Is enclosing the article from the Nation [a review of The Song of the Lark] hoping he will reprint it. Believes it would be of interest to people there. Willa S. Cather [Stout #328]
Thinks the ad is unexciting. Why not quote some of the really live statements in reviews? Has redone the ad proposing some other quotations. [Encloses example.] Has sent her Nation to Will Owen Jones for reprint. Willa Cather [Stout #329]
Hopes there will be copies of her books available when she lectures in Chicago, Omaha, and Lincoln in September. Has he seen the current Nation? W. S. C. [Stout #548]
Understood from the Canbys that she would see him before now, so didn't write. Has articles due to the New Republic and the Nation in February, so can't get one done for the Yale Review right away. Willa Cather [Stout #572]
Congratulations on her article [ "Vermont: Our Rich Little Poor State" ] in the Nation. Hopes they can visit in private before or after they call on Knopf. Willa [Stout #598]
Glad to have his confirmation that people in Omaha pay no attention to Mrs. Shotwell. Touched by Harvey Newbranch's column. Glad people of Nebraska are pleased with her article in The Nation. Not sure if she can get painting to Omaha by December 10. Glad to report that A Lost Lady is going into a third printing after only a week. Willa Cather [Stout #702]
Sending a review from the Nation that she is proud of. [Possibly referring to a review of The Song of the Lark in October 1915 or to one of Joseph Wood Krutch's strongly positive reviews in the Nation: of A Lost Lady, November 28, 1923; of The Professor's House, September 23, 1925; of My Mortal Enemy, November 10, 1926; of Death Comes for the Archbishop, October 12, 1927.] Please return it after she shows Roscoe. Willie [Stout #1785]
Is working hard after two weeks in Virginia, and Isabelle is preparing for her sister Edith's wedding.� Pleased Elsie is doing some horseback riding.� Wishes to get back to beautiful Nebraska.� Sending a review from the Nation [97 (4 Sept. 1913): 210-211].� Likes beating out Norris and Phillips [Nation reviewer compared O Pioneers! to their work]. Willie
Enclosed review [of O Pioneers!] is from the Nation [97 (4 Sept. 1913): 210-211], which rarely publishes a positive review of a novel. Used to see Phillips at the Waldorf and said to herself that she understood the west better than he did, but no one would ever believe a woman. Now they do! Is very pleased. Please send back after Roscoe sees it. Willie
Wanted to respond right away to his kind letter. Is so pleased that he and their parents like the new novel. It is getting positive reviews from many critics, too. She received a letter from France, even, and it will soon be published there. Prefers the previous one herself, as it is full of intensity and the hardships of life then, but critics prefer the artistry of My Ántonia. A reviewer in The Nation claims "it exists in an atmosphere of its own—an atmosphere of pure beauty." [This quotation has not been found. It does not appear in the review published in "The Nation" in 1918 ("Two Portraits," The Nation [November 2, 1918]: 522-3)] That's silly: the atmosphere is like grandmother's kitchen. Booth Tarkington says it is as "simple as a country prayer meeting or a Greek temple—and as beautiful." [No published or unpublished remarks about My Ántonia by Booth Tarkington have been located. However, Booth Tarkington did write a letter to S. S. McClure praising his "Autobiography" (which Cather ghost-wrote) and used the sentence "It's as simple as a country church—or a Greek statue." See Lyon, Peter, Success Story: The Life and Times of S. S. McClure (New York: Scribner): 1963. 347] Isn't it funny how people who can't create anything of real quality themselves can know it when they see it? And something really honest is honest for everybody. It doesn't work for a writer to be concerned about the pre-formed taste of the audience. They accomplish nothing. Unless one is going to be completely conventional, one has to do something utterly new and un-wished for by readers. Innovative works are never desired, because people have to figure out how to appreciate what they have never encountered before.
