PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend Library will host an event centering on Willa Cather and her book “My Ántonia.”
The free event will take place tonight at 5:30 p.m. at the library, 1220 Lawrence St.
Port Townsend Community Services Director Melody Sky Weaver said she was a part of a the National Endowment of Arts’ (NEA) Big Read that read “My Ántonia” in the early 2000s, when she worked for Boise Public Library. Weaver first read the book then.
“I remember falling in love with the language,” she said. “There’s some books that you read quickly, and this is a book you savor because every sentence is crafted. The attention to language is really incredible.”
The event will include a dramatic reading of passages from “My Ántonia” by Key City Public Theatre actor Kirsten Louise Webb and a screening of the documentary “Willa Cather: Breaking the Mold,” featuring Ken Burns.
The documentary was shared by The National Willa Cather Center, Weaver said.
The library is participating in this year’s NEA Big Read Program.
“The foundation sent us 100 books to give out for people to keep,” Weaver said.
Attendees may claim their copy, Weaver said.
The library’s participation in this year’s program was inspired by Robert K. Miller, who brought the idea to Weaver.
A Port Townsend resident since 2022, Miller is a retired college professor who taught Cather.
Miller edited “Great Short Works by Willa Cather” published in 1999. The collection is still in print, he said.
As a professor, he taught 15 weeklong seminars covering seven or eight of Cather’s 12 number novels and three or four of her short stories, he said.
He brought the idea to Weaver after speaking to a local book club, which was reading “My Ántonia.”
Knowing of Miller’s interest in Cather, a neighbor asked him to speak to her book group last March, Miller said.
“I was really impressed by the group,” he said. “There were 10 women, they had all finished the book, which often doesn’t happen in book groups. They had all enjoyed the book, and they had come with passages that they wanted to read aloud. It was a great, positive experience.”
Soon afterward, Miller became aware that “My Ántonia” would be included in the NEA’s 2025 Big Read program.
“I spoke to Melody and things took off from there,” he said.
“My Ántonia” addresses social issues still alive today, Miller said.
“One of the great issues addressed in ‘My Ántonia’ is the importance of immigration and what immigrants have brought to this country,” he said. “When she published this book in 1918, the world was at war and Congress was already debating the most restrictive immigration bill that would ever be passed in U.S. history. That was passed in 1922. What she does in ‘My Ántonia,’ among other things, is celebrate what immigrants bring to this country.”
She’s thoughtful about it, Miller said. Some of her immigrant characters aren’t celebrated; some are creepy, and some can’t make it in America, he added.
“My Ántonia” also is a book which portrays women as capable of doing anything, Miller said.
Miller first read the book when he was in high school and said he thinks it’s taught at that level because Cather’s style is so lucid and easy to read.
“I used to warn my students, ‘Slow down,’ because there’s a lot of subtlety in her prose,” Miller said. “If you read too quickly because she seems to be easy to read, you miss a lot of stuff that’s going on.”
Miller also advised that, for a reader who is enjoying reading quickly, they should do so and then read the book again. Miller said he’s read some of her books 10 or 11 times.
“They get better every time I read them,” he said.
Of the features characteristic of her writing, the first thing to note is her style, Miller said.
“When Robert Frost first read ‘O Pioneers!’, he had no idea who she was and he wrote to a friend saying, ‘This must be written by a poet,’ because she writes so beautifully and succinctly,” Miller said.
Cather began as a poet; her first published book was a book of poems, Miller said.
“I’m just dazzled by what a good writer she is,” Miller said.
He added that Cather was better than the most celebrated authors of her era.
“Head over heels over people like (Ernest) Hemingway and (F. Scott) Fitzgerald, who were celebrated in part because they had colorful lives,” Miller said. “The jazz age, shooting elephants, getting on the cover of Life magazine, while Cather worked away in an attic.”
Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to Cather that he was so influenced by Cather’s “A Lost Lady” that he feared he had plagiarized elements of her work while writing “The Great Gatsby’s” heroine, Miller said.
He said he thinks “A Lost Lady” is the superior book. “The Great Gatsby” had been read by many more American students, he added.
“It has a lot to do with gender,” Miller said. “Until the ’80s, the American professoriate consisted mostly of men, teaching male writers. In the ’80s, that started to shift.”
Thirty years ago, Miller would say Cather was the best woman writer of the 20th century.
“Now I drop off the ‘woman,’” he said. “I just think she’s the greatest American novelist of the 20th century.”
On May 1, the library’s book club will discuss the book at the Pink House, next to the library, at 2 p.m.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
