Join the Willa Cather Read Along on April 5
A detailed reading schedule and prefatory remarks
Beginning on Friday, April 5, I invite you to join me for a read-along of My Ántonia. We’ll read the Introduction and Book I, Chapters 1-5 for next week. You can find a detailed reading schedule at the end of this post. ⬇️
My plan is to savor My Ántonia for the entirety of April and May. I assume that you have competing demands on your time, and so none of the reading blocks should take more than 30 minutes of focused attention.
Every Friday from April 5 through May 31 I’ll post a brief essay on that portion of the reading. I’ll add a few prompts to spark discussion, as well as excerpts from scholarly essays and other resources as appropriate.
The Friday read-along will be free to all with the goal of gauging interest in a more ambitious project: reading all 12 of Willa Cather’s novels in a year. (Fun fact: The young Willa Cather accompanied Red Cloud physicians on their house calls and even administered chloroform to one boy as the doctor amputated his leg.)
Over the next two months I will add a few supplemental posts for paying subscribers on Tuesdays, such as a chapter from my memoir, adaptations of my scholarship on My Ántonia, perhaps even interviews with Cather scholars.
You can read along in the First Edition, available for free at the Willa Cather Archive.
The Vintage edition is an affordable option in paperback.
Or you can pay a little more for the Scholarly Edition, which includes a historical essay and many explanatory notes. The Scholarly edition is also free in digital form.
As we go, I invite you to browse the Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In addition to the digital texts I’ve linked to above, you can browse or search Cather’s letters, peruse James Woodress’s biography, and read Cather’s interviews and speeches (including her stunner of a commencement address at age 16).
I cannot count the number of times I have read My Ántonia since Stephen Woolsey assigned it in his American Literature class at King College thirty years ago. But experience can blind us to fresh insights, and so I will be relying on you to help me discover Cather all over again. As you read, please remember that a question is often the best kind of comment, because it is an invitation, a call in hope of response.
In fact, Cather opens the novel with just this kind of request. The introduction centers on two friends who meet by chance on a train traversing the scorched plains of Iowa. They reminisce about their Nebraska childhood and about a Bohemian girl that they’d both loved who embodies, in their memories, the essence of the place. They each resolve to write all they can recall of Ántonia and to share the results with one another, to sharpen their image of her.
Jim Burden, the narrator of the story that follows, appears on his friend’s doorstep some months later with a manuscript.
"I finished it last night—the thing about Ántonia," he said. "Now, what about yours?"
I had to confess that mine had not gone beyond a few straggling notes.
"Notes? I did n't make any." He drank his tea all at once and put down the cup. "I did n't arrange or rearrange. I simply wrote down what of herself and myself and other people Ántonia's name recalls to me. I suppose it has n't any form. It has n't any title, either." He went into the next room, sat down at my desk and wrote on the pinkish face of the portfolio the word, "Ántonia." He frowned at this a moment, then prefixed another word, making it "My Ántonia." That seemed to satisfy him.
"Read it as soon as you can," he said, rising, "but don't let it influence your own story."
My own story was never written, but the following narrative is Jim's manuscript, substantially as he brought it to me.
I extend the same invitation to you. Don’t let me or anyone else influence the story you discover between these pages.
This is Jim’s Ántonia. Now, what about yours?
Willa Cather Read Along with Joshua Doležal
My Ántonia Reading Schedule
April 5: Introduction and Book I, Chapters 1-5
April 12: Book I, Chapters 6-12
April 19: Book I, Chapters 13-19
April 26: Book II, Chapters 1-5
May 3: Book II, Chapters 6-10
May 10: Book II, Chapters 11-15
May 17: Book III (all four chapters)
May 24: Book IV (all four chapters)
May 31: Book V (all three chapters)
Looking forward to it, Josh!
So excited for this!