"My Antonia": Little House on the Prairie?

I read every single book from the "Little House on the Prairie" series when I was a kid, to the point where I must've been sick of pioneer adventures. Opening "My Antonia" by Willa Cather, my reaction was something along the lines of: oh great, this is where the prairie cliches started. I was also biased by a friend who recalled studying the book in high school. One of those books.

Two things kept this book going for me. 1) I knew nothing of Willa Cather and I wanted to get an idea of what she was about, and 2) I never knew the Midwest had such a multicultural heritage (Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Russian, Bohemian). Shame on my American history teachers.

Upon finishing the novel, I was able to give it an amiable shrug and return it to the bookcase in the "to be donated/sold" section. A nice, nostalgic book about life on the frontier and the identity of America. Harsh but still romantic. I felt kind of jilted-- shouldn't there be more to it? So, I did some surfing around and dug up a couple of unexpected, interesting nuggets.

The book was written in 1918 and, taken in context, is a strong voice for women's rights. Antonia works as hard as any man, with pride in her strength and fertility; the main women of the novel survive the frontier and go on to be successful wives/businesswomen. Cather herself had quite the interesting life, leaving Virginia for Nebraska and then beginning a writing career in Pittsburgh and New York. There's quite a bit of speculation as to whether or not she was a lesbian (an actual article: "My Gay Antonia: The Politics of Willa Cather's Lesbianism"). Her works, like those of Edith Wharton, seem to be in the midst of a revival -- the female counterparts to Fitzgerald & company. I'd put her on par with "The Great Gatsby" ... but the fact remains that I knew who Fitzgerald was by the 7th grade and I didn't know who Cather was until a week ago.

As for the structure of the novel, I hadn't given it much thought but then stumbled across an article by Richard Millington, "Willa Cather and 'The Storyteller': Hostility to the Novel in 'My Antonia.'" EGADS! I referenced Walter Benjamin's essay earlier, via Sontag. The point here is that "My Antonia" is more in the tradition of stories and telling from experience than the restrictive "form" of the novel; in this sense, it's a mildly modernist work. In fact, more than just the loose structure is modernist. Jim is a subjective narrator for describing the women foreigners and their social interactions (Lena vs. Antonia, for example), but not to the point where the reader questions his reliability. And, importantly, this Georg Simmel quote from my post on Lord Jim, regarding the theme:

"to preserve the autonomy and individuality of [the character's] existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life"

The immigrant residents of Black Hawk, Nebraska facing Mother Nature and American society (to grotesquely simplify things).

Bottom line: An interesting read after the actual read. Now I know who Willa Cather is, and I'm curious to see if I'll enjoy her writing in a setting other than a prairie.

Side notes: There's a PA beer called My Antonia. Thanks to a scene in this book, I discovered that the movie "Moulin Rouge" is based on the opera "La Traviata."

I also did a quick read of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" and thoroughly enjoyed it. In stark comparison of writing styles, Marquez wins over Cather for sure.

Next up: "Zorba the Greek"