Sensing Willa Cather

[...] this is a rich, complexly conceived interpretive project—though it is a book that itself reads, and reads Cather, with a deft and approachable lucidity. Sensing Willa Cather is one of those rare critical works that is interesting both for what it has to say about its subject and for how it goes about its intellectual enterprise. [...] Reynolds has given us a new conception of Cather’s writing, one that already seems as necessary as it is novel. -- Richard H. Millington, Smith College * Modern Fiction Studies *
This book reveals Cather as "most sensuous of writers." From her first story, "Peter," about a disabled, displaced violinist, to her last novel, populated by enslaving and enslaved bodies, she focuses on "bodies in transition" to whom the five senses are crucial. Drawing from recent work in queer, disability, aging and food studies, Reynolds gives us fresh, revelatory readings, especially of Cather's last three novels, each of which explores a major theme in U.S. culture--"colony, performance, race"--through close attention to bodies. An indispensable, engrossing, and transformative book! -- Ann Romines, The George Washington University
In his insightful new study, Sensing Willa Cather, Guy Reynolds offers nothing short of a revelatory new way to encounter Cather’s work. Her richly nuanced scapes—their visual details, their tapestries of sounds and tastes and smells and tactilities—are explored here with prodigious care and originality. This marvelous book opens up the entire sensorium of Cather’s world both to new readers and those who have read her deeply yet are open to pondering avenues that lead to an even richer understanding of this quintessential American writer. -- Bradford Morrow, author of The Prague Sonata and The Forger’s Daughter