And to representation she adds something more-something that is quite beyond the reach, and even beyond the comprehension of the average novelist. It is not as they see themselves that she depicts them, but as they actually are. Beneath the tawdry surface of Middle Western barbarism-so suggestive, in more than one way, of the vast, impenetrable barbarism of Russia-she discovers human beings bravely embattled against fate and the gods, and into her picture of their dull, endless struggle she gets a spirit that is genuinely heroic, and a pathos that is genuinely moving. I know of no novel that makes the remote folk of the western farmlands more real than My Antonía makes them, and I know of none that makes them seem better worth knowing. In brief, she knows her business thoroughly, and so one gets out of reading her, not only the facile joy that goes with every good story, but also the vastly higher pleasure that is called forth by first-rate craftsmanship. Her style has lost self-consciousness her grasp of form has become instinctive her drama is firmly rooted in a sound psychology her people relate themselves logically to the great race masses that they are parts of. Now, at last, she has arrived at such a command of all the complex devices and expedients of her art that the use she makes of them is quite concealed. Bit by bit, patiently and laboriously, she has mastered the trade of the novelist in each succeeding book she has shown an unmistakable advance. The plain fact is that she is now discovered to be a novelist of original methods and quite extraordinary capacities-penetrating and accurate in observation, delicate in feeling, brilliant and charming in manner, and full of a high sense of the dignity and importance of her work. But today even campus-pump critics are more or less aware of her, and one hears no more gabble about imitations. When she was mentioned at all, it was as a talented but rather inconsequential imitator of Mrs. Four or five years ago, though she already had a couple of good books behind her, Willa Cather was scarcely heard of.
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