Major Gifts Help Cather Group Secure Grant on Saturday, Made the Conference Unique in the History of the Hastings Tribune, Aug
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
"The Cather Foundation’s success in meeting the NEH Endowment Challenge marks a new stage in our evolution as a society," said Charles Peek of Kearney, President of the Foundation Board of Governors. With the grant money in hand, the Foundation now has an endowment of $1.1 million for the Opera House. Interest revenue will be used to support cultural and educational programming, provide some money for a part-time archivist, and help maintain the building. Fundraising for the endowment challenge began even before the 1885 Opera House reopened to the public in May 2003 following a $1.68 million renovation. In fact, about $300,000 already had been raised by the time of the grand reopening. Originally, the Foundation had faced a deadline of July 2004 to finish its fundraising for the match. That deadline was extended twice. "[NEH] went out on a limb for us," said Betty Kort, Foundation Executive Director. "We understand that they have never extended a significant NEH Challenge Grant to so small an organization as the Cather Foundation. It is difficult for (Continued on page 10) The 2006 Willa Cather Spring Conference focused on Willa Cather’s French Connections and featured the novel Shadows on the Rock. The Scholars’ Symposium, a new feature of the Conference, necessitated a third day. This, along with Photograph by Dee Yost. the dedication of the newly acquired Willa Cather Memorial Prairie and the international ambiance of the traditional events Major Gifts Help Cather Group Secure Grant on Saturday, made the Conference unique in the history of the Hastings Tribune, Aug. 3, 2006 Foundation. Andy Raun John Murphy was highly instrumental in organizing RED CLOUD --Major donors, including two families related the Scholars’ Symposium heldon the first day of June. Scholars to author Willa Cather, have helped the Willa Cather Pioneer participating in the event came from throughout the United States Memorial and Educational Foundation meet a major endowment and as far away as England. challenge. The Conference continued on Friday with a panel of The Cather Foundation announced Wednesday it had distinguished scholars who shared their experiences teaching reached its goal of raising $825,000 Ibr the Red Cloud Opera (Continued on page 10) House endowment fund. Aided by two Cather family gifts of $50,000 apiece, an anonymous $100,000 gift, and numerous smaller contributions, the foundation met its goat by July 31--its final deadline to match a $275,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. ’International Seminars tn Sante Fe, Virgtma, Quebe , Nebraska, the CATHER FOUNDATION invites Willa Cather’s life. John J. SEMINAR WILLA CATHER. Robe t~ v~it :or http://cather.unl.edu or contact T~ ~LA CATHER FOUNDATION 413 North Webste~ :Street Red Cloud; ska 68970 Betty Kort (ExeCutive Director) wcpm@~ommet KeynoteSpeakers: A.S. Byatt War in Nebraska: Willa Cather’s One of Ours Andy Jones The famous debate over the legitimacy of One of Ours become charged with even more irony than Cather’s supporters as a war novel began early and quickly became heated. Willa have recognized. Cather’s supporters were undoubtedly pleased when One of Ours Cather’s cousin G. E Cather fought in World War I, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. Raymond Wilson III notes that providing Cather with the spark for One of Ours. According to "many veterans wrote to tell [Cather] how perfectly she had James Woodress, G. E Cather--like Claude Wheeler--dreaded recreated the atmosphere of the war" (25). However, dissenter life on the farm (304). Cather was intrigued by her cousin, who Sidney Howard felt that Cather should have continued to write had become so dedicated to the idea of escaping the farm that he about what she knew, "farms and farmer folk," and recognize was willing to go to war. When her cousin was killed, Cather "war for the big bowwow stuff that it is" (qtd. in Trout, Memorial was inspired to write a war novel, a type of novel she might not Fictions 107). And Hemingway, writing to Edmund Wilson, have written otherwise. One of Ours is thus simultaneously an brutally lamented the success of Cather’s novel: "Then look expression and critique of G.E’s escapist idealism. Clearly, G. E at One of Ours. Prize, big sale, people taking it seriously. You is the driving force behind the novel, and the novel itself may be were in the war weren’t you? Do you know where it came seen as an homage to her cousin, who found himself in the war. from? The battle scene in Birth of a Nation. I identified episode Cather’s homage to her cousin is self-aware and after episode, Catherized. Poor woman she had to get her war meticulous, following the commemorative conventions of Civil experience somewhere" (Selected Letters 105). War veterans organizations, as Steven Trout recognizes. Trout Then, as today, One of Ours is generally regarded understands that although the Civil War ended eight years before as having two distinct and only slightly connected halves: Cather’s birth, "popular conventions of military experience" the "Nebraska section" and the "war section." It is this type still greatly influenced American conception of military of thinking, of course, that led critics to wonder why Cather experience ("From ’The Namesake’" t 19). "According to this introduced war into a novel about "farms and farmer folk." Even nostalgic picture," writes Trout, "the war had offered its initiates critics who correctly read Cather’s "unrealistic" romanticizing comradeship, connection with nature, and the opportunity to of war as part of an ironic critique usually rely upon the pursue... ’the divine folly of honor’" (122). In addition to novel’s second half, ignoring the first. But treating the novel creating a nostalgic picture of the war, these conventions either in its entirety allows us to recognize that war as a theme runs ignored or "patriotically varnished" battlefield horrors (125), throughout. In fact, one finds the fullest expression of both a convention Cather adopts. However, the horror of war does Cather’s criticism of the war and her understanding of the reality seep ironically into Cather’s text, as Trout notes: the graveyard of war in the "Nebraska section," not in the "war section." Claude opens up in an attempt to bathe and the soldier’s hand Similar to Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises, Cather writes about that keeps reappearing in the trenches are two of the most notable what she knows well Nebraska and farming--as a means of instances of irony. Yet, Trout does not believe that these ironic writing about something else entirely. Behind the tractors and ruptures are the result of "conscious artistry" on Cather’s part; horses, and beneath the smooth surface of her prose, Cather’s instead, he argues that the irony present in the text is the result criticism and sober understanding of the Great War resides. of the limitations of the commemorative traditions themselves. Before I begin my analysis of the Nebraska section, Furthermore, Trout does not discuss Nebraska and farming in I will identify Cather’s specific project in the latter half of the relation to the war: "My claim that One of Ours is very much a novel; this will reveal why Cather chose to romanticize the novel about the Great War... requires some justification. After war section. It then becomes possible to separate the largely all, more than half of the narrative takes place in Nebraska" romanticized depiction of the war from Cather’s own perception ("Willa Cather’s One of Ours" 190). Trout, like most critics, does of the war. Then I will analyze the Nebraska section, revealing not see the depiction of war in Nebraska. both the presence of the war as well as Cather’s critique of the Frederick T. Griffiths separates himself from most critics war. Once we realize the extent to which the "Nebraska section" in this respect. Griffiths recognizes that "Cather practices the is about World War I, Claude’s tour of duty and his idealism Tolstoyan art of seeing war and peace as describable within the -3- War in Nebraska: Willa Cather’s One of Ours Claude has an accident involving a barbed wire fence, described (Continued) by one witness as "the queerest thing I ever saw" (1049). Claude’s face is wrapped in bandages, and he is nursed by Enid same reality" (268). Furthermore, Griffiths argues that Cather during his recovery, which is the seed of their failed marriage. laments "the dehumanizing mechanization of modern warfare.., by This incident associates life on a modern farm in Nebraska with anticipation from Nebraska," citing newspaper reports on the war the war in several ways. First, barbed wire was employed at as an example (265). He identifies Claude’s voyage to Europe the front lines of World War I. Second, soldiers often became as the moment in the text that "sets up the counterpoint between entangled in barbed wire and many met their death because Claude’s expectations and war’s realities," which prevents one of it. Although such an accident is "queer" on a farm, where from reading the rest of the novel "with simple literalness" (265). barbed wire is meant to contain animals, it commonly occurred Griffiths argues that "Claude’s insistence on experiencing the on the battlegrounds during the war. The very fact that Claude’s passage [to France aboard an influenza-ridden ship] as an Atlantic accident is described as "queer" serves to remind the reader cruise" sufficiently indicates that in the war narrative "Cather... moves that this was decidedly not the case in the war.