Not Under Forty

Willa Cather's collection of essays, Not Under Forty, starts off with a caveat that the essays would likely not appeal to those "under forty."  Nonetheless, I took a stab at it. Enjoyable and interesting of course, but not as wonderful for me as Cather's fiction. There was one quote that resonated with me:

"The unique charm of Mrs. Fields' house was not that it was a place where one could hear about the past, but that it was a place where the past lived on - where it was protected and cherished, had sanctuary from the noisy push of the present."

This last sentiment captures why I love Willa Cather so much, because when I read her work, it is indeed a sanctuary for me, as her writing hearkens back to an earlier time stripped away of distracting modernities, and instead focuses on the essence of relationships with oneself, others, and the landscapes that define us.  

Cather: The Young Adventurer

Before Willa Cather became a famous author she was a teacher in Pittsburgh, and when she was only twenty-eight years old (in 1902), she traveled to England and France to the first time.  Having grown up in pastoral Nebraska, some of the countryside she saw resonated with her own life, whereas the cities and the level of poverty within them was something she had never experienced before.  Collected in Willa Cather in Europe:  Her Own Story of the First Journey are fourteen travel articles that Cather wrote for a newspaper in Lincoln, Nebraska.  The articles contain her first impressions of the places she visited.  Even in this early writing of hers, some of the key themes of her later writing are captured, perhaps the most compelling of which is her keen interest and curiosity of the lives of the poor and working class, as opposed to high society.  My favorite quotes:

In Liverpool:  "Hats have never at all been one of the vexing problems of my life, but, indifferent as I am, these render me speechless.  I should think a well-taught and tasteful American milliner would go mad in England, and eventually hang herself with bolts of green and scarlet ribbon - the favorite colour combination in Liverpool."

In Barbizon:  "The village at first sight looks like any other little forest town; the home of hard-working folk, desperately poor, but never so greedy or so dead of soul that they will not take time to train the peach tree against the wall until it spreads like a hardy vine, and to mass beautiful flowers of very hue in their little gardens."  

"There is something worth thinking about in these brown, merry old women, who have brought up fourteen children and can outstrip their own sons and grandsons in the harvest field, lay down their rake and write a traveler directions as to how he can reach the next town in a hand as neat as a bookkeeper's."

In Avignon:  "As we carried no bologna with us, we were naturally interested in the dining-room on the afternoon of our arrival."

In Marseilles and Hyeres:  "What more of life could one wring out of twenty-four hours, if you please  At noon the wet olives of Arles; at nightfall a chorus of gay sailors, made up to the life, and the rattle of stage thunder, much blue lightening, and a great tossing of blue water; at dawn a sunrise over feathery date palms, with the sea at one's feet and a porcelain sky above.  What more could one ask for, even in the country of Monte Cristo?"

In Lavandou:  "I am sure I do not know why a wretched little fishing village with nothing but green pines and blue sea and a sky of porcelain, should mean more than a dozen places I have wanted to see all my life."

Troubled Bridge Over Water

It all comes full circle for me with my beloved Willa Cather!  Alexander's Bridge, Cather's first novel, was published in 1912, and it was one of the last of her novels that I have read.  Ironically, I read this book in one sitting just a stone's throw away from a bridge that crosses the great Stanislaus River.  The story's protagonist is Bartley Alexander, an engineer who builds bridges.  Torn between his love for his wife Winifred in Boston and his lover Hilda in London who makes him feel alive and youthful, Alexander must navigate these relationships and becomes increasingly tormented.  Perhaps, given all the weight on his shoulders and his inability to move forward in either direction, life comes crashing down on him, literally, when his newest bridge collapses, despite the description earlier in the book as a man who had shoulders that "looked strong enough in themselves to support a span of any one of his ten great bridges...."  Perhaps some heavy handed metaphor here, but for a first novel, it still showed signs of Cather's greatness.  One of my favorite descriptions in the book is how Cather writes of how Winifred's face suggested "stormy possibilities."  One of her better shorter works, but still not comparable to the wonderful My Antonia.

Obscure Cather

Willa Cather's collection of three stories of the West, Obscure Destinies, was published in 1932.  The first story, "Neighbor Rosicky," tells the story of the patriarch of the farm, Rosicky, who cares for his land and his family in Nebraska.  It is a simple story, but a really warmhearted one.  My favorite scene is when old man Rosicky visits his son Rudolph and his daughter-in-law Polly. Worried about how Polly, a city girl, will take to farming life, he goes over to give them his car to borrow so they can go out to a night on the town.  Rosicky takes an apron off a hook and gently pushes Polly out of the way.  Cather writes, "That kind, reassuring grip on her elbows, the old man's funny bright eyes, made Polly want to drop her head on his shoulder for a second."  Cather finds such tenderness in the smallest moments.  The second story, "Old Mrs. Harris," follows the life of Grandma Harris, who is often stoic except when she beams with love for her grandchildren.  The neighbor, Mrs. Rosen often brings over coffee cake and tries to bring Mrs. Harris out of her shell.  As Cather writes, the house in which the Harris family lived was small and "Mrs. Harris and her 'things' were almost required to be invisible."  While Mrs. Harris may not take up very much space figuratively, she doesn't need more than her grandchildren to make her "perfectly happy."  Cather writes of Grandma Harris and her grandsons, "She and the twins were the same age; they had in common all the realest and truest things."  This sentiment really reminds me of Capote's short story, "A Christmas Memory" which follows the friendship of young Buddy and his older cousin Sook.  The final story, "Two Friends" is told from the perspective of a young boy who looks up to two older men in his small town, who "led more varied lives than the other men in our town."  These stories are classic Cather - not my favorites of hers, but still worth reading. 

Mere Mortals

Willa Cather's novel My Mortal Enemy, written in 1926, tells the story of Myra Driscoll, a woman of strong character and opinion.  Not my favorite Cather novel (it is over so quickly), but still includes some beautiful passages by Cather, in which she succeeds in very distinctly describing some of the people in the short novel, as follows:

"She looked strong and broken, generous and tyrannical, a witty and rather wicked old woman, who hated life for its defeats, and loved it for its absurdities." 

"I felt that his life had not suited him; that he possessed some kind of courage and force which slept, which in another sort of world might have asserted themselves brilliantly." 

A Tale Not so Gayheart-ed

Lucy Gayheart was one of Willa Cather's later novels, written in 1935.  It tells the story of Lucy, who grows up in a small Midwest town, and then moves to Chicago at the age of 18 to study music.  While in Chicago, she discovers her own talent and also falls in love with the great singer Clement Sebastian.  After tragedy strikes, she returns home to her small town, where further tragedy ensues.  While the story line is not riveting, Cather captures small town life in her usual pitch perfect way.  In my opinion, this was not nearly as good as some of her other works that I have previously reviewed. 

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the novel:

"In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another; loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching.  On the sidewalks along which everybody comes and goes, you must, if you walk abroad at all, at some time pass within a few inches of the man who cheated and betrayed you, or the woman you desire more than anything else in the world.  Her skirt brushes against you.  You say good-morning, and go on.  It is a close shave.  Out in the world the escapes are not so narrow."

A Novel of Contrasts, from Cather

Published in 1925, Willa Cather's The Professor's House is a character study of Professor Godfrey St. Peter, the book's protagonist.  St. Peter is a scholar and a family man with two married daughters, very stuck in his ways.  Even though his family moves into a new house, he continues to work in the study of his old one.  The novel is divided into three sections - the first and last focus on St. Peter and we learn through this lens about one of his most brilliant students, Tom Outland, who was also engaged to one of St. Peter's daughters before Outland's untimely death.  The second section of the novel focuses on Outland's story of discovering the remains of a cliff dwelling city in New Mexico, and for me was the most beautifully written part of the novel.  The themes of the novel are many, but the most interesting to me is the that of embracing modernity and change versus holding on to the beauty of nature's simplicity and a lost era.  While this is a departure from Cather's rural novels mainly set in Nebraska, I enjoyed the exploration of life in a small university town.  For me, this doesn't hold a candle My Antonia, which for me thus far is Cather's greatest masterpiece.  

Some of my favorite quotes:

"...the muscular, many-lined palm, the long, strong fingers with soft ends, the straight little finger, the flexible, beautifully shaped thumb that curved back from the rest of the hand as if it were its own master.  What a hand!  He could see it yet, with the blue stones lying in it."

"St. Peter was so pleased with his flowers that it hadn't occurred to him to get more; but all his life he had regretted that he didn't buy two bunches, and push their fortunes a little further."

Lost and Found

I'm on a reading roll with Willa Cather!  Once again, she does not disappoint.  While A Lost Lady (published in 1923) is not as epic or sweeping as Cather's Prairie Trilogy works, it is an intriguing character study and intimately explores the relationship between the protagonist, Marian Forrester and her relationships with the men and boys who live in Sweet Water, a Western town along the Transcontinental Railroad during pioneering days.  We mainly see Mrs. Forrester through the eyes of Niel Herbert, who we first meet as a young boy going fishing at the Forrester's creek with his friends, but who becomes a friend and confidant of Mrs. Forrester even as Niel becomes a young man.  He is drawn to Mrs. Forrester's laugh, twinkling eyes, and charisma.  However, after her husband Captain Daniel Forrester has a stroke and his health continually declines, Mrs. Forrester also declines in her own way.  Eventually she moves away (first to California, then to South America) and marries again.  What Cather captures in this short novel are some very warm and heartening scenes that seem to exude the essence of small town life. 

O Willa!

One of Ours, published in 1922, is Willa Cather's classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that explores the life of a young man who grows up on a farm in Nebraska and eventually becomes a soldier in World War I.  Claude Wheeler hopes to someday leave the farm, but his father's plans for him conflict with this, resulting in him staying in Nebraska and marrying a woman he has known since his childhood.  While friends of his are content with their farming lives, Claude is "unable to conceal his discontent" and is unable to "subdue his own nature," despite "resisting unalterable conditions."  Claude lives with "the conviction that there was something splendid about life, if he could but find it!"  He sets off to Europe with high hopes of finding a sense of purpose and seeing more of the world, but quickly must face the harsh reality of the violent life on the frontier.  I love Willa Cather's writing and I was very engaged with the first two-thirds of the book, but I did not enjoy the final part of the novel which focuses on Claude's life at war.  This was not my favorite Cather novel, but I still want to read all of her other novels, because she has such an engaging writing style.

O Pioneers!

O Pioneers! was the first book that Willa Cather wrote as part of her "prairie trilogy."  Written one hundred years ago, with the title of the book based on a Walt Whitman poem, O Pioneers! is a great book that features the Nebraska landscape which is also the setting for The Song of the Lark and My Antonia.  The novel's protagonist is Alexandra Bergson, a Swedish immigrant who came to the United States with her family as a child.  Using her business know-how and instinct, Alexandra is able to help her family's farm grow and prosper.  Other wonderfully drawn characters include Alexandra's brother Emil, the first in his family to go to college (his farmer brothers Lou and Oscar think his education ruined him), the captivating and radiant neighbor Marie, and Ivar, the barefoot elder who lives in a cave and tends to Alexandra's horses in the later years of his life. 

The book explores family relationships, forbidden love, and the experience of working the land.  It is an easy read and a really good story, but my favorite of Cather's prairie trilogy is My Antonia.  Nonetheless, these are some of my favorite lines from O Pioneers!:

"...the all-suffusing brightness of being twenty-one..."
"I'm cowardly about things that remind me of myself."
"Out of her father's children, there was one who was fit to cope with the world, who had not been tied to the plow, who had a personality apart from the soil.  And that, she reflected, was what she had worked for." 
"It was like a sigh which they had breathed together; almost sorrowful, as if each were afraid of awakening something in the other."
"Good night, sister.  I think you did pretty well by us."

My (Awesome) Antonia

Usually I keep a pencil nearby to mark down on my bookmark passages and pages that I want to return to while reading a book.  By the time I reached p. 20 of My Antonia, the classic work of fiction depicting farm life in Nebraska, I had written down really every page number.  I was absolutely blown away by the quality of writing of this work.  The description of the landscape and characters were very vivid.  Cather used very simple language in a poetic manner.   Jim Burden grows up as the neighbor of Antonia Shimerda, a girl with eyes brimming with life and an indomitable spirit.  The novel follows the lives of Jim, Antonia, and their families and friends through their years of childhood into adulthood.  Here are a few of my favorite lines:

"He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history."
"My grandfather said little.  When he first came in he kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative.  I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity , and was a little in awe of him."
"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 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."

I feel that My Antonia surpassed Cather's The Song of the Lark in overall greatness, and I definitely now want to read all of Cather's books.  An absolute pleasure, and it amazes me that a book written nearly 100 years ago can still feel like it comes right to life.  Perhaps an early contender for one of the best books read in 2013!