Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather

A brief and tender biography of one of the greatest authors of the 20th century and an elegant exploration of artistic endurance, as told by a life-long lover of Willa Cather’s work.

The story of Willa Cather is one defined by a lifetime of determination, struggle, and gradual emergence. Some show their full powers early; yet Cather was the opposite. She took her time, and gradually transformed. The writer who leapt into the forefront of American letters with O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Antonia (1918), was already well into middle-age. Through years of provincial journalism in Nebraska, brief (hated) spells of teaching, and editorial work on magazines, she persevered in pursuit of the ultimate goal – literary immortality.

Unlike Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald, her idealism was unironic, and she stood alone among the great modern authors, at odds with the time in which she lived. Combining intricate analysis with an empathetic, lyrical voice, Benjamin Taylor uncovers the reality of Cather’s artistic development, from provincial beginnings to the triumphs of her mature years. Simultaneously an homage to her character, a warm consideration of her work, and a case being made to read Cather with renewed vigor.