Posts Tagged ‘Carl Van Vechten portrait’

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLA CATHER!

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Washington, DC
December 7, 2009

WillaCatherVanVechtenwithhatLOCweb

Willa Cather photographed by Carl Van Vechten, January 22, 1936. From Library of Congress Carl Van Vechten collection.

Happy Birthday to Willa Cather, who was born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, 136 years ago today. In May 1925, Cather traveled to Brunswick, Maine, to present a lecture as part of Bowdoin College’s “Institute of Modern Literature.” As reported in the evening edition of  the Boston Globe, here’s an excerpt of the author’s thoughts on technique and the novel. (If you’re interested in reading more of Cather’s speeches, public letters, and interviews, browse the Willa Cather archives hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.)

“Technique, as it applies to a novel, is full of faults, as nearly all great novels have great blemishes from the standpoint of technique. Novels live by their plusses, not by their minuses. They live because of what they have, not because of what they lack. You cannot improve on the technique of a great writer, because his faults are necessary. Laboratory methods are best in science, but have no place in art.”

Learn more about Willa Cather and My Antonia from The Big Read educational materials.

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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

October 15, 2009
Washington, DC

WillaCatherVanVechtenfrLOCWeb

Portrait of Willa Cather by Carl Van Vechten, 1936. From Library of Congress collection

Betty Kort is the former executive director of the Willa Cather Foundation. Based in Red Cloud, Nebraska, the foundation is dedicated to preserving and promoting the understanding and appreciation of the life, time, settings, and work of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Kort is also the photographer-curator of Willa Cather and Material Culture, a traveling photography exhibition of select objects important in Cather’s life and work. In this interview excerpt, Kort talks about Cather’s  development as a novelist.

The. . . thing I would say about My Ántonia was that everything was an experiment. With O Pioneers! she took a big step in writing about immigrant populations, and no one was doing that. When [Cather] started out, I believe that she thought she probably had to write novels like people on the east coast were writing novels. And they were writing about sophisticated people in sophisticated settings.  Her first novel was a novel like that, Alexander’s Bridge, and it was not a particularly successful novel, at least in Cather’s eyes.  She had to come home to her roots, to what she knew best, and then she had to have the courage to write about common, ordinary people working the soil, and that took some time.  That took some courage. And she also had to figure out a way to do it that would be successful and would compete against what was being written at the time.

Hear more from Kort and others on Willa Cather and her work on The Big Read radio show for My Ántonia. Visit The Big Read calendar to find out where a Big Read celebration of My Ántonia is taking place near you.

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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

September 24, 2009
Washington, DC

ScottFitzgeraldVanVechten

Portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Carl Van Vechten, June 4, 1932. From the collection of The Library of Congress.

Happy Birthday F. Scott Fitzgerald! In honor of  the 113th anniversary of Fitzgerald’s birth—at 481 Laurel Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota—here’s the late literary scholar Matthew Bruccoli on the structure of The Great Gatsby and “the proper duty of a good reader.”

The structure of The Great Gatsby is extraordinary because of Fitzgerald’s brilliant manipulation of what is called the partially, or partly involved, narrator, Nick. Usually the narrator of the novel, if there’s a narrator, it’s the hero. . . But as in the work of Joseph Conrad, which I think Fitzgerald learned a great deal from, the narrator of The Great Gatsby is a minor character, but he’s there to document what happens. There is no scene at which Nick is not present. When Nick has to tell us something about Gatsby’s past, he tells us when Gatsby told it to him, the occasion, the circumstances under which Gatsby told it to him. The structure, the organization of The Great Gatsby is virtually perfect. There are some chronological glitches—sometimes he’s off a couple of days or a week. If you take the whole novel apart and you put a chart on the wall, which I’ve done, there are too many things in the space of one summer.

This business of a reader, a scholar, a teacher, a critic saying “Gotcha” is criminal! The thing to do with a brilliant piece of work is to worship it!  Because the answer is, if I know so  much, how come I didn’t write The Great Gatsby?  No! The proper duty of a good reader is to recognize genius and celebrate it.

To hear more from Matthew Bruccoli, Gish Jen, Robert Redford, and others on F. Scott Fitzgerald and his works, take a listen to The Great Gatsby radio show.

Visit The Big Read calendar to find a Big Read celebration of The Great Gatsby (and maybe some birthday cake) near you!

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Posted in The Great Gatsby | 3 Comments »