O Pioneers!

O Pioneers! 

by Willa Cather
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off." (p. 59)

This is such a beautiful book! Cather captures the beauty and the sadness of the prairie through both descriptions of the land and the thoughts and feelings of her characters. Alexandra Bergson, who is the center of the novel, is a wise, stoic woman who accepts the heavy responsibilities handed to her with grace and good sense. 

This book was originally published in 1913 and is set in Nebraska 30 years earlier. The (fictitious) French settlement of Sainte-Agnes plays a large part in the story. There is an interesting article, by Kathleen Danker, on the influence on Cather of her French neighbors which describes the French-Canadian town of Campbell, Nebraska. My great-grandparents, who were French-Canadian immigrants, lived in Campbell at the time this novel is set which added to my enjoyment of it. 

Shadows on the Rock

Shadows on the Rock 

by Willa Cather
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a beautiful, quiet book about an apothecary and his daughter living in Quebec at the end of the 1600s. Cather's writing paints pictures of the place and captures the feelings of the people in simple but perfectly crafted language. These are people living in a harsh and unforgiving place, but whose lives are filled with love for their families and their God. 

"Quebec is never lovelier than on an afternoon of late October; ledges of brown and lavender clouds lay above the river and the Ile d'Orleans, and the red-gold autumn sunlight poured over the rock like heavy southern wine." (p. 27) 

"These coppers, big and little, these brooms and clouts and brushes, were tools; and with them one made, not shoes or cabinet-work, but life itself. One made a climate within a climate; one made the days,--the complexion, the special flavour, the special happiness of each day as it passed; one made life." (p. 160) 

"Good wine was put into the grapes by our Lord, for friends to enjoy together." (p. 217)

This book is from my Classics Club list and it counts toward the Back to the Classics challenge as a new-to-me classic by a favorite author. Because it is set in Quebec it also counts toward the Canadian Reading Challenge. 

The Professor's House

I didn't like The Professor's House by Willa Cather as well as I liked her Death Comes for the Archbishop, but in some ways they seemed similar.
The Professor's House tells two stories: the story of Professor Godfrey St. Peter who has came to the later years of his life not quite sure how he got there and not entirely happy with where he has arrived and the story of one of his students, Tom Outland, who died in the war but has left a legacy to one of St. Peter's children. 
The tone of Outland's story is very typical of other Cather works I have read, while the St. Peter story reminded me (stylistically) of E. M. Forster. 
As a character I liked St. Peter, he is a somewhat selfish man, but has an awareness of his own faults that I felt made him sympathetic. His observations of the world around him, especially the women in his life, were insightful and seemed true. The contrast between the southwestern mesas of Outland's story and the domesticated world of the Professor's house (houses, actually) brings an interesting tension to the narrative.

A.S. Byatt has an excellent analysis of the work of Cather in her article "American Pastoral." The article includes the following quote which refers to Cather's work overall, but I think is a good summary of this novel:

"What did she write about? Acocella says "the great subject of early 20th-century literature, the gulf between the mind and the world". This is perceptive. Cather wrote about the subject of Ecclesiastes, the rising and setting of the sun, the brevity of life, the relation between dailiness and the rupture of dailiness, the moment when "desire shall fail"."

#20

The Classics Club Spin number came up today and it was 20. That means I am reading The Professor's House by Willa Cather between now and April 2. I have never read a Willa Cather novel I didn't like and my sister recommended this one, so it should be good. It is also quite short, I can probably read it in a single evening, which is excellent because I have a TON of 2013 fiction to read for an awards committee I am on. 

Classics Club Meme

The Classics Club Meme for October 2012 is "Why are you reading the classics?"

"One loses one’s classics. Oh not all. That is what I find so wonderful. A part of one’s classics remains, to help one through the day." --Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days

I am reading the classics because I think they provide a context for other reading (and for movies, and plays, and talking to people). I have read quite a few classics, getting a degree in English Literature made it very hard to avoid them.  Some of them I loved and thought were amazing books that I enjoyed reading (The Great Gatsby, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Mrs. Dalloway). Others I didn't really enjoy much (Moby Dick, The Last of the Mohicans, The Red Pony). But whether I liked the books or not, I feel like reading works that are considered classics gives me the ability to have a deeper understanding of the world, of myself, and of the things--classic or not--that I read. When a novel or a movie makes a reference to something from one of the classics I have read I know what they are referring to which gives me a more complete understanding than I would have otherwise. The more classics I read, both in general and in specific genres like mystery or science-fiction, the more I will be able to appreciate the other things I read. 

The other reason for reading the classics is that they speak to a universal experience that, as Winnie points out, can help on through the day.