• Title: Chasing Bright Medusas
• Author: Benjamin Taylor
• Genre/Subject: Literary Biography
• Publisher: Viking Press
• Publication Date: 2023
• Start date: 12/18/23
• Finish date: 12/21/23

Review:

Being a Willa Cather enthusiast and a member of the National Willa Cather Center every new biography is pretty much required reading. So I pre-ordered this volume and eagerly awaited it. Well, I got it and I read it, and I’m very disappointed.

First of all this slim volume is, a slim volume. 154 pages, that’s it. It reminded me of being in school when you had to write an essay and had nothing much to say. So you had the bright idea to double space it and leave lots of spaces between words to make it look longer. For a woman whose career spanned over half a century this is disappointingly short.

The prose is pretentious without actually providing any added value to the reader. Here is an author who wants you to know he is a distinguished fellow of letters. Like the owl, who seeks knowledge purely for the sake of appearing wise.

Biography is difficult, both for the author and for the reader and there are very few who get it just right. What to keep in, and what to leave out? This is a difficult line to walk and in my opinion this author went well over the line. He seems to be obsessed with Cather’s sexuality, and in particular her relationship with Edith Wilson. Okay, maybe it’s generally assumed that Cather was same sex oriented, and this affects her literary output how, exactly? Not one bit, so get over it.

So I gained a little information from reading Chasing Bright Medusas, very little as it was only 154 pages and nothing that I couldn’t get from other sources. And it was a quick read for the reasons stated,

I’m disappointed as I pre-ordered this and waited expectantly for it’s arrival, only to discover that this didn’t come close to even matching my expectations. And that’s really all I have to say.