Distinguished Pulitzer Prize–winning American author (1876–1947) of such classics as O Pioneers! and My Antonia. Dramatically insightful TLS, one page, 8.5 x 11, personal letterhead, October 20, 1943. Letter addressed to “My dear lady,” possibly Emmy Liddell. In part, with Cather adding some punctuation and one additional word in her hand: “I am always glad to hear from people who like Lucy. It is a very slight story, but she herself was a very lovable thing. I used to wish I had a butterfly net to catch her with. Dear lady, nothing in the world can be less American than Hollywood; the people who live there, and the types they manufacture for the screen! Just at present nearly all the second rate actors and nearly all the artificial and affected writers in the world are assembled in Hollywood. And they are all doing their worst! Almost nothing that Hollywood sends out represents real American people—and I have spent a good deal of time in almost every one of our States. There is really nothing American about Hollywood. But what effect these continual distortions and misrepresentations of human behaviour may have on children and very young people, I dread to think. However, youth has a grand way of coming through, hasn’t it?” In fine condition, with intersecting central horizontal and vertical mailing folds, mild toning along vertical fold, and a few wrinkles. Accompanied by two handwritten letters from Liddell to Cather, one from 1943, the other from 1946.
Dripping with disdain, this letter reflects Cather’s feelings toward celebrity culture at the end of her career. Hollywood’s relatively loose adaptation in 1934 of her novel, A Lost Lady, soured the author on “all the second rate actors” and her belief that “nothing in the world can be less American than Hollywood,” with its “continual distortions and misrepresentations” of human behavior. Although she retreated from public life in the late 1930s, displeased with a growing trend that artists had to place their craft second to a larger-than-life figure that had been created by their work, Cather remained an iconic figure up until her death. Pre-certified PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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