Willa Gather’s Imagination by David Stouck (review)

HUMANITIES 421 David Stouck, Willa Cather's Imagination. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1975,253, $9.50 The 'chief purpose' of this most recent addition to the University of Nebraska Press's list of books devoted to the life and writings of Willa Cather is 'to illustrate the unusual range and depth' of her imagination. Mr Stouck professes little interest in the author's literary relationships or in the biographical aspects of her fiction, except as these shed light on the 'archetypal imaginative patterns' in her works, 'the universal dimensions of her imagination' (pp 2-4). His approach is potentially a rewarding one: decades before the'archetypal' analysis of literature had become a critical cliche, Cather had demonstrated a sensitivity to the 'modes' into which fictive statements tend to resolve themselves. In her quiet way she was throughout her career a tireless experimenter with the resources of narrative. Mr Stouck brings to his subject a forthright style and with it a detailed knowledge of the Cather canon which enables him to discuss in meaningful juxtaposition works written years apart. The first of the book's three sections, entitled 'Modes,' is itself divided into three chapters - 'Epic,' 'Pastoral,' and 'Satire.' At the outset of each Mr Stouck provides a 'brief working definition' (p 3) of the literary mode under consideration before proceeding to discuss certain of Cather's works which conform more or less closely to it. The preliminary statements , though necessary, are not illuminating; one tends to hurry over them in order to encounter Mr Stouck at his untheoretical best, as a sharp-eyed and usually persuasive explicator of texts. On occasion his adherence to the theory of modes does blur his perceptions. For example, he tells us that 'we feel only a limited sense of identification' with Alexandra Bergson, the heroine of 0 Pioneers!, 'because as epic heroine she is idealized' (p 27). Few will agree with this judgment. In his second section, 'Forms,' Mr Stouck brings together My Mortal Enemy, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Shadows on the Rock as Cather's exploration 'through Christian imagery and myth [of] the full range of the moral universe' (p 115). He presents the works as adaptations of three traditional forms - respectively, the novelle, the saint's legend, and the historical novel. The concluding section, 'Themes,' includes two chapters, one a survey of Cather's tales about artists and the artistic life, the other a perspicuous and sympathetic reading of her last four works - Obscure Destinies, Lucy Gayheart, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, and the posthumous The Old Beauty and Others - as her final assessments of the relative values of art and life. The book clearly has many dimensions, but it also has several flawsthe chief of which, already evident to the reader hard-put to distinguish absolutely between amode, a form, and a theme, is its want ofcoherence. Notwithstanding Mr Stouck's demurrer, he betrays a keen interest in the 422 LETTERS IN CANADA relationship between Cather's life and art. Again and again he makes luminous passing comments on this topic (eg, pp 17, 74), or includes them in his notes. I have the impression that, while his study is devoted essentially to the explication from various points of view of Cather's writings in themselves, this emphasis is somewhat at odds with his present interests. (Several of the chapters have previously appeared as articles.) A related problem is his tendency to explain inadequately the biographical details he introduces in the course of his commentary (see, for example, the portentous references to the author's 'loss of her Bank Street apartment,' pp 119, 207). Yet MrStouck's diverse approaches to the novels, tales, and poems do serve him well in realizing the primary illustrative aim of his book. If Willa Cather's Imagination is neither a comprehensive nor - as its title would seem to indicate - a synthesizing study, it is a clearheaded and suggestive series of essays in criticism. (WAYNE R. KIME) E.H. Mikhail and John Q'Riordan, editors, The Sting and the Twinkle: Conversations with Sean a'Casey. London and Toronto: Macmillan 1974, xii, 183, $15.95 ane of the impressions left upon the reader of...