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 |
You ask3 me what book I would rather have
writtene than all others: I suppose you mean
what novel? Well, since it's a wishing game, why be modest? I imagine you expect me
to name some neat obscure book, by some neat obscure talent. To be really chic I ought to say that I'd love to be
responsible for the high-flying rhetoric of "Moby
Dick"4, where one metaphor about the Museèe de Cluny5 and the human soul
runs to the length of a page and a half.
Thank you!
iIf I can choose, I won't meekly say
that the neck of the chicken is my favorite portion. I'd rather have written "War and Peace"6 than any other novel I know. I am not
sure that I admire it more than any other, but I'd rather to have written it; Simply for the grand game of making it, you understand, quite regardless
of the successful result. I would like to be strong
enough to have, and to survive, so a many gloriously
vivid sensations about almost everything that goes to make up life
human society. I would like to have had
that torrent of life and things pour through me,; and yet to be well-bred
enough as an artist to unconsciously and unfailingly present it all in scale, with
the proper proerspective and composition and distribution of light;
enough, at least, to hold the thing
together. That such form, it seems to me, any satisfying work must have. From this
you may infer that I wouldn't choose to be swept away in Dostoevsky7's torrent, though it's as big and full as heart could
desire. The richer the welter of life, the more it
needs a restraining intelligence. I choose "War and Peace", thank you, because it
has both- - - and in what a degree! You remember what an experience it is to read
that book for the first time; can you
imagine anything more exciting than writing it? The actual writing of it, of course,
was a much more concentrated and unadulterated and smooth-running form of excitement
than all the many, the countless excitements, long forgotten, which enabled
o
one
him to write it at all. But there, of
course, I'm getting into a matter which isn't at all for general discussion. Every trade has its
compensations; but it's wiser to keep
quiet about them, or somebody turns up and tries to spoil them for you.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1522.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1522
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Fanny Butcher1
- Date letter was written
- January 9 [1923]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by its publication in the Chicago Tribune on February 10, 1923, in Fanny Butcher's "Confessions" series.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Fanny Butcher Papers, 1830-1984 (Midwest MS Butcher), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
Fanny Butcher began posing the question Cather answers here to authors in late 1922, inaugurating a semiregular Chicago Tribune feature entitled "Confessions," which lasted through 1927.
Also known as the Cluny Museum, the Musée de Cluny is a museum of the Middle Ages in Paris, France, located in the former Hôtel de Cluny, which opened as a musuem in 1843.
Person Annotations
Bokum, Frances Amanda Butcher (1888-1987) (“Fanny”).
American newspaper critic and bookstore owner. Born in Fredonia,
KS, Butcher moved to Chicago, IL, as a child. She received an A.A. from
Lewis Institute in 1908 and a BA from the University of Chicago in 1910. In
1911, Floyd Dell of the Chicago Evening Post assigned
her to review Alexander’s Bridge (1912). Cather wrote
the anonymous reviewer care of the Post, beginning
their correspondence and friendship. From 1913 until her retirement in 1963,
Butcher wrote for the Chicago Tribune, becoming
literary editor in 1922. She ran Fanny Butcher Books in Chicago from 1919
until 1927, when she sold it to Doubleday. Cather frequently saw Butcher
when she changed trains in Chicago and closely followed Butcher’s reviews of
her works, often writing to her about them. She also relied on Butcher’s
knowledge of the book business and particularly book distribution in the
Midwest. Their extant correspondence begins in 1920, although in her memoir
Many Lives—One Love (1972), Butcher
paraphrases earlier letters. Butcher married Richard Drummond Bokum in 1935.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1821-1881). Russian novelist. Born in Moscow and trained as an engineer at a military school, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first novel, Poor Folk, appeared in 1840. His opposition to the Tsarist regime landed him in a Siberian prison camp, followed by compulsory military service in exile. His best known novel, Crime and Punishment (1866), was written while he was in exile in Western Europe. He returned to St. Petersburg the same year. Back in Russia, Dostoevsky struggled financially and drifted away from his earlier radicalism. His novels were widely influential, both for their philosophical themes and his technical handling of multiple perspective and voices. He died in St, Petersburg.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville
War and Peace (1869) by Leo Tolstoy
