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."

For the Love of Nebraska

Having read Willa Cather's Prairie Trilogy, I have become very intrigued with the setting of her novels - rural Nebraska.  Therefore, I was excited to learn about Pamela Carter Joern who also focuses on the Nebraska landscape as a backdrop for some of her work.  In fact, her novel The Floor of the Sky takes its title from a Willa Cather quotation.  The Floor of the Sky, set in modern day in the remote Sandhills region of Nebraska, focuses on the story of Toby, an older widow, and her pregnant granddaughter, 16-year old Lila.  The novel weaves together stories of Toby's past and Lila's new life in the small town and on her grandmother's ranch.  With a range of characters, including Toby's embittered sister Gertie, the quiet but loyal ranch hand George, and Lila's cousin Clay who is going in a bad direction, there are interesting perspectives and meta-stories within the novel.  However, for me the setting is not as prominent as it is in Cather's works, and in fact seems like it could be a small rural town anywhere in the U.S.  The writing style reminds me more of Kent Haruf than Willa Cather.  Ultimately, while I liked the focus on inter-generational relationships and the multiple perspectives, I did not feel connected to the characters and this is not one of those books that will resonate with me for very long. 

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. 

Hatchet and Hope

There is something about survival stories that draws me in, and I think it is about reducing (or expanding?) to the basic elements and needs of life - shelter, warmth, food, and the human instinct to survive.  Gary Paulsen writes young adult fiction that often focuses on coming of age stories in the wilderness.  Hatchet is Paulsen's 1987 Newbery Honor-winning novel that tells the story of thirteen year-old Brian Robeson.  Brian is the only passenger of a small plane flying from New York to Canada, to visit his father.  His parents have recently divorced, which Brian is grappling with as he flies toward his father's home.  While in the air, the pilot has a heart attack and dies, and Brian is left to figure out how to land the plane and then survive in the wilderness.  The novel tells of his despair, resourcefulness, and self-sufficiency.  Brian comes up against many challenges of the natural world, such as sharing his new environment with wild animals (beavers, moose, bears, wolves, skunks, etc.), weathering a tornado,combating loneliness, and making it through each day with enough food and a well stoked fire.  While there is something rather formulaic about fictionalized survival stories, I enjoyed the novel and found each challenge that Brian must face to be interesting and I was always wondering how he would overcome everything thrown at him.  After nearly two months in the wilderness, Brian reflects that he becomes a new version of himself.  I am not ultimately a huge fan of young adult fiction, but this is a readable and engrossing tale.

Introduction to Henry James

The Turn of the Screw is a novella published in 1898 by Henry James, and is considered to be a kind of old-world, old-fashioned, even gothic, ghost story.  A young governess watches over two cherubic children, Miles and Flora, at the Bly Estate, in the countryside.  Along with Mrs. Grose, the estate housekeeper, the two women must care for the children without involving their uncle who has expressly asked to not be involved in the children's lives.  What starts out as an idyllic story with two children who couldn't be easier to care for, quickly turns into a subtly sinister tale of supernatural occurrences and strange relationships.  The ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel seem to haunt the house and to specifically seek out the children, who are aware of their presence.  Things quickly unravel and end on a disturbing note.  While I enjoyed this introduction to Henry James, the writing is somewhat dense and the plot moves rather slowly, though I do love an old-fashioned tale.  Thus, I was left with mixed feelings about James.  Perhaps I will read another novella to get a better sense of his breadth. 

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.

This Boy's Life

In This Boy's Life, Tobias Wolff tells the story of his upbringing in the 1950's, starting with a car trip taken by him and his mother to escape an abusive man, which lands them in Utah, and soon after Seattle.  Wolff's mother eventually meets another man, Dwight, who doesn't like or accept Tobias (who renames himself Jack) from the get go.  Wolff writes of his relationship with his mother, his friends, his father, and his brother.  He straddles the line between being a kid who gets good grades and is a Boy Scout, and one who falls in with the wrong crowd and might end up with few opportunities.  This is a well written memoir that can be read in just a few days.  The language is straightforward and simple, but pierces right to the heart of things. 

How Marjorie Celona's Debut Novel Made Me Cr(Y)

Marjorie Celona's debut novel, Y, centers around the life of Shannon, a foster child who is abandoned as a newborn by her mother on the steps of the YMCA.  We follow Shannon's life from home to home, until she comes to life with single-mother Miranda and her daughter Lydia-Rose, who try their hardest to create a new sense of family for Shannon, who never feels like she truly belongs.  Interspersed with scenes of her foster family are scenes of Shannon's birth mother Yula and father Harrison, in the days when they first meet as well as the days leading up to Shannon's birth.  The novel moves quickly, with punch and unflinching detail, but even two-thirds of the way in, while I liked the writing I had not yet really been moved by any of the characters.  Yet,  I found myself with tears in my eyes in the final parts of the novel, when Shannon comes face to face with her past.   It is very rare that a book brings me to tears, and for that quality alone, I recommend Y. 

Kent Haruf is Back, with Benediction

I remember vastly enjoying Kent Haruf's novels Plainsong and Eventide, and was thrilled to learn that Haruf recently published a new work of fiction called Benediction.  The backdrop, as is the case in several of Haruf's other novels, is a small town called Holt located in the high plains of Colorado.  This story centers around the life and approaching death of Dad Lewis who has only a short time left to live as he is dying of terminal cancer.  It is interesting how I just happened to read this book after reading A Death in the Family, which also focuses on the death of a patriarch in a small town, though nearly a century earlier.  With simple, graceful language, Haruf introduces us to a diverse cast of characters that surround the protagonist and intersect with his life in different ways, including a preacher that is new to town and his wife and son, an elderly neighbor and her daughter, and Dad's immediate family, his wife Mary, daughter Lorraine, and estranged son Frank.  This work highlights some moving small moments and gestures, as well as gives one a sense of the importance of community and neighbors in small town life.  I did not enjoy Benediction as much as Haruf's earlier works, but it is well worth reading nonetheless. 

Agile Writing from Agee

James Agee's classic novel, A Death in the Family, was published in 1957 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958.  The story revolves around the death of the patriarch of a family living in Knoxville, Tennessee in the early 1900s.  The book closely follows each family member and their internal thought process and interactions with each other shortly before and after learning Jay's death, the one major event of the novel.  Other than this, the book focuses on smaller details and intimate moments, between brothers and sisters, mothers and their children, etc.  There are many beautiful passages, including a very moving scene between Jay and his wife Mary, which neither could have known would be the last time they would see each other.  In this scene, they are up in the middle of the night, and Jay freshens the covers so that Mary will have a warm bed to return to after seeing Jay off. 

Here are a few of my other favorite passages:

"I need never fear: nor ever shall I lack for loving-kindness."
"Rufus felt his father's hand settle, without groping or clumsiness, on the top of his bear head; it took his forehead and smoothed it, and pushed the hair backward from his forehead, and held the back of his head while Rufus pressed his head backward against the firm hand..."
"I know it's just unmitigated tommyrot to try to say a word about it." 
"He put his hand around her arm and felt how little it was.  He could feel a vein beating against the bone, just below her armpit."

Southern Fried Stories

Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find, is filled with great story titles, memorable one-liners, macabre moments, and scenarios bordering on the absurd and outrageous.  Her work is very original, and her talent is evident.  O'Connor lived to be only 39 years old, and in that time she published a total of 32 short stories.  The stories in this collection are set in the rural South, and are considered to part of the Southern Gothic style.  My favorites were, "A Late Encounter with the Enemy," which focuses on a grandfather attending his granddaughter's graduation, "Good Country People,"which tells of the brief affair between a Bible salesman and a wooden-legged well educated woman, and of course the infamous title story in which a family outing quickly becomes a murderous tale, where even grandma isn't spared.  In "Good Country People," I really liked these two lines:

"Well, young man, I don't want to buy a Bible and I smell my dinner burning." 
"True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind."  

All in all, this is a rather zany collection of unique stories.

Man vs. Marlin

The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952,  is one of Ernest Hemingway's classic works of short fiction, and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953.   The story is about a fisherman named Santiago who has both a physical battle with a marlin he tries to catch off the coast of Havana, Cuba, as well as a psychological battle within himself.  Hemingway is quite economical in his words, yet he vividly captures the scene so much so that you feel you are alongside Santiago in his boat as he captures the fish, then patiently waits for it to come to the surface, and then battles against sharks who want to eat the newly captured and killed fish strapped to the side of his boat.  There are some intriguing elements to this book, one being Santiago's relationship with a boy named Manolin.  They have a very tender and loving relationship, revealed to us through just a few exchanges between the two of them.  Santiago also has emotions toward the fish he aims to kill and sell.  He states, "I love you and respect you very much.  But I will kill you dead before this day ends."  He further describes fish as as "noble" and "more able" than man, and acknowledges the fish's "greatness and his glory."  Interestingly, he even at one points admits that the killing of such a great fish is "unjust."  Hemingway writes, "Then he was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him.  How many people will he feed, he thought.  But are they not worthy to eat him?  No, of course not.  There is no one worth of eating him from the manner of his behaviour and his great dignity."  As the fisherman becomes more tired, hungry, in pain, and even delirious, he continues to ponder the concept of killing the fish.  Ultimately, his great effort is not rewarded and we are left to ponder the message of this short but powerful "man vs. nature" story.  This is a book best read in one sitting!

Turnips and Tragedy

Tobacco Road, by Erskine Caldwell, was published in 1932 and focuses on the lives of a white sharecropper family, the Lesters, who live in poverty in rural Georgia.  The novel takes place over the course of just a few days, starting with Jeeter Lester's son-in-law passing by the Lester house along Tobacco Road with a bag of turnips.  Fueled by desperation and hunger, Jeeter tries to take Lov's turnips, and subsequently repents for this as he believes it to be a sinful act.  Jeeter and Ada Lester had seventeen children, most of whom left home to seek a more prosperous life as a result of industrialization, and more specifically, cotton mills.  Jeeter Lester steadfastly refuses to leave his land and go work in the cotton mills, given that the land had been in his family for two generations.  As Lov states, "The ground sort of looks out for the people who keeps their feet on it.  When people stand on planks in buildings all the time, and walk around on hard streets, the ground sort of loses interest in the human."  Despite his desire and need to farm his land, Jeeter has few options as storekeepers won't extend credit to him for seed and fertilizer, and he was also the victim of predatory lending.  Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, Caldwell's famous novel unflinchingly portrays the degradation, oppression, and racism prevalent in those times.  It is an unsettling work, brought to life by the day to day struggle of the Lester family. 

Three with Ford

I'll read anything that Richard Ford writes, because I was a huge fan of Canada, Wildlife, and Rock Springs.  Women with Men is a collection of three long stories (shorter than novellas), that highlight intimate moments, mixed signals, unspoken thoughts, and crossroads moments between men and women. Two of the stories are set against the backdrop of Paris but my favorite story was "Jealous," which takes place in Montana and focuses on Ford's typical nuclear family of an estranged mom and dad and their teenage son.  Larry sets off with his aunt to visit his mother, but on the way, they stop in a small town where things quickly take an unexpected turn.  I loved the few exchanges of dialogue between the father and son, as I did in Ford's other books.  This wasn't my favorite Ford work, but very readable nonetheless. 

Riveting River Tale: Deliverance

Deliverance, published in 1970 by James Dickey, is one of those novels that you really could pick up and not put down, to be read in one sitting in a couple of hours.  Set in the north Georgia wilderness (in "the country of nine-fingered people," as Dickey writes) on the Cahulawassee River, four middle-aged men decide to spend the weekend on a canoe trip down river.  What was supposed to be an invigorating weekend shaking the men out of their office life ennui quickly turns into a harrowing few days of life and death.  Dickey's writing moves swiftly and builds tension slowly but surely.  While some of it seems a bit over the top, there is a kind of lawlessness to the tale that makes it riveting.  I enjoyed the book, but other than the protagonist, we learn little of the interior life of the other characters, which would have been very interesting had the story been told from multiple perspectives. 

Whim and Grimm

I recently read Philip Pullman's Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version, a collection of 50 fairy tales, which includes some well known tales as well as many lesser known tales.  These fairy tales were first published just over 200 years ago by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm.  I have not read the originals, so I am not sure how Pullman's re-tellings compare.  I did not find his notes at the end of each fairy tale to be very interesting, though I enjoyed the fairy tales.  Filled with poor millers, golden apples, wicked stepmothers, and dense forests, the stories are very archetypal and form the basis of other themes in literature.  There are some common structural elements and themes - things happen in threes, good conquers evil, and magic often happens.  While I enjoyed the swiftness and wit of the tales, the characters are often nameless and there is little emphasis on their interior life, nor emphasis on the description of the setting.  Plus, after reading fifty tales, the themes do start to get repetitive.  Nonetheless, they are inventive, entertaining, and an important contribution to the canon of literature. 

Bringing the Great Migration to Life

I enjoyed Anaya Mathis' debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, which follows the lives of Hattie Shepherd and all of her children.  The Great Migration took place from 1910 to 1930, and was characterized by millions of African Americans moving from the rural South to the urban Northeast in search of opportunity and to no longer be subject to segregation.  In this book, Hattie moves at the age of fifteen from Georgia to Philadelphia.  She has her first children (twins) at the age of seventeen and lives a life of hardship and making ends meet by the skin of her teeth and the strength of her character.  I enjoyed the narrative structure, wherein the chapters are essentially interwoven vignettes of Hattie's different children and the very different paths they end up taking in their lives.  This is a story of grit, courage, the strength of familial bonds, and the sacrifice and challenge of motherhood.  This would be an interesting book to read coupled with Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, which I hope to read soon.  

Doig Dull This Time Around

Having enjoyed several of Doig's later novels, I was excited to pick up English Creek, the first of Doig's Montana trilogy.  Set in Montana in the 1930s, the story is told through the perspective of Jick McCaskill, a boy on the cusp of being fifteen years old and coming into his own.  Unfortunately, I felt the story was filled with way too much detail and moved at a snails pace.  There was no climax and no real drama or intriguing moments.  While Doig's writing is jaunty and pleasant, this was my least favorite of his books. 

A Tale of Courage

Ingrid Betancourt's memoir of her six years of captivity in the Colombian Jungle, entitled Even Silence Has an End, is a detailed account of her daily life under horrific circumstances.  At the time that she was captured, she was running for president of Colombia.  This is a story about hope, the will to live, and surviving against all odds.

The Round House

Louise Erdrich has written fourteen novels as well as short stories, a memoir, and children's books.  Her most recent novel, The Round House, won the 2012 National Book Award.  Curious to see what the buzz was about and not having read any Erdrich since college, I was immediately drawn in to the story as soon as I picked it up.  The Round House takes place in 1988 on a reservation in North Dakota, and is told from the perspective of thirteen-year-old Joe.  Joe's mother Geraldine is the victim of a horrific crime.  Joe and his father attempt to piece what happened together and to bring the attacker to justice, which is not an easy task when it is not clear exactly where the crime took place (private land, government land, Native land, etc.).  Ultimately, Joe sets off with his friends and starts to learn of the crime, eventually taking justice into his own hands.  The story was very powerful, and had a potent mix of humor and tragedy.  I found Erdrich's channeling as a thirteen-year-old boy to be convincing, in the range of emotions he feels for his parents, his friends, and the very grown-up situation he unexpectedly finds himself in.