Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
I have had a grand time reading THE PRODIGAL
PARENTS3 - all through it I had the sense of coming home again to
my own people. Even the sawdust son and the detestable Sara are unmistakably
American - couldn't be mistaken for anything else. Maybe it's the fact that
they are so easily taken-in that makes them seem so much our own kin. With a
world-wide reputation for being smart and on-the-make, aren't we just about
the most gullible and easily taken-in of all peoples? It's our incurable
optimism and sweet truthtrustfulness that have got us into all this mess.
When this country4 is chock-full of
solid people who always come up to the scratch without any rhetoric, like
Fredk. Wm. and Hazel, will you tell me why we lie down and take a booting? I
half believe that it's because we can't seriously believe evil of anyone. We don't like to believe evil.
It's more comfortable not to believe it. We think that Stalin5 must have very good points, and we know Mussolini6 has made Italy7
so comfortable for tourists. I
don't believe we'll waken up to the situation we've drifted into until the
knife is at our throat. There are Howard Cornplows in every country, but I
think in other countries they have more meanness and sharper claws than this
poor dub. The reason I so enjoyed this book is, that it fairly glows with
that peculiar and generally misplaced and unintelligent kindness which is so
peculiarly American. (For a hundred years we have been begging all the
crooks and incompetents in the world to come over to us and be happy. Well,
we've got them). What is worse is that we've got their grandsons, and with
the right kind of political manipulation they'll do us all in very nicely.
Anyhow, I'd rather live and die in such a silly soft-hearted ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ country than in any other.
Wouldn't you? All the same we are in a tight fix just now, though not many
of the people you meet on your lecture tour will realize it. They will tell
you that "things will come out all right", just because they always
have.
Please come and have tea with me when you get back.
Your obliged Willa Cather From W. Cather 570 Park Avenue8 New York, N.Y.2 Mr. Sinclair Lewis,1 Hotel Wyndham, 42 W. 58th Street, New York City.2 NEW YORK.N.Y.2 JAN 14 1938 2-PM Please ForwardPLEASE FORWARDInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1392.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1392
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Sinclair Lewis 1
- Date letter was written
- January 14, 1938
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Sinclair Lewis Papers (YCAL MSS 268), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Individual Annotations
570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.
Person Annotations
Lewis, Sinclair (1885-1951). American novelist. Born
in Sauke Centre, MN, Sinclair Lewis graduated from Yale University in 1908.
Although he published short stories and several novels in the teens, he
achieved critical and popular success with Main
Street (1920), which satirized Midwestern provincialism. On a 1921
lecture tour, he regularly praised Cather’s work. He continued with a string
of popular and critical successes, including Babbitt
(1922), Arrowsmith (1925) (for which he declined the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction), Mantrap (1926), and Elmer Gantry (1927). Even though he depicted One of Ours (1922) as a failure in his New York Evening Post review, Cather invited him to
tea and said she was not “a particle sore at him” (#0624). Although they
infrequently saw each other in person, they remained on good terms, and when
Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature,
he praised Cather in his acceptance speech. Lewis was married and divorced
twice, first to Grace Livingston Hegger and then to Dorothy Thompson. Later,
he lived with Rosemary Marcella Powers, whom Cather met. Lewis’s later
career was marred by his alcoholism, which led to his death in Rome,
Italy.
Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) Dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Joseph Stalin was born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili to a poor family in Sakartvelo, Transcaucasia, a country on the eastern end of the Black Sea. After Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin took leadership of the Communist party. He collectivized Soviet agriculture, and farmers and those who resisted were executed or sent to the Gulag system of labor camps. His forced collectivization led to a famine that killed millions of Soviet Union citizens. By some estimates, Stalin killed nearly 20 million people during his rule.
Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945). Italian dictator. Mussolini
declared himself dictator of Italy in 1925, gaining favor with the people of
Italy through extensive public works projects. By 1938, when Cather mentions
him in letters, he had begun expelling Jews from Italy and working towards
an alliance with Adolf Hitler’s Germany, formalized in May 1939.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Prodigal Parents (1938) by Sinclair Lewis
