The second aspect of this novel we have already named. It is cyclic, that is, it sums up an era. Such a quality always gives a book a historical value; where it is wedded to high fictional art, as here, the satisfaction of the reader is complete.
The Song of the Lark gains over O Pioneers! in the first place by its sheer bulk. O Pioneers! was a series of scenes in a single but changing setting; to cover so much ground, in point of time, the author had to strip her action of all that was not indispensable. But as The Song of the Lark is entirely centered about the development of a single person there is a chance to enrich the narrative with no end of detail; more, it is necessary to do so. For here we are trying to come at the innermost secret of Thea Kronberg, we are trying to find out what—what—it was in her that made her great. To get at that we must have exhaustively every item which can be made to contribute the least mite of information. We must have everything about her from her girlhood to her success on the New York stage, we must have all the persons who came in contact with her and who had their effect on her, or upon whom she had her effect, for it was generally that way about! We must have her as she appeared to each and every one of the few really privileged to know her. What they saw and said, the conclusions they drew, are the material from which we have to dig out the secret. And Miss Cather gives us all we need. She is replete with the facts and she puts them in their entirety before us. The result is a biography, no less; but a biography unencumbered with letters and irrelevant conversations and unimportant views and the unendurable conscientiousness of the faithfully recording friend.
My Antonia is a book to be put alongside O Pioneers! It is less epical but of more historical value for its minute and colorful depiction of life on the Nebraska prairies and in the Nebraska towns about 1885. The book is really a chronicle of people and their surroundings, a mosaic of character sketches and scenes and short stories brought within a single ken. The material ranges from tragedy, horror and repellent occurrences to pathos, humor and farce. It is perfectly handled, however; the reader is never offended and is variously touched and amused—and always the book is engrossing. Such a book is worth a dozen formal historical records. And the figure of Antonia Cuzak is a biographical triumph. Reminiscence here surpasses fiction.
There is no more to be said and it may easily be that too much has been said already. If this chapter has been too venturesome in its inferences and too declamatory in its exposition, forgive that, O reader! If you have read Miss Cather’s notable novels you may disagree but you will understand and condone; if you have not read them you will be more indulgent toward us after doing so; and actually if what we have said shall lead you to read her books the whole of our striving will have been fulfilled. She is a novelist whose work already adds measurably to American literature; whether all of us put the same estimate upon her accomplishment does not matter at all; it matters supremely that as many of us as possible should be acquainted with it.
Books by Willa Sibert Cather
April Twilights, 1903. R. G. Badger, Boston.
The Troll Garden, 1905. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.
Alexander’s Bridge, 1912.
O Pioneers! 1913.
The Song of the Lark, 1915.
My Antonia, 1918.
Youth and the Bright Medusa, 1920.
One of Ours, 1922.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, but Youth and the Bright Medusa and One of Ours are published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
CHAPTER XXII
CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM
TO write twenty-six books is something, is it not? To have written twenty-six books which have sold half a million copies (the publisher’s offhand guess) is something else again and more. Clara Louise Burnham has done that; and the cold arithmetical statement does not begin to convey the real nature of her achievement. You must read her to know how capable a novelist she is, how expert, how gifted with humor, insight, fertility in those slight inventions which make up the reality of a fictionist’s whole. Mrs. Burnham’s writings are associated in the minds of many thousands who have not read her tales, or have read only a few of them, with the doctrines of Christian Science. And it is true that she is the author of several novels in which the principles of this faith are of the essence of the stories. Equally true is it that she has said of her book, Jewel:
“I like Jewel best. I think she is my high water mark. It is a Christian Science book and without the Christian Science terminology that is used in the story it, well, it would be a kind of second Little Lord Fauntleroy, and besides, it wouldn’t be Jewel.”