Alexander's Bridge: For the Hard-Core Willa Cather Fan

Last year I waited until the bitter end to complete my own reading challenge, and I am determined that I'll read way ahead this year for the Back to the Classics Challenge. I have thrown myself headfirst into my TBR piles this year and have already completed three books for the two challenges for which I've signed up (BTCC and the TBR Pile Challenge). 

Published in 1912, Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather is her first novel, and the last of hers for me to complete (except for the short stories). It is the story of Bartley Alexander, a successful American engineer, famous for creating unbuildable bridges. The story begins in Boston, where an old schoolmate Lucius Wilson has come to visit. Wilson meets Alexander's beautiful and gracious wife Winifred, and learns all about Alexander's success and how they met while he was building a famous bridge in Canada, his first big break. 

Soon after, Alexander travels to London for work, where he is reunited with an old flame, an Irish actress named Hilda Burgoyne. They had been madly in love years ago, but Alexander broke things off when he met and married Winifred. Hilda has now become very successful and she and Alexander keep meeting. One thing leads to another and soon they're having an affair which lasts off and on for several years, as Alexander travels back and forth between London and America, working on various jobs. The bridges that he builds are a metaphor for his struggles to connect his two lives. He loves both women and can't bear the thought of living without either of them. 

The book started out a little slowly but picked up when Alexander went to London and met up with Hilda. I think I appreciated it more because I've been to London a few times since moving overseas, and have been able to go to some of the theaters in the West End, so I could really picture that part of the story. The plot is very simple, but I didn't find the characters as compelling as in some of her later novels like Lucy Gayheart which I read last year. (Of course it's Cather's first novel and so it's not surprising.) I did find some of the writing beautiful and insightful. 

This was a very quick read -- I literally read this entire book in one sitting on an airplane (and it was a fairly short flight). It's not my favorite by Willa Cather but if you're a fan of her work, it's worth reading. 

I'm counting this as my Classic Novella for the Back to the Classics Challenge. 

Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather is Beautiful and Tragic

After making up my list for the TBR Pile Challenge, I realized that quite a few of my selections were in the 500+ pages range. I was planning to read Testament of Youth in March for Women's History Month, but I'd just finished Wives and Daughters and was rather hesitant to start another 700 page behemoth right away. The answer was of course a nice short book -- Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather. 

One of her later works, it's set at the turn of the century but actually written in 1935, and is her penultimate book. The story begins in the small town of Haverford, Nebraska, somewhere west of Lincoln. Young Lucy Gayheart is home for the holidays. She's 18 and is a talented pianist, and has been working in Chicago. The story begins as she's out skating with Harry Gordon, the most eligible young man in town. He fancies himself in love with Lucy, and plans on marrying her and making her his most prized possession, but unbeknown to him, Lucy has dreams and aspirations that don't include spending the rest of her life in a small town.

The moment she shut the door on the baggage man, she seemed to find herself again. Out there in Haverford she had scarcely been herself at all; she had been trying to feel and behave like someone else she no longer was; as children go on playing the old games to please their elders, after they have ceased to be children at heart.

After the holidays, Lucy returns to Chicago, where she teaches piano and finds another job as a part-time accompanist to a famous singer named Sebastian Clement. Lucy is dazzled by his talent, and eventually falls in love with him, despite a large age difference, and the fact that he is married. She's unsure if he returns her feelings, but Harry visits her from Nebraska for the Opera season and she's forced to make a decision between a secure future with Harry and her dreams of Sebastian and a musical career. 

There's a major plot twist about halfway through the story, and it appears that Lucy's dreams are shattered. The second half of the novella deals with Lucy's attempts to comes to terms with her past decisions, and with her future. 

I had expected this to be similar to her earlier book The Song of the Lark, which is about a young woman from Colorado who also moves to Chicago to study music, but they're actually quite different. It's been several years since I read it, but The Song of the Lark deals much more with a young artist dealing with a developing career and interacting with other people. I think Lucy Gayheart is much more about there personal relationships than about her career -- it's the personal aspects that drive the story, not her career aspirations. I would say they're two different possibilities of how a person's life could change. 

Some people's lives are affected by what happens to their person or their property; but for others fate is what happens to their feelings and their thoughts -- that and nothing more.

I actually enjoyed Lucy Gayheart much more than The Song of the Lark -- it's definitely one of her best works, though I wouldn't have minded if it were longer (I actually thought the final section was a bit rushed and would have liked to have seen a little more character development among some of the secondary characters). I did love all the descriptions of both Nebraska and Chicago, two places where I've lived and loved. I particularly enjoyed some of the mentions of Chicago -- there's a scene where Lucy and Harry visit the Art Institute, and Cather mentions the famous lions on the front steps, and the French Impressionists (which don't impress Harry much!). Parts of the book also reminded me a little of Ethan Frome, which is one of my all-time favorite books. 

This is my fifth book for the TBR Pile Challenge 2018, and I've now read all of Cather's works except the short stories and Alexander's Bridge, which is her first novel. 

One of Ours by Willa Cather

Willa Cather is mostly known for her novels set in the great prairies of middle America, and though I lived in Nebraska for three years, I didn't seriously start reading her novels until I moved far away to Florida and then Texas. In the past ten years, I've read nine of her novels, and it took me this long to read One of Ours,which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. It's both a prairie novel and a World War I novel. Mostly, it's about a young man who is searching for meaning in his life, and has to travel halfway around the world to find it.

The book starts about 1910, when Clyde Wheeler is a young man, splitting his time between his family's Nebraska farm and his education at a small religious college in Lincoln. He really wants to transfer to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, but his parents fear that footballs and fraternities would be a bad influence; besides, they've decide he needs to work full-time on the farm. He loves his family, he loves the farm, but he wants more out of life. Over the next few years, things start to heat up in Europe, and he finally gets the chance to do something meaningful -- enlist in the army and fight in the Great War. Like The Professor's House, this could almost have been split into two different novels. 

For a war story, there isn't a whole lot of action, at least not until the very end. The first half of the book is mostly set in Nebraska, giving background and showing Clyde's disillusionment. A large chunk of the book details Clyde's journey overseas, especially the difficult sea voyage in which hundreds of his fellow soldiers fall ill (a significant percentage of soldiers died of disease, some before they actually saw any combat). When Clyde finally gets to France, there's a lot of vignettes about different people that he meets, soldiers and civilians, and how they impact his outlook on life. 

It's not what you'd call a fast-moving book with a lot of plot, but I loved the descriptions of farm life in Nebraska, and Clyde's character development. It's also inspired me to read more World War I literature -- I still own Birdsong, The Guns of August, and Testament of Youth, which I'm planning to read next year for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

Bloggers, what other World War I books do you recommend?

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

I've been in a bit of a blogging slump lately -- all has been resolved with Blogger and the hijacker, and many thanks to everyone for the encouraging words -- and to the good folks at Blogger for taking care of it so promptly. And hopefully I'll never have to think about it again.

Anyhow. . . . I've been reading a lot but not terribly inspired to blog much lately. But I did manage to finish another of the books from my TBR Challenge list, which pleases me greatly. This one is The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather, one of five Cathers on my Classics Club list, and my fifth book by Cather overall.

The Song of the Lark was published in 1915 and is the story of Thea Kronberg, a girl growing up in a very small town in Colorado. Thea is one of about seven children, the daughter of the local minister.  Since she was a small child, she's been mentored by the town doctor and everyone has recognized her musical talent. The reader follows her development, growing up in a rural community and finally going away to study music in Chicago, where her piano teacher realizes her true talent lies in her singing. It's about her struggle to rise from her humble beginnings and become a great artist.

This book is divided into various sections, based on times in Thea's life. By far my favorite sections were set in Colorado, during her childhood. There are a lot of short chapters with vignettes from her life, almost like interrelated short stories about the people that shape her character and her life, from the beloved town doctor to her rivals at the annual music festival, and the railwayman who hopes to marry her when she's old enough. I loved Cather's descriptions of the town, its inhabitants, and its surroundings. I've never been to Colorado though I've seen the Rocky Mountains in Montana as a child, so I can only imagine it. Detailed descriptions of settings sometimes bore me, but Cather does it really well.

I absolutely loved the first half of this book. The beginning really reminded me of two of my previous Cather reads, O Pioneers! and My Antonia, because they're about living in small Western towns. It also had little elements that I remembered from The Professor's House (1925) and Death Comes From the Archbishop (1927). Thea takes a break from her singing studies and travels to the canyons of New Mexico, and Cather's love of the southwest really emerges in this book. For me, this is a sort of transitional book between her Midwestern and Southwestern books.

About halfway through the book, Thea goes to Chicago to study music, and I loved that part too, partly because I spent ten years of my life in the Evanston/Chicago area, and for four of those years I lived very close to where Thea lives, in a Swedish neighborhood called Andersonville which is still there (and where you can get the best cinnamon rolls I've ever had). She also goes to the Symphony and the Art Institute, which is one of my favorite places in the world.

However, the last quarter or so of the book kind of went downhill for me. Thea becomes a very successful singer and, honestly, kind of a diva. The focus changes from mostly her point of view to that of Dr. Archie and of Frederick Ottenburg, the man who falls in love with her. There's a lot of talk about The Artist and what makes her so, blah blah. I admit it, I am not an opera fan so I didn't get a lot of it (and I'm looking over my shoulder for lightning as I write this, since I have a sister and brother-in-law who are classically trained singers).  I just found Thea to be really self-centered and unlikeable at this point. Having grown up with a sister who's a performer, I know creative people have to believe in themselves and their talent to survive all that criticism, but I just didn't like Thea anymore.

I have heard that this is one of the more autobiographical of Cather's works. I'm sure she's making a point about how hard it is to be An Artist, but I just didn't get it. However, I am going to send this to my sister, the professional singer, and hopefully she'll like it and maybe she'll get more out of it that I did. I do have several more by Cather on the TBR shelf, including a 1931 edition of Shadows on the Rock, a historical novel set in 17th century Quebec.

I've now finished nine of the twelve reads on my TBR Challenge list, so I'm averaging one a month and I'm on track to finish by the end of the year. I'm getting really gung-ho about reading books off my own shelves -- my goal this year is choose 50% of my reading material from my own shelves, and I'm pretty close. The shelves still seem to be just as full but I am making progress, however slow.

How are you doing with your Classics Club challenges, bloggers? And how about that TBR Challenge?Anyone finish it yet? And what other books do you recommend by Willa Cather?

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

After reading The Professor's House, I was really looking forward to Death Comes For the Archbishop which was the selection of my real-life classics book group.  In fact, I've been looking forward to this one since we selected it and put it on the schedule last fall.

If you are not familiar, here's the setup:  Beginning about 1850, Father LaTour is a young French missionary prince, working in Ohio.  Some church elders decide he is the perfect person to administer the enormous vicarate of New Mexico, as the new archbishop.  The story is basically a series of vignettes in the life of Father LaTour and his boyhood friend, Father Valliente, another missionary who accompanies him on his journey to save the souls in the Southwest.

I feel almost guilty writing this, but I just did not get why this book is so beloved.  It's considered one Cather's best works, if not THE best, but I found it disappointing, and really slow.  Of course, the writing was wonderful, but I just hard a hard time connecting with the story, which isn't really a narrative -- it's just little slices of the lives of Father LaTour and Father Valliente.  It's almost like a series of short stories.  It's possible I didn't appreciate it as much because I took a break in the middle of reading it, a couple of weeks, and I had a hard time getting motivated to pick it up again.  However, I honestly didn't care much about the characters.  Father LaTour didn't really seem to be very developed to me.

I'm not a religious person, and I was actually raised Catholic though I don't agree with it.  I'm not going to use this post to get into a big religious discussion (and if I get any hateful comments I WILL delete them); in general, it just didn't really interest me.  I actually got rather offended at times when Cather wrote about some of the abuses of power shown by the priests.  There's a scene in which a Mexican woman, who's been enslaved by a horrible white family, comes to Father LaTour -- does he help her and give her refuge?  No, he hears her confession and sends her back to her captors!  Now, as far as I know, this book is set before the Civil War, but to my recollection slavery was never legal in New Mexico, and definitely not the slavery of Mexicans by whites!!  I was appalled.

I also disliked how condescending the white characters were to both Mexicans and Indians.  I wasn't shocked when it was characters who were obviously unsympathetic jerks, but even Father LaTour was kind of racist.  Cather repeatedly refers to his parishoners as "yellow" and "red." I should have expected it, because it is a historical novel, but I did find it kind of offensive.  I never got the impression that Cather was racist, since she portrays the Mexicans as loving and generous, and the Indians with great dignity and respect.  It was just the white characters that really bugged me.

Of course, Cather's writing was great, and I do think the best thing I liked about it was the sense of place.  At our book group discussion, Amanda pointed out that New Mexico itself is almost a character in the book, because it plays such a big part.  Cather writes repeatedly about the canyons, the rocks, the pinon and mesquite trees, the enormous sky and the clouds, in such a way that made me feel as if I was right there with Father LaTour:

The weather alternated between blinding sand-storms and brilliant sunlight.  The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still -- and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world.  The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud.  Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it.  Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.  The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!

Now, if that doesn't make you want to buy a ticket to New Mexico, I don't know what will.  And I'm still going to keep reading Cather -- I still have The Song of the Lark and Shadows on the Rock on the TBR shelf, and both look wonderful.