Review of \u3ci\u3eNew Essays on My Antonia\u3c/i\u3e Edited by Sharon O\u27Brien

In her introductory essay, Sharon O\u27Brien correctly claims that My Antonia\u27s critical history illustrates the indeterminacy of meaning, for even in this relatively short book one is struck by the variety of responses evoked by Willa Cather\u27s novel. From the first essay, suggesting the sweetness of Cather\u27s narrative, to the last, recording the violence of Jim Burden\u27s hegemonic presence, this collection gives readers a fresh, if sometimes unconvincing; look at one of the most famous novels of the Great Plains. Miles Orvell\u27s essay Time, Change, and the Burden of Revision in My Antonia gives us the first argument of many about literary influence, connecting the novel to the three works Cather labeled as American books with a long, long life : The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn, and The Country of the Pointed Firs. Orvell makes several interesting connections between the works, particularly Jewett\u27s, and ultimately concludes that Cather wanted to propose a sweeter, more optimistic narrative. The collection\u27s most compelling essays Elizabeth Ammons\u27s My Antonia and African American Art and Anne Goodwyn Jones\u27s Displacing Dixie: The Southern Subtext in My Antonia -illustrate the richness of influence that informed Cather\u27s writing. Ammons\u27s contention that Cather\u27s book is deeply indebted to and shaped by African American music, though she was conflicted by such a debt, will surprise many readers. But the essay intriguingly takes on the novel\u27s troubling Blind d\u27 Arnault passage, refusing to write it off as either simple racism or benign characterization. Instead, Ammons offers a complex vision of Cather\u27s engagement with African American culture, suggesting that the very structure of My Antonia is based (subconsciously) on ragtime. Jones\u27s essay, too, illustrates that one of the novel\u27s largest silences can be a source of important analysis. Writing about the ghostly presence of Jim Burden\u27s southern roots, Jones notes that his first nine years in Virginia, all but ignored in the book, subtly influence his perceptions. The essay ably suggests the deep and lasting effect of region on imagination. The collection\u27s final essay, Marilee Lindemann\u27s \u27It Ain\u27t My Prairie\u27: Gender, Power, and Narrative in My Antonia, is its least satisfying. Though making an important point concerning Cather\u27s ambivalen[ce] about female artistic and cultural power, the piece tends toward extended harangue about the control Jim Burden wields as the story\u27s narrator. On the whole, New Essays on My Antonia provides fresh avenues of Cather research, though all lines of thought are not equally rewarding