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

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...

审核人：

• 唯一美妙的事情：威拉·凯瑟和伊迪丝·刘易斯的创造性合作，梅丽莎·J·霍姆斯特德（Melissa J. Homestead）
• 凯尔西乡绅

文学的传记方法经常依赖于从档案材料中提取的事实——信件、照片、出生证明、票根——以至于很容易忽视解释在作者及其作品的传记研究中所起的作用。哪些事实受到重视？哪些证据被认为不重要？在《唯一美妙的事情：威拉·凯瑟和伊迪丝·刘易斯的创造性合作》一书中，作者梅丽莎·J·霍姆斯特德谈到了威拉·凯瑟研究中最大的解释空白之一：凯瑟与长期合作伙伴伊迪丝·刘易斯的关系。The Only Wonderful Things让凯瑟小说的崇拜者对凯瑟的生活和工作有了更深入、更细致的理解。更广泛地说，唯一美妙的事情将对那些工作与传记、作者身份、LBGTQ 研究和 20 世纪早期美国文学和文化领域相交的学者有用。

在她个人且引人入胜的介绍中，霍姆斯特德概述了伊迪丝·刘易斯（Edith Lewis）的角色如何在凯瑟作品的研究中被最小化——在某些情况下，被抹去。正如 Homestead 解释的那样，“Willa Cather 的形象是一位独立的艺术家，脱离了市场和当代[End Page 131]社会世界，让凯瑟传记作者和评论家很难看到伊迪丝·刘易斯”；而霍姆斯特德承认，她自己作为一名年轻的学者“陷入了没有看到 [刘易斯] 或误解我所见的陷阱”（3）。诸如“凯瑟真的是女同性恋吗？”和“凯瑟和刘易斯是朋友、同事还是恋人？”这些问题一直困扰着凯瑟的生活和工作的传记研究。Homestead 总结了像 Phyllis Robinson 和 Sharon O'Brien 等学者是如何开始识别的凯瑟在 1980 年代是一名女同性恋者。霍姆斯特德继续讨论批评者如何曲解新罕布什尔州贾弗里的凯瑟-刘易斯墓地的证据——包括刘易斯被埋在凯瑟脚下的谣言——以及这些错误如何将刘易斯在凯瑟生活中的角色最小化。Homestead 还借鉴了 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick、Christopher Nealon 和 Heather Love 的作品来探索关于凯瑟和刘易斯已出柜以及他们对他们的关系保密的说法。

那么，将凯瑟和刘易斯的关系标记为女同性恋是否合适？Homestead 令人信服地为这个标签辩护。借鉴历史学家 Lillian Faderman 的学术成果，Homestead 鼓励读者将“女同性恋”作为形容词与作为名词的女同性恋区分开来，认为这种说话方式最能描述凯瑟和刘易斯的关系 (7)。Homestead 提供了一个有说服力的模型，可以帮助我们思考从 19 世纪晚期到我们当代的同性关系定义的语言的历史变化。虽然“凯瑟作为女同性恋”的问题可能已经主导了凯瑟的流行公共叙述，但霍姆斯特德对凯瑟-刘易斯关系的另一个标签——“创造性伙伴关系”——同样重要。

虽然The Only Wonderful Things借鉴了文学的传记方法，但正如 Homestead 澄清的那样，它不是 Willa Cather 或 Edith Lewis 的完整传记。霍姆斯特德如此解释她的组织：“我在按时间顺序和主题组织的章节中展示了他们合作的一系列场景”（2）。这个主题组织存在让读者感到困惑的风险（需要仔细跟踪时间线的跳跃），但通过 Homestead 灵巧的处理，主题组织允许她在提供凯瑟和刘易斯跨时间生活的凝聚力画像方面拥有更大的余地。第 1 章提供了关于伊迪丝·刘易斯 (Edith Lewis) 的生活和家族史的基本细节，从她 1881 年在内布拉斯加州林肯市的出生开始。[完第 132 页]描述刘易斯的父母亨利和莉莉刘易斯的生活，宅基地提供了 19 世纪后期中西部中产阶级生活的细致入微的描绘。特别是，宅基地追溯了亨利和莉莉·刘易斯如何通过他们的职业和个人生活“在西方重建或创建基于新英格兰的社交网络”（19）。Homestead 还通过讨论故事和素描，详细讨论了伊迪丝·刘易斯的写作倾向……