Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice by Sharon O’Brien, and: Cather’s Kitchens: Foodways in Literature and Life by Roger L. and Linda K. Welsch (review)

Reviews 69 In addition to their analyses of the Manley-Rogers routes, the Johnsons have reproduced certain primary sources regarding the trip. First, there is one account by William L. Manley who wrote about the trip several times. Second, John Rogers’ account from the Merced Star in 1894 is reprinted. Third, portions of Louis Nushaumer’s journal are included. And finally, there are letters from the Reverend James Brier whose family was not part of the Bennett-Arcan group but had some contact with them. The book accomplishes its goals well and is surprisingly readable. The maps are sufficient, although I would have liked more photographs to get a better feel for the difficulties of the trip. Desert rats, Death Valley aficionados, and Gold Rush students are the primary audience, but the book is sufficiently informative and readable to commend itself to a wider audience. DAVID WELLENBROCK Stockton, California Willa Gather: The Emerging Voice. By Sharon O’Brien. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. 464 pages, $24.95.) Cather’s Kitchens: Foodways in Literature and Life. By Roger L. and Linda K. Welsch. Foreword by Susan J. Rosowski. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. 177 pages, $16.95.) It soon may be necessary to emend the words of Ecclesiastes to read: Of the making of books about Willa Cather there is no end. Studies of the Nebraska author’s life and work seem to pour forth in an ever-widening stream. Such activity may be an indication of growing respect for an author once sadly neglected. How deplorable it would be, however, if Cather were to become an “academic industry” wherein all genuine appreciation is over­ shadowed by ingenious dissection. The impressive diversity of current interest in Cather is evidenced by two recent books: Sharon O’Brien’s Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice and Roger and Linda Welsch’s Cather’s Kitchens: Foodways in Literature and Life. The first of these covers the first half of Cather’s life up to the publica­ tion of O Pioneers!, with special emphasis on the young midwesterner’s strug­ gle to find her own identity as a writer. This story, of course, has been told before. Cather students have long known, and Cather herself knew, that she experienced a long—though not, really, abnormally long—literary apprentice­ ship before she finally “hit the home pasture,” to use her own words. But Sharon O’Brien interprets this aspect of Cather’sdevelopment almost entirely in terms of what she calls the conflict between gender and vocation. Cather is pictured as frustrated by both her subservience to a male-dominated literary tradition and her abhorrence of a sentimental female literary tradi­ tion. Unable to believe that one could be a woman and a writer worthy of 70 Western American Literature esteem, Cather was intimidated by such things as the single-name tombs and monuments of male writers in Europe, according to O’Brien: And it was only after encouragement came from an established woman writer, Sarah Orne Jewett, that Cather was able to accept the possibility of being seriously accepted as a woman-writer-artist. Cather’s dilemma was exacerbated, according to this account, by her lesbianism. O’Brien draws a picture of a woman whose sexual nature was problematic and who was plagued by an inability to conceal or reveal in her fiction this aspect of her character. Although O’Brien concedes that no facts are available that give indisputable evidence of Cather’s sexual experiences with anyone, she nevertheless freely aludes to her as a “lesbian writer” who had “love affairs” and female “lovers.” Such usage isjustified, O’Brien argues, because Cather “possessed a lesbian sense of self.” Clearly, O’Brien has researched her subject with care and makes use of a variety of sources to support her conclusions. Especially interesting are the discussions of Cather’sfamily and the analyses of early and lessfamiliar stories. Ms. O’Brien’s exposition, however, is weakened by her tendency toward the melodramatic: “Would Cather be able to transform emotion into art? Or would she betray herself and her gifts . . . ?” The novelist’s individuality is described as constantly threatened by sinister friends. S. S...