Willa Cather

[SFG75]

Any big fans of hers? I live an hour from Red Cloud, which was her hometown and the basis for her book My Antonia. The tour is one of those walking ones where you get to see various houses and businesses that she frequented. The cemetary contains many people that she profiled in her works as well. Picked up a copy of her Pultizer winning book, One of Ours and hope to start that one some time soon.

Here's a great link with Cather links, electronic texts, as well as other interesting information regarding her.

-link

 

[Peder]

No, not a fan SFG. Have not read her at all, so I am extremely interested in reading what people say. I hope you get a bunch of responses because I have always had the feeling I would like her.
Peder

 

[Prairie_Girl]

I read a little blurb somewhere recently, and am interested in reading something of hers. I'll add her to my TBR list.

 

[Ell]

I've only read O Pioneers by Cather and I enjoyed it a great deal. It was a short, quick read but packed a powerful emotional punch. Had me weeping at the end.

I have My Antonia on my TBR list.

ell

 

[zen]

anyone read any books by Willa Cather? i haven't. i have read up on a website or two, and i have downloaded some books of hers from Project Gutenberg, there were 7 of them there...

why i am asking: this author's name has come up in relation to a book club style discussion, and i need to choose one of her books to put up for selection.. but unless i read every one, all i can do is toss a coin.. wondering if maybe someone had a good reason why one of her books would be suitable for an online discussion group.

thanks in advance...

(can i read seven of her books in a month, finish A Feast of Crows, read High Tide in Tucson and prepare for the next discussion on that, and still discuss Memoirs of a Geisha all at the same time? no... don't think so.. not and stay sane.. which is why i ask... )

 

[Tiffany]

The only Cather I've read is Death Comes for the Archbishop, and I found it very dull...so I wouldn't recommend using that title.

 

[shiraz]

I've read a couple of her books, but that was quite a long time ago. From my dim memories - they are quite similar in tone, so tossing a coin wouldn't do much harm. I recommend My Antonia - though (sorry!) I don't remember much more than it's a tale about immigrants (Czechs, Russians and Scandinavians) in American Midwest and about the nostalgia for childhood. Unlike Tiffany, I quite liked Death Comes for the Archbishop - slow and gentle tale about Catholic missionaries in New Mexico.

 

[zen]

thankyou both for your response..

maybe i do just toss that coin?

 

[mehastings]

I recommend My Antonia - though (sorry!) I don't remember much more than it's a tale about immigrants (Czechs, Russians and Scandinavians) in American Midwest and about the nostalgia for childhood.

I read this one for a class on The Westward Expansion a few years ago. We were obviously looking for more than just a "good book", but I still managed to enjoy reading it. I haven't read anything else of hers so I can't say this book is better than her others, but I can tell you it was better than the other books I read for that class.

 

[zen]

that has to be some sort of recommendation! thankyou...

and luckily there are reading guides and summaries etc available on the net.. this was school reading for some i take it?

 

[SFG75]

I read My Antonia in high school. At the time, I really didn't appreciate her writing, but in college, I developed a true appreciation for her work. While taking an American literature course, we read My Neighbor Rosicky, a short-story about immigrant farm families in the great plains. She did a good job of creating characters that were multi-faceted and who had intense emotions about the normal anxieties of life. Even more importantly, she did a fantastic job of portraying the ethnic mix of communities in Nebraska. We've had towns founded by civil war veterans, practicing catholics who were unwelcome to towns that they first arrived at, as well as Polish and Czech communities founded by people who just wanted a better life. It's easy to overlook that stuff now, but back then, you had interesting conflicts between towns as to who would be the county seat and possess the court house. One local story is that a certain community took a Union Pacific train, traveled twenty miles to another community, stole the files from the courthouse, and put them in a building that became the new courthouse. Cather highlights in amusing, and not so amusing stories relating to these differences. There is a good museum located in Red Cloud, which is about an hour southwest of me. My wife lived in the area for a number of years when she was younger. Cather fans might also enjoy this link page to other informative sites.

 

[zen]

thankyou for the links.. i loved the courthouse story too..

i have read My Antonia now, and my little group will be discussing this book next month.. i am going to have to dig deep for discussion material i think! altho, to be fair, it's just not my usual style of reading material, and i suppose being Australian, it didn't really ring any bells for me. i think i learned more of the person telling the story (jim) than i did of Antonia..

 

[novella]

Hi zen,

Well, that’s a good place to start. It’s no coincidence that you feel you know more about Jim than about Antonia. That’s surely intentional on the author’s part, much as in The Great Gatsby you know more about Nick Caraway than about Jay Gatsby. In fact, the evolving prejudices and views of the first-person narrator are really a main interest of both books.

There’s also a theme of leaving naturalism behind in My Antonia, which was also very current in other arts at the turn of the century. The idea is basically that as the country ages and develops, the ‘naturalism’ of Antonia is left behind. She’s always portrayed as primitive, although also intelligent. For instance, living in a cave, barefoot, and raising many barefoot children. Her satisfaction with the simplest of things. Also, another theme that gets touched on a lot is her sexuality or androgyny, something that I’m not particularly interested in, but it’s definitely there. For instance, she’s called Tony and is strong and straightforward and not flirtatious. She seems to have no sexuality for most of the book. There’s a lot of discussion about Willa Cather’s own sexuality here and there, and it’s interesting that this is a story within a story within a story, essentially told from a man’s point of view.

The character of Jim is more truly the Willa Cather representative in the book, not Antonia. There are a lot of interesting issue to explore in the book. Australia is a similarly young country with rough beginnings for many immigrants. It’s interesting how Antonia never really shakes the image of the naturalistic, simple foreigner, though she lives a whole life in Nebraska. I think Cather’s choice of Bohemian as her culture of origin is also quite intentional, with all its connotations.


Just a few thoughts.

SFG, do you have anything to add?



Also, I would recommend Flannery O'Connor to anyone who enjoys Cather. O'Connor is far more biting and complex, IMO, much closer to the bone and less soft and pretty in her writing. Everything That Rises Must Converge is a good place to start.

 

[zen]

your 'few thoughts' have me thinking here.. there's some good discussion points i would thank you for as well... (taking notes here)

i spose too, as you said, Australia did have a lot in common with America in the earlier days.. i did think of the Polish family that lived in my street as i was growing up, one daughter was around my age and we became friends.. my 'home town' was a far cry from Nebraska in the early days tho!

 

[Ronny]

The only Cather I've read is Death Comes for the Archbishop, and I found it very dull...so I wouldn't recommend using that title.

I tried it too for a library book club and it was one of the few books I just couldn't finish. My husband did a bit better with it because he was familiar with and liked the Kit Carson bits. I didn't go to the book club meeting that month

 

[nomadic myth]

I read The Professor's House for university, and recently I read O Pioneers!

From what I remember from university The Professor's House was good and easy. O Pioneers! was marvelous. There were some really magical parts that totally gave a feel for wildness. As well, it's a really short book, and the plot is quite gripping (at least it was for me).

 

[SFG75]

i spose too, as you said, Australia did have a lot in common with America in the earlier days.. i did think of the Polish family that lived in my street as i was growing up, one daughter was around my age and we became friends.. my 'home town' was a far cry from Nebraska in the early days tho!

This part reminds me of a piece that Cather did for The Nation in the early part of the twentieth century. In it, Cather related how the first generation of immigrants to Nebraska were hard-bitten, hard-working people. They put up their own fence posts and laid down their blood, sweat, and tears to make the land productive. The grandchildren of that hard working generation were letting the fence posts fall into disrepair and spending their time in their model Ts, heading to town to drink and engage in all forms of debauchery. This fits in with the last part in regards to people progressing from the early days and forgetting the sacrifice and toil that went in to make things possible for subsequent generations. Cather didn't like the effect that the "roaring 20s" had on the grandchildren of the Nebraska pioneers.

 

[novella]

This fits in with the last part in regards to people progressing from the early days and forgetting the sacrifice and toil that went in to make things possible for subsequent generations. Cather didn't like the effect that the "roaring 20s" had on the grandchildren of the Nebraska pioneers.

How do you know that? I never heard anything like that. In fact, I read her entirely differently. People of 'quality' and education (such as herself and Antonia's narrator Jim) leave Nebraska for more sophisticated lives. There's a definitely sense of Jim's looking with awe and some disgust at the primitive in Antonia, which is a theme throughout her books.

Also, I don't buy the notion that Cather's books are REALLY about the development of the midwest by immigrants, but about the myth of the west and the myth of the peasant (as opposed to how Jim's family lived, which was very similar to his life in the east), much the way the Hudson River Valley painters weren't painting nature as it was, but as how they idealized it when faced with industrialization. In so many passages he indicates that he's lost his religion to nature, that he's overwhelmed by the wildness of the prairie (and Antonia) and that he ultimately chooses to leave and respects those who do leave.



Let's not forget that Cather herself left Nebraska for the East and wrote only from a distance, surrounding herself with another kind of person entirely.

 

[SFG75]

How do you know that? I never heard anything like that.

That's because my comments are in relation to The Nation article that she wrote, not My Antonia.

 

[zen]

just wanted to say thankyou here.. we are now in the discussion phase of this book, and the comments here have helped me frame some questions for the group...