The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis by Melissa J. Homestead

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis by Melissa J. Homestead Kelsey Squire The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis. By Melissa J. Homestead. Oxford UP, 2021. 408 pp. Biographical approaches to literature rely so often on facts drawn from archival materials—letters, photographs, birth certificates, ticket stubs—that it can be easy to overlook the role that interpretation plays in biographical studies of authors and their works. Which facts are valued? What evidence is dismissed as unimportant? In The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis, author Melissa J. Homestead addresses one of the largest interpretive gaps in Willa Cather studies: Cather's relationship with longtime partner, Edith Lewis. The Only Wonderful Things provides admirers of Cather's fiction with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of Cather's life and work. More broadly, The Only Wonderful Things will be useful to scholars whose work intersects with the fields of biography, authorship, LBGTQ studies, and early twentieth-century US literature and culture. In her personal and compelling introduction, Homestead outlines how the role of Edith Lewis came to be minimized—and in some cases, erased—in the study of Cather's work. As Homestead explains, "[t]he image of Willa Cather as an autonomous artist, detached from the market and from the contemporary [End Page 131] social world, has made it difficult for Cather biographers and critics to see Edith Lewis"; and Homestead admits that she herself as a younger scholar "fell into the trap of not seeing [Lewis] or of misperceiving what I saw" (3). Questions like "was Cather really a lesbian?" and "were Cather and Lewis friends, coworkers, or lovers?" have haunted biographical studies of Cather's life and work. Homestead summarizes how scholars like Phyllis Robinson and Sharon O'Brien first began to identify Cather as a lesbian in the 1980s. Homestead goes on to discuss how critics misinterpreted evidence at the Cather-Lewis gravesite in Jaffrey, New Hampshire—including rumors that Lewis was buried at Cather's feet—and how these errors minimized Lewis's role in Cather's life. Homestead also draws on the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Christopher Nealon, and Heather Love to explore claims that Cather and Lewis were closeted and that they kept their relationship a secret. Is it appropriate to label Cather and Lewis's relationship as lesbian, then? Homestead argues, convincingly, for this label. Drawing on the scholarship of historian Lillian Faderman, Homestead encourages readers to distinguish "lesbian" as an adjective from lesbian as a noun, arguing that this manner of speaking best describes Cather and Lewis's relationship (7). Homestead provides a persuasive model for how to think through historical changes of language that defined same-sex relationships from those of the late nineteenth century to our contemporary moment. While the "Cather as lesbian" question may have dominated popular public narratives of Cather, Homestead's other label for the Cather-Lewis relationship—"creative partnership"—is equally important. While The Only Wonderful Things draws on biographical approaches to literature, it is not, as Homestead clarifies, a full biography of either Willa Cather or Edith Lewis. Homestead explains her organization thusly: "I present a series of scenes from their partnership in chapters organized both chronologically and thematically" (2). This thematic organization runs the risk of being confusing to readers (jumps in the timeline need to be tracked carefully), but through Homestead's deft handling, the thematic organization allows her more expansive leeway in providing cohesive portraits of Cather and Lewis's lives across time. Chapter 1 provides essential details about Edith Lewis's life and family history, starting with her birth in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1881. By [End Page 132] describing the lives of Lewis's parents, Henry and Lillie Lewis, Homestead provides a nuanced portrait of middle-class life in the late nineteenth-century Midwest. In particular, Homestead traces how Henry and Lillie Lewis "recreated or created New England-based social networks in the West" through their professional and personal lives (19). Homestead also presents a detailed discussion of Edith Lewis's writerly inclinations by discussing the stories and sketches...