The World and the Parish, Volume 1

Not the least remarkable feature of this collection is the range and variety of forms and subject matter--reviews (of books, plays, operas, concerts, art exhibits, lectures), feature stories, interviews, straight reportage, columns of miscellaneous comment, and travel letters. Seemingly, with no apparent effort Willa Cather could adjust her sights to any assignment and any audience. And if it is astonishing that she could write so much about so many matters at so many levels, it is perhaps even more astonishing that so much of it was so good. Undeniably, however, the chief interest to the general reader and the peculiar value to the scholar of these journalistic writings reside in their manifold and crucial connections with Cather's later work and in the unparalleled insights they afford into the process by which a gifted writer becomes a great artist.