Now, A Literary Moment…

Radio host Garrison Keillor reads from Willa Cather’s 1918 prairie novel, My Antonia.

Garrison Keillor: "I sat down in the middle of the garden where snakes could scarcely approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it like the pumpkins. And I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die. And become a part of something entire whether it is sun and air or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness. To be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."

This Literary Moment was created by the National Endowment for the Arts