148 Charles Street: A Novel by Tracy Daugherty

Abstract

Reviewed by: 148 Charles Street: A Novel by Tracy Daugherty Max Frazier Tracy Daugherty, 148 Charles Street: A Novel. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2022. 144 pp. Paper, $19.95; e-book, $19.95. Tracy Daugherty fictionalizes the friendship between well-known historical literary figures Willa Cather and Elizabeth “Elsie” Shepley Sergeant in 148 Charles Street, a title lifted from Barbara Rotundo’s 1971 article in American Heritage by the same name. An author with an impressive background in writing biographies and novels, surprisingly Daugherty seems to miss the mark in his characterization of these two women and offers sloppy use of real-life content to create his fictional narrative that flounders in its search for a higher purpose. Daugherty opens with acknowledgments that first thank Roger Angell “who was always very kind to me, if (I think) a little irritated at my callowness” (ix). He adds, “we never spoke of his aunt, Elsie Sergeant,” and yet Daugherty claims, “I felt I got to know a bit of her through him” (ix). Maybe that bit of knowledge actually came from Angell’s memoir, Let Me Finish, and the brief mention of Cather there. Knowing this scene is important to understanding 148 Charles Street. On an afternoon in 1921, Cather, Sergeant, and Angell’s mother, Katharine Sergeant Angell, gather for a small party where the two women offer differing perspectives on Cather. Roger Angell quotes from Sergeant’s memoir to characterize that [End Page 84] Sergeant found that Cather made “a friend feel welcomed [and] was most charming.” Katharine Angell insists in a letter the author found that the two women only wanted to talk about their own works, but Cather won out over Sergeant. Angell’s mother adds, “it soon became evident to me that Miss Cather was there for another reason—to get factual detail and background for her own novel in progress [. . .] One of Ours” (106; emphasis original). Roger Angell’s mother resented the possibility that Cather might be using Sergeant’s tragic experience of being wounded by an unexploded ordnance when visiting a former WWI battlefield, and apparently Tracy Daugherty resents the idea as well. Roger Angell does not offer a position. For whatever the reason, the novel is particularly unflattering about Cather. One redeeming quality in 148 Charles Street is how Daugherty renders physical setting, especially in the New Mexico Southwest, in ways reminiscent of Cather’s own skill. Beyond this skill in landscape, other details make the novel nearly unbearable. Writing with the bias gained from Angell’s memoir and possibly a dislike of Cather’s novels beginning in his college days, Daugherty tips the scales to present Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant as a singular heroine, flat as a character in her enthusiasm as a political reformer, journalist, and the butt of Cather’s disappointment. On the other hand, he takes the Willa Cather figure scholars know to have been vibrant and engaging, narrowing in on a grim and painful part of her life to characterize her as dull and inflexible. He at least opens the possibility that she could have been more in her refrain, “Which Willa am I?” (116). The work has inaccuracies such as omitting the presence of a Bryn Mawr friend in her home for at least part of Sergeant’s New Mexico time and the timing of Cather’s injury to her hand. Daugherty excuses inaccurate plot points under the guise of fiction with his flippant disclaimer that “facts, chronologies, or biographies” are “tweaked and violated freely [ . . ] in service to the novel’s narrative and themes” (143). One has to question why he needs real historical figures to service the narrative and themes that might arguably boil down to the bickering between two strong women. The prejudice in the writing can only serve Daugherty’s [End Page 85] desire to portray a maudlin, one-sided Cather, which then calls into question the reliability of Sergeant’s portrait. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this novel is the many references to accurate, yet cherry-picked, material from Cather’s work, which lends a sheen of verisimilitude to the narrative. The content required Daugherty’s close engagement with Cather’s work and life...