Review of \u3ci\u3eWilla Cather and the American Southwest\u3c/i\u3eEdited by John N. Swift and Jospeh R. Urgo

Cather criticism has come a long way since Sharon O\u27Brien\u27s 1987 biography, Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. O\u27Brien had a singular take on Cather\u27s trip to the Southwest in 1912, viewing this journey as a moment of psychological transformation, a tipping point when Cather became a creative rather than a merely professional writer. O\u27Brien emerged from a distinctive 1970s literary feminism, which placed the life-story of neglected writers within a psychoanalytical context. This new collection is, in contrast, a kaleidoscopic array of varied approaches to Cather\u27s Southwest. A number of the essays are close readings of specific episodes, motifs, or characters: John Swift\u27s piece on metaphors of wrapping/unwrapping in The Professor\u27s House; Marilee Lindemann\u27s essay on the queer mesa and male desire. Others lock a particular interdisciplinary body of contextual information onto the Southwestern novels. John Murphy writes on the interplay between science and religion; Matthias Schubnell explores German archaeology\u27s impact on American readings of the primitive. What these pieces point to is a widening-out of criticism from its roots in biography and its focus on Cather as woman writer. There is real diversity here; but there is scepticism too. Cather\u27s oeuvre has increasingly become a battleground for critics debating questions of gender, race, nationality. Walter Benn Michaels\u27s Our America (1995), with its decoding of the political unconscious of US modernism, serves as a touchstone for a number of commentators. Ann Fisher-Wirth, writing on Anasazi Cannibalism, voices doubts about Michaels\u27s readings, while Lindemann seeks to offset his critique of homosociality in Tom Outland\u27s Story. Joseph Urgo\u27s elegant Multiculturalism as Nostalgia maintains Michaels\u27s skepticism, but pushes Cather into a fresh, suggestive juxtaposition with Faulkner. What we see here is a certain maturity in Cather criticism. The work is critiqued; but, in turn, the critic becomes part of an ongoing debate within the academy. Yet there remains a refreshing sense of outreach within the Cather community, well-illustrated by this volume. David Harrell\u27s From Mesa Verde to The Professor\u27s House (1992) was a pioneering study of Cather\u27s engagement with the region\u27s archaeology and anthropology. In a heterodox but welcome move, the editors asked Harrell, who left academe to work for New Mexico state government, to provide an afterword to the collection. His graceful and incisive overview is as practical an illustration of the broad church of Cather criticism as I can think of