Book Review: The Cambridge Companion to Willa Cather

In this collection of thirteen essays Lindemann successfully meets her goal of offering recent criticism that recenters Cather as a writer who responded fully to the changing social and demographic conditions of her time. The essays indeed encourage reading against the grain of Cather\u27s escapism in a range of interpretative possibilities. Particularly useful are essays exploring little-examined areas of Cather scholarship, including the late Susan Rosowski\u27s study of the comic sense of self in Cather\u27s works and Lisa Marcus\u27s discussion of Cather and the geography of Jewishness. Rosowski resituates Claude Wheeler\u27s yearning for something splendid in One of Ours within the comedic tradition of the optimistic sacred fool who is hardly a tragic figure. Marcus\u27s essay, though overlooking subtle tones and sarcasm that might clarify Cather\u27s ambivalence toward Jewishness, provides excellent background on the Jewish culture of New York in Cather\u27s day and elucidates the dual roles Jews play in Cather\u27s works, that is, the embodiment of American industry and excessive perversion of the American ideal. One regrets, however, that this essay begins with pointed criticism of Joan Acocella\u27s Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism (2000) and inadvertently becomes a precursor to Jonathan Goldberg\u27s vitriolic attack on Acocella in the subsequent essay. Goldberg, while well delineating variant critical responses to Cather\u27s sexual politics, detracts from his otherwise cogent argument by devolving into a multi-page and scathing review of Acocella