Willa Cather and the Fairy Tale by Marilyn Berg Callander (review)

186 Western American Literature the tales with remarkable realism, including the colorful language, and with an irresistible vitality. Her style is both vigorous and relaxed, salty and poetic. This book isfull of laughter and fond remembrances. Its gusto and enthusiasms are contagious; to borrow a phrase from James Thurber, it embraces life instead of straight-arming it. The people “carried with them a built-in readi­ ness to handle whoever and whatever was going to happen.” These are people that John Steinbeck would have liked. The reader will like them too. ROBERT E. MORSBERGER California State Polytechnic, Pomona Willa Cather and the Fairy Tale. By Marilyn Berg Callander. (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989. 108 pages, $39.95.) Marilyn Berg Callander’s Willa Cather and the Fairy Tale persuasively traces elements of the fairy tale in narrative design through five of Cather’s major novels. Prof. Callander argues that “fairy-tale elements embroider the fabric of Cather’s work,” and that they are her “primary symbol of romance.” Interestingly, Callander does not see such romance as an aspect of Cather’s own philosophy; rather, “romance ... is as much an illusion as a fairy tale,” and fairy tales “represent illusion in Willa Cather’s canon, superimposed upon winter’s reality” (3). Callander explores Thea’s Cinderella-like rise in The Song of the Lark, Jim Burden’s “fairy-tale hero journey” in My Antonia, “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White” as an “integral part of the structure of My Mortal Enemy,” the motif of “Two Brothers” as it “fits like a kind of transparency on Archbishop,” and the creation of a “novel which is itself almost a fairy tale” in Shadows on the Rock. Callander states that Cather’s other novels either have “no allusions to fairy tale” or finds that there are “none of significance” (4). I can find little to criticize about the book. Prof. Callander’s prose is clear, interesting, engaging. Her ideas are intelligent and provocative. She limits the study to what she believes is Cather’s “conscious use” (2) of the form; because such references therefore are apparent, the arguments are not forced and are readily acceptable. I was also happy Prof. Callander neither overestimates nor underestimates the contribution of fairy tales to Cather’s canon; she sees the focus of her study as “a narrow one” and acknowledges that “Willa Cather’s work is so much richer, denser, and grander than this study suggests” (5 ).The book was a pleasure to read because it iswritten with clarity and verve; it is thought-provoking and well proven. My only criticism is its length (sixty-six pages of text) ; I was interested enough that I would have been content to read much more, even if it were on minor references to minor tales. MARGARET DOANE California State University, San Bernardino ...