… Cather was right—My Ántonia is a queer book, flickering with darkness and light, a true representation of its time, both in terms of wisdom and in terms of ignorance.One of the takeaways from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan is that to understand the past it is necessary to reconstruct what the people at the time did not know.
Saturday, March 03, 2018
Masterwork …
… Willa Cather, Pioneer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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“...it then HONES in on Alexandra...” and “...the war impinged ITSELF on Cather’s life...”. Jane Smiley and The Paris Review, asleep at the wheel.
ReplyDeleteJeff, how about something of substance?
ReplyDeletePerhaps I'm too forgiving, for I'm a great fan of Willa Cather, but 'hones' is no more than an overlooked typo (never guilty of that yourself?). As to 'impinged itself', I actually disagree that this is a mistake, however ungrammatical it appears, for it serves to strengthen the sense of an objective reality encroaching on Cather's life.
One of the most important insights from Taleb's The Black Swan, in my humble opinion.
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