ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines works from a long period in Cather’s career, from her earliest fiction to her masterpieces of the mid-1920s, and traces how she considers this transformative potential of journalism in conjunction with the similar potential she finds in the influence of recent immigrants. While Strychacz rightly points to the contemporaneous emphasis on professionalism in both journalism and literary writing, he assumes that the later development of modernist literature rests on an authority solely derived from the mastery of a difficult language. Cather continues to explore the feasibility of a popular modernism and the potential influence of artists through a consideration of journalism and immigrants. Cather uses the journalist and the immigrant to measure her aspirations for achieving a kind of popular modernism.
