5:45 – 7:45 pm
Willa Cather moved to Nebraska at age 9, hated it, and only grew to value the West once she relocated to a big city and began to write. We will survey her great novels, from My Ántonia to Death Comes for the Archbishop. Cather’s vision of the frontier is revelatory: polyglot, musical, shimmering with culture. But we read Cather for the story she tells about the closing of the frontier and about the predicament of those individuals who were sorry to see it go. Cather struggled to turn regret into art.
Benjamin Lytal’s first novel, The City I Wanted, will be published in the fall of 2012; his criticism has appeared in the Nation, the Wall Street Journal, and the Believer.
Eight sessions, $190.
Online registration for this class has closed. Please call (312) 255-3700 to register.
Materials List
Required:
Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. University of Nebraska Press, 2003. ISBN: 978-0803264304
Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. Virago UK, 2006. ISBN: 978-1844083725
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. Dover Thrift Editions, 1994. ISBN: 978-0486282404
Cather, Willa. The Professor’s House. Vintage Classics, 1990. ISBN: 978-0679731801
Jewett, Sarah Orne. The Country of the Pointed Firs. Signet Classics, 2009. ISBN: 978-0451531445