Complete My Ántonia Read Along With Joshua Doležal
From April 5 - May 31, 2024, I organized a slow read of My Ántonia. I now offer the complete guide here, in one place, for anyone who would like to follow our steps asynchronously and at your own pace.
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. This is Jim’s Ántonia. Now, what about yours?
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Wow. I am so happy to find your Substack and your Cather read-a-long. I read "The Professor's House" during graduate school and completely fell in love with it — and it made me realize I needed to read "My Antonia" again, because I definitely didn't get it the first go 'round in high school.
I can't wait to dive into your guide later this year!