It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi
Terrific, albeit corny, opening. The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!
ReplyDeleteI suppose that served as the necessary hook at the time ; )
ReplyDeleteReading that excerpt, though, does show that most of what I consider best about the Skloot book had already been written before -- including the graphic descriptions of cancer cells like pearls and that amazing realization of the humanness of Henrietta Lacks and that she once was more than her cells.
ReplyDeleteWhen you think about it, Skloot was on the right track, wanting to write the biography of an otherwise almost anonymous woman. Unfortunately, she didn't seem up to the task. I agree with your comment earlier that the book reads like someone's first draft. That was my impression, too.
That said, I read it to the end. Incredible story that I just hadn't heard about before, even though I worked for years with microbiologists and (environmental) biotechnologists. Maybe that's why I found it so fascinating.
I see that Skloot was pretty hard on Gold, especially in mentioning the autopsy.
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