University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Fall 1982 The Uses Of Biography: The Case Of Willa Cather James Woodress University of California at Davis Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Woodress, James, "The Uses Of Biography: The Case Of Willa Cather" (1982). Great Plains Quarterly. 1638. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1638 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. THE USES OF BIOGRAPHY THE CASE OF WILLA CATHER JAMES WOODRESS I n the first of his series of lectures on biog­ Cather, whose dedication to her art was as raphy at the University of Toronto, Leon Edel consuming a passion as was James's. observed that "the writing of a literary life I don't know whether or not it would be would be nothing but a kind of indecent "indecent curiosity" exactly to write a life of curiosity, and an invasion of privacy, were it Cather that dealt only with her early years in not that it seeks always to illuminate the mys­ Red Cloud, her college days in Lincoln, her terious and magical process of creation.,,1 Edel journalistic beginnings, her school teaching, her was generalizing about the life of Henry James managing editorship of McClure's Magazine, when he made that statement, for he was deep her trips back and forth between Nebraska, the in the writing of the James biography to which Southwest, and New York, her travels in he devoted about twenty years of his life. For Europe, and her New York apartments, but it a writer such as James this view of biography is surely would be of limited value unless it re­ undeniably true. His writing was his life, and lated her life to her writing. Certainly the there is no separating the two. One cannot purpose of a biography of Cather must be to imagine a biography of James in which the "illuminate the mysterious and magical process biographer talks only of his relations with his of creation." That is what I intended when I brothers and sister, his parents, his goings and wrote my book about her, and I hope I suc­ comings between England and America, his ceeded. travels on the Continent, his social life in Lon­ How does the biographer manage to illumi­ don, and his country life in Rye. And I think nate the mysterious and magical act of crea­ Edel's generalization also applies to Willa tion? First of all he must approach his subject objectively. Then he must be willing to undergo a great deal of drudgery to collect his data. A professor of English at University of Cali­ fornia at Davis, James Woodress is the author of Finally, he must have a reasonable amount of Willa Cather: Her Life and Art (1970). He has success in clearing the roadblocks from his also written American Fiction, 1900-1950 path. (1974) and biographies of Booth Tarkington The biographer is a historian, and a biased (1955) and Joel Barlow (1958). historian is not much use to anyone. In our 195 196 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1982 Western culture we hold the ideal of objectivity which these volumes are composed, will hardly high, though it may often be much more be conceived by those who read them with honored in the breach than in the observance. careless facility .... I have sometimes been Of course, we do not rewrite our history every obliged to run half over London, in order to fix time a hero falls from power as the Russians a date correctly; which, when I had accom­ do, but we change our viewpoint from age to plished, I well knew would obtain me no praise, age. Emerson said that every age had to write though a failure would have been to my dis­ its own books, and his words were prophetic. credit.,,3 Of course, in the eighteenth century The history of literary reputations makes it the amount of documentation available was far clear how perspectives change as the culture less than it is today. The verifiable facts about changes. But given these inevitable shifts, one Shakespeare's life, despite three centuries of still hopes for objectivity in a biographer. One scholarship, can be written on one sheet of does not ask the biographer to be completely paper. For contemporary writers there is likely neutral about his subject. That would be asking to be too much material. The literary remains too much, for who would spend months or of Theodore Dreiser and Thomas Wolfe, for years of his life writing the life of someone he example, are prodigious; James T. Farrell, did not have a strong interest in and liking for? who was persuaded years ago by the University Complete neutrality probably would result in of Pennsylvania to give them his papers, sent a something like a clinical case history, and I truckload, and he kept material coming until think that in biography, as in fiction, what he died in 1979. Cather called the "gift of sympathy" is neces­ For Cather the amount of archival material sary for good work. is modest, and one would like to have much In our biographies of Willa Cather, E. K. more. Few of her manuscripts are extant and Brown and I were perhaps too admiring, but it many of her letters were destroyed. Yet I had a is difficult to spend years working on a biogra­ great deal more material at my disposal than phy of someone one admires without becoming Brown did, because many of the letters I was somewhat protective of the subject.2 It is a able to use at the University of Virginia, the natural hazard that must be kept constantly in Newberry Library, and the Huntington Library mind. A biographer's subject becomes almost a were not available to him. Edith Lewis wrote member of the family. One can ask, however, her memoir for his use, and the archives and that the biographer not start with a precon­ memory of Alfred Knopf were an important ceived thesis that he wants to prove. If Vernon resource, but Elizabeth Sergeant had not yet Calverton or Granville Hicks had written published her memoir, and the great efforts of biographies of Cather in the thirties, they migh t Bernice Slote and others to identify and re­ have tried to diminish her stature because trieve the huge amount of journalistic writing of her lack of interest in social activism. And of Cather's early years had not yet been made.4 the efforts to make a case for Cather's anti­ Thus when I began my research there was more Semitism, as has been tried, can only be done to go on, and I am sure that when the next by slanting the evidence. Both Brown and I biography of Cather appears the picture will be endeavored to present a balanced portrait of even more complete. Cather, and I am not aware of suppressing any The drudgery in collecting all this informa­ biographical data that I collected. tion is formidable. There are approximately In the advertisement to the first edition of one thousand Cather letters scattered about the his Life of Samuel Johnson, our first really United States in fifty-eight libraries spread modern biography, James Boswell e~phasizes between San Marino, California, and Burling­ the research task of the biographer: "The ton, Vermont. All must be read and assimilated. labour and anxious attention with which I One must examine everything the author ever have collected and arranged the materials of wrote and, insofar as possible, everything that THE USES OF BIOGRAPHY 197 ever has been written about her. For Cather this Enemy; Cather then initiated the correspon­ preparation for the writing of the biography is dence with Tennant. This fact comes as a not nearly so difficult as the preparation for surprise, because Cather is deferential and writing the life of someone like James or candid about her work in· her first letter to this Howells, whose extant letters number about twenty-year-old golden youth of the British ten thousand each and whose published work is upper class. This letter was written at a time many times more extensive than Cather's. when Cather was refusing interviews and draw­ Then there is the search for documents and the ing a veil of silence about her private life. Lewis sifting of evidence, a time-consuming and no doubt felt that it was unseemly for an es­ tedious process. tablished writer with a large following and a Of course, I collected more data than I could secure critical reputation to initiate such a use. I was aiming at a biography of about a friendship. The entire relationship, which I hundred thousand words, which seemed to me confess I made nothing of in my book, strikes a reasonable length. There is no ideal length me now as important and revealing of a facet for a biography. Although Edel advocated of Cather's character that needs more illumina­ succinctness, his own biography of James tion. It is another of the paradoxes that gov­ (which is a great achievement) ran to five erned her life. volumes, and the last is the thickest of all. Some The roadblocks are not thrown up only by biographies are far too long, however, and protective family and friends.