Margins, Centers and the Nebraskan Commonwealth

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Presentations, Talks, and Seminar Papers -- Department of English English, Department of March 2003 The Politics of Cather’s Regionalism: Margins, Centers and the Nebraskan Commonwealth Guy Reynolds University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishtalks Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Reynolds, Guy, "The Politics of Cather’s Regionalism: Margins, Centers and the Nebraskan Commonwealth" (2003). Presentations, Talks, and Seminar Papers -- Department of English. 1. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishtalks/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Presentations, Talks, and Seminar Papers -- Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Reynolds, The Politics of Cather’s Regionalism The Politics of Cather’s Regionalism: It features, of course, as this region often does in expatriate US writing: as everything you want to get away from. Here, the ‘dis‐ Margins, Centers and the Nebraskan quietingly cheerful horde’ represent a hideous uniformity, a col‐ Commonwealth lectivised national identity which seems both coarse and bland. This is, sadly, one of the main themes in the literary representa‐ tion of this particular region over the last century. In his useful Guy Reynolds study, The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture, Kansas geographer James Shortridge follows the rise and fall of the area’s Presented March 25, 2003, at the Plains Humanities Alliance Research & status in the national imagination. ‘The reign of the Middle West Region Seminar, Great Plains Art Collection, 1155 Q Street, Lincoln NE as the self‐confident symbol of the United States was remarkably short‐lived.’ By the 1930s, negative images abounded. Shortridge A version of this paper is online at cites a brutal quotation from John Abbot Clark, ‘The Middle http://libr.unl.edu:2000/plains/events/seminars/reynolds1.html West—There it Lies’ in 1937. The Middle West was ‘a geographical blunder, an intellectual dead spot, a spiritual swamp.’ Such commentators could point to the literary history Yet, walking into the American Express Office one that lies behind Giovanni’s Room—the Midwest’s own writers had harshly bright, midsummer afternoon, I was forced moved out of the area, had indeed formed the bedrock of the to admit that this active, so disquietingly cheerful literary expatriate movement centred in Paris. horde struck the eye, at once as a unit. At home, I This might seem a sobering introduction to a series of seminars could have distinguished patterns, habits, accents on regionalism, held under the auspices of the Plains Humanities of speech—with no effort whatever; now every‐ Alliance, but I do think we need to accept, from the start, that the body sounded, unless I listened hard, as though study of literary regionalism will also be the study of cultural they had just arrived from Nebraska.(1) stereotypes: how they develop, how they condition readers’ imaginations, how such stereotypes are resisted and transformed. It might seem rather strange to start a talk on regionalism and As a Willa Cather specialist I want to focus this talk on region Willa Cather with this quotation from a novel written by another through the prism of Cather’s oeuvre. But I also want to note that (and very different) author. This passage occurs in James Bald‐ the reception of her work has been shaped by what we might call win’s novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956). Its protagonist, David, is a the declensionist narrative of Shortridge’s story, the decline of the troubled American writer in Paris; the novel tells of his journey Middle West in the national imagination. Cather’s reputation is away from a certain kind of American puritanism and into a often seen as being conditioned by her gender; she was pushed to decadent European underworld where he will finally accept his the edge of the canon by male critics keen to promote a masculin‐ own gay identity. How and why does Nebraska and its associated ist model of the national literature. This argument is not altogether region (the Plains, the Midwest) feature in this expatriate fiction? 2 Reynolds, The Politics of Cather’s Regionalism Reynolds, The Politics of Cather’s Regionalism true, since Cather’s regional identity was, perhaps, just as signifi‐ and the advent of air travel had all helped to create an altered cant as her gender. Look at this quotation from one of the harshest sense of social space. We have to recognise, however uncomfort‐ accounts of her work, and note how it follows the logic of earlier able the recognition might be for Cather enthusiasts, that the sheer quotations, in seeing Cather’s chosen region as a place lacking ‘otherness’ of turn‐of‐the‐century Nebraska was changed by these contemporary significance. When Quentin Anderson came to re‐ spatial re‐configurations. Cather’s early fiction still carries with it view her career in 1965 he felt that the great age of Nebraska had a strong sense of the sheer remoteness, inaccessibility and con‐ long gone, and with its passing Cather’s work was inevitably di‐ comitant exoticism of the rural world she grew up in. Think of minished. As late as Alfred Kazin’s study, On Native Grounds how Jim Burden re‐visits Antonia by train, carriage and foot—his (1942), Anderson argued, ‘One can catch echoes of the fullness of journey seeming to become steadily more primitive, more tricky, this faith in the big country.’ Now, however, twenty years late, as the ways of getting around become steadily less accommodat‐ ‘The country has shrunk, and our sense of the weight and rele‐ ing. Then think of how the resonance of this last episode, with all vance of Willa Cather’s observation of Nebraska has shrunk with its suggestions of a journey made with some difficulty, would be it.’ Anderson explicitly linked Cather’s literary status to her re‐ diminished if Jim had simply driven up to her farm in a hired gion; as her home‐territory had fallen from national significance, Land Rover on modern roads. Anderson, I think, reflects these so Cather’s importance was correspondingly diminished: shifts when he notes of Nebraska that ‘as a distinct imaginative possibility it has for the moment simply disappeared.’ It has dis‐ The country has shrunk, and our sense of the appeared for the reason that ‘The country has shrunk’: in a weight and relevance of Willa Cather’s observation shrunken country certain regions lose their distinctiveness. Cather has shrunk with it. Nebraska is no doubt still there, scholars will immediately recognise the irony of this. Cather but as a distinct imaginative possibility it has for warned against the ‘standardization’ of American culture in the the moment simply disappeared. As in so many 1920s. Partly because of standardization, her own region has be‐ other cases we are left confronting the artist who come, for Anderson, bleached of its uniqueness. If Cather’s diag‐ has been abandoned by his ostensible subject. The nosis of the direction of American culture was correct, then the artist we now see is one whose energies are largely unfolding process of standardization would also undermine the lavished on defensive maneuver, on masquerade. idiosyncratic uniqueness of her homeland, and in turn would (2) jeopardise her early work’s status. How things have changed over the last hundred years! Looked What is happening here (and this is typical of what has hap‐ at from the perspective of commentators from a century ago, this pened to the reputation of Midwestern writers over the past few situation would seem remarkable. In 1896, as he responded enthu‐ decades) is that centers and margins have been reversed. What siastically to the historian’s theories of the frontier, Theodore Roo‐ was once the heartland is now the margin. Anderson is surely sevelt wrote in a letter to Frederick Jackson Turner: ‘Personally, I right when he argues that ‘the country has shrunk’; modern com‐ think it will be a good thing for this country when the West, as it munications, the development of the interstate highway system 3 4 Reynolds, The Politics of Cather’s Regionalism Reynolds, The Politics of Cather’s Regionalism used to be called, the Centre as it really is, grows so big that it can writing of the West. Civilization progresses through stages; there no more be jealous of the East than New York is now jealous of is an inevitable drive towards ‘civilization’ (4). Cather’s essay thus Boston.(3) But, of course, this very interesting phrase, ‘the Centre’, follows the plains from pre‐history through to the heyday of the never became common currency. Instead, Roosevelt’s Centre be‐ native Americans and then on to pioneer wagons and the rail‐ came a margin—the only place we now see such a use of the roads. The essay is a fine example of Cather’s skill as a journalist: ‘Centre’ is in time‐keeping—Central Time. The Standard Time Act her talents for compression and selection; her ability to weave a of 1918 reduced Roosevelt’s heroic notion of ‘the Centre’ to a mere range of discourses into a seamless prose. ‘Nebraska’ is at once a form of administrative book‐keeping. Again, as Cather had fore‐ natural history of the state, a historical account, a travelogue, a cast, the processes of standardization would be bound up with personal reminiscence and a thesis about nationhood. how a state like Nebraska preserved, or lost, regional distinctive‐ For this is a major statement about how the ideology of pro‐ ness.

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