The Song of the Lark

Description

The Song of the Lark is the third novel by American author Willa Cather. The title comes from a painting of the same name by Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton. The story is about an ambitious young woman, Thea Kronborg, who leaves her town to go to the city to fulfill her dream of becoming an opera star.

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Customer Reviews

Song of the Lark
I thought it was really good at first then about half way through it got pretty slow and too much detail about music and then the ending fell a bit short. I am glad I read it, but it was a long book that lost some steam along the way...

2010-05-05 (Arkansas) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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By Far the Best Willa Cather Novel
I am working my way through all of Cather's novels and short stories, and while I found O Pioneers had the best twist, I have to say the Song of the Lark is by far her best work and my favorite. It was probably the 6th or 7th Cather novel I read, so I had several to compare it to. The characters are wonderfully developed, as is the story. I don't even know how much more I need to say but that you should read it and I think you'll find it's her best. The descriptions of the Cliff Dweller ruins, and the time the character spends there, as well as her romantic life are the things I loved best about this novel. I've actually been thinking about reading it again, and I never do that--it's just that good.

2009-12-12 (South Dakota) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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art for arts sake
The Song Of The Lark is Cathers third novel and is her longest novel.The length is the biggest a very good n of the book it feels padded at times but overall the novel is very good. Thea Kronborg the protagonist is a small town music teacher who throught the death of her lover gets an inheritance that enables her to leave her small Colorado town and move to Chicago to develope her signing voice. She succeeds in doing so but her singleminded devotion to her music leads to frustration and other negative consequences in her personal life. This potrait of the aridness of small town life and the obsessiveness of an artist totally dedicated to excellence in her art is a very good novel only some padded scenes that go too long or are needlessly repetitive keep it from 5 stars

2009-09-25 | tdlockwood (lINCOLN NE) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Not read yet
I haven't read the book yet, but they've asked me to review it so I'll just say that it looks very interesting and I'm looking forward to finishing the book I'm reading now so I can dive into this one.

2009-08-20 | Happy girl (Alabama USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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The selfishness trap
I am really shocked at the number of reviewers who criticize Thea, our heroine, for being selfish and unlikable--many of these reviewers women. The women's movement has a long way to go, I see, before women who pursue something that they want aren't subject to censure. In our culture we rarely have a problem with men who act passionately in the pursuit of their dreams, but we still (in 2009) don't allow women the same freedom. I'm sure that Willa Cather felt these complaints in her own life, but thank goodness she persevered in spite of them to write such an honest account of what it really takes to pursue and achieve excellence. If we think that being an artist of renown is easy, we are foolish. However, it seems that some readers are put off by the truth and would prefer the conventional story of the happy ending achieved with only minimal pain and sacrifice with the heroine acting constantly in a nice fashion. I saw the same criticisms for The Gathering, a recent Booker prize, about a woman reevaluating the happiness of her own life after the death of her brother. "Self -absorbed" and "selfish" were what some critics said of the main character because she had the audacity to question whether she was happy in her marriage.

2009-05-23 (Boulder, CO USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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One of Ours

Description

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / War

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Customer Reviews

An American Treasure
"One of Ours" is a brilliant, beautiful book. Willa Cather, that most painterly of authors, describes life in the American heartland with such glorious detail that even this city born-and-bred woman can see the wheat fields and hear the running of Lovely Creek. Cather describes emotional landscapes with equal skill. We feel what Claude feels: the closeness of his life, his restlessness, his acceptance, and finally his overwhelming need to leave. Other reviewers here have expressed their opinions on "One of Ours," wondering whether Cather had been blinded by altruism or seduced by the dream of patriotism. I am not concerned with her motivation. It is enough for me to read words such as these, when Claude has said goodbye to his mother and is being driven off to leave for the war. His mother watches from the window as the car fades from view:

"As they neared the crest of the hill, Claude stood up in the car and looked back at the house, waving his cone-shaped hat. She leaned out and strained her sight, but her tears blurred everything. The brown, upright figure seemed to float out of the car and across the fields, and before he was actually gone, she lost him. She fell back against the windowsill, clutching her temples with both hands, and broke into choking, passionate speech. 'Old eyes,' she cried, 'why do you betray me? Why do you cheat me of my last sight of my splendid son!'

It is beautiful, true writing. It is exactly right. I can't recommend "One of Ours," or any of Willa Cather's books, with enough enthusiasm. This author deserves, demands, needs to be read.

2010-07-20 | Read 'em if you got 'em (Pennsylvania) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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One of Mine!!!
Incredible...Insightful...Internal. If you want to know what it is like to grow up in the Midwest as a young man - READ IT!

I read this book over twenty years ago and it has stuck with me on all those pathways of time. Cather's did an incredible job identifying and relating the internal strife that young men often find within themselves and presenting them in an engaging story. Not only is this a book for entertainment, but over the years I have found this book to be a guidepost for the mind and soul of men.

This book should be used to teach the Today's society tells boys that their rough nature is unnatural and needs to be medicated and then bombards them with idolatry of muscle-bound Neanderthal who signed the multimillion dollar sports contract or sleazed his way to a powerful political appointment - this book helps them understand that they are fine just the way they are. That being a man is to recognize their restlessness and learn how to harness it. That being a man is to embrace idealism and intellect. That being a man is about seeking more than what is before them and not settling for things which society has set before them as "normal". It is also wonderful to see an author, having just gone through a horrible time in history, embrace patriotism and national pride.

Bottom line is that this book needs to be read by parents and children alike....it is truly a Classic.

2010-07-19 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Great storytelling
When one reads a novel such as One of Ours, it's hard not to think of those who have died giving the ultimate sacrifice fighting for freedom. And yet war is such a horrible experience for all those involved, most often the youngest and most vibrant of society.

This novel tells the story of Claude Wheeler, who is impatient and unenthusiastic about his life on a Nebraska farm. He has little enthusiasm for farm work, merely tolerates his family and feels a constant sense of agitation. Until, that is, the US enters World War I. All of a sudden, as if it's a revelation, Claude feels a sense of duty, a sense of belonging, a sense of raison d'etre. The slow moving pace of the early part of the book reflects, I believe, Claude's attitude with how slow and meaningless his life had been thus far. Cather makes use of this beginning section of the book to expertly develop his character as well as the long list of supporting characters.

During the latter part of the novel, when Claude experiences war, Cather's imagery was so real and so emotionally provoking that I had a hard time believing that she had never been to war. As the reader, I felt like I was there in the trenches with Claude or walking alongside him. Towards the climax of the book, when Lt. Claude Wheeler arrives to take over at a trench, the description of what he found was visually and emotionally graphic: "The stench was the worst they had yet encountered, but it was less disgusting than the flies: when they inadvertently touched a dead body, clouds of wet, buzzing flies flew up into their faces, into their eyes and nostrils. Under their feet, the earth worked and moved as if boa constrictors were wriggling down there, soft bodies, lightly covered..." Words so descriptive that as the reader, I found myself swatting the invisible flies away and covering my nose against the stench.

Claude, who would have considered himself Christian, "wanted little to do with theology or theologians," and, in many respects, found himself leaning toward liberal ideology. However, in the climax of the book, he surprises himself (and the reader) by beseeching God in the face of tragedy and asking for nothing short of a miracle. In exchange, Claude makes his own promise with God.

Willa Cather was one of those writers who encompassed the entire package: great storytelling, exquisite writing, memorable characters, visually clear and exciting imagery. This is an ideal book to read around Veterans Day or Remembrance Day in November.

I highly recommend this Pulitzer-prize winning novel to anyone who wishes to read a good story, but also for those who wish to understand that "Real freedom isn't really free," and to allow Colonel John McCrae's words from the poem "In Flanders Fields" to hit home: "We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved and now we lie in Flanders Fields."

2010-04-30 | author, Emily's Hope & In Name Only (Pakenham, Ontario, Canada) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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bad publishing
This edition is unreadable because all the type runs together so that as you are reading youget wordsrun together likethis. I quit trying. I intend to read this book, not this edition because I love Cather and the subject interests me.

2010-03-22 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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Horrible typography in this edition
This review is about this specific edition. The typography is atrocious. Numerous, pervasive errors are found throughout the text, usually 10-20 per page. Almost always it is two words pushed together: "butit"; "moneywas"; "toYucca"; etc. This is not the edition to get. Unfortunately I had already written in this book or I would have returned it. I do not understand how Amazon sells something like this. Again: DO NOT GET THIS EDITION! It is awful.

2010-02-25 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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My Antonia (Oxford World's Classics)

Description

My Antonia is a classic tale of pioneer life in the American Midwest. The novel details daily life in the newly settled plains of Nebraska through the eyes of Jim Burden, who recounts memories of a childhood shared with a girl named Antonia Shimerda, the daughter of a family who have emigrated from Bohemia. As adults, Jim leaves the prairie for college and a career in the east, while Antonia devotes herself to her large family and productive farm. When he returns Jim sees that although Antonia is careworn, she remains "a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races,". Full of stirring descriptions of the prairie's beautiful yet terrifying landscape, and the rich ethnic mix of immigrants and native-born Americans who chose to restart their lives there, My Antonia mythologized a period of American history that was lost before its value could be understood.
This new edition provides a critically up-to-date introduction and detail notes which put the events and themes of the book in full historical context. Also included are Cather's original and revised introductions to her novel.

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It seems almost sacrilege to infringe upon a book as soulful and rich as Willa Cather's My Ántonia by offering comment. First published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land ("not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made") comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: "I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America," and it seems almost certain that readers of Cather's masterpiece will just as easily pinpoint the first time they heard of Ántonia and her world. It seems equally certain that they, too, will remember that moment as one of great light in an otherwise unremarkable trip through the world.

Ántonia, who, even as a grown woman somewhat downtrodden by circumstance and hard work, "had not lost the fire of life," lies at the center of almost every human condition that Cather's novel effortlessly untangles. She represents immigrant struggles with a foreign land and tongue, the restraints on women of the time (with which Cather was very much concerned), the more general desires for love, family, and companionship, and the great capacity for forbearance that marked the earliest settlers on the frontier.

As if all this humanity weren't enough, Cather paints her descriptions of the vastness of nature--the high, red grass, the road that "ran about like a wild thing," the endless wind on the plains--with strokes so vivid as to make us feel in our bones that we've just come in from a walk on that very terrain ourselves. As the story progresses, Jim goes off to the University in Lincoln to study Latin (later moving on to Harvard and eventually staying put on the East Coast in another neat encompassing of a stage in America's development) and learns Virgil's phrase "Optima dies ... prima fugit" that Cather uses as the novel's epigraph. "The best days are the first to flee"--this could be said equally of childhood and the earliest hours of this country in which the open land, much like My Ántonia, was nothing short of a rhapsody in prairie sky blue. --Melanie Rehak

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Customer Reviews

A Dark Prairie Story
I've read this book before, and I forgot how truly beautiful it really is. Jim is an Eastern boy, sent out West to live with his grandparents. getting off the train in Black Hawk, the small town nearby their farm, he meets up with a poor immigrant family from Bohemia (today part of the Czech Republic), and is particularly struck by one of the daughters, Antonia. They ride together to their respective farms, and the friendship between the two families is struck.

Antonia's father is an artist, but upon arrival in the US, he is stripped of all his monies. The family struggles and lives in a sod house in horrid conditions, exacerbated by the inability of the mother to keep a decent home. But there is little that can keep the exuberant and spirit filled Antonia down. Her beauty, charm and innocence makes her beloved by many, but especially by Jim. This story is told by Jim, and through hi voice, Cather paints a lovely portrait of a tough young woman, her physical and emotional person strengthened by hardship, but tempered by wistfulness and an innate appreciation of beauty.

The writing in this story is absolutely lyrical. I was tearful through the last chapter, some of the passages were like poetry. Although this is not a sad story, it is a story of a pioneer woman, and a reminder that our country was built on the backs of immigrant families and women like these to become the bread basket of the world. It is easy to forget that in our currently xenophobic state here in the US. Another classic that should be read in high schools throughout our country, as both a history lesson and a lesson in beautiful writing.

2010-07-09 (Birmingham, Alabama) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Poignant tale of Nebraska prairie life and relationship
My Antonia is a double bildungsroman: both narrator Jim Burden and titular Bohemian immigrant Antonia Shimerda grow and mature on the Nebraskan plains. Jim tells of his next door neighbors, the Shimerdas, and talks about their one fascinating daughter in particular, Antonia. Antonia and Jim quickly become companions and friends, with Jim appreciating Antonia's zest for life despite her poor conditions as an immigrant's daughter. Antonia's spirit persists throughout the whole novel, but soon, Jim and Antonia's paths split. In this story of love and friendship, Cather's backdrop of Nebraska countryside sets the tone for simplicity and genuine emotion.

2010-07-06 | Author of Surviving The Darkest Days/www.tonettachester.com | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Oxford World's Classics? How did this even get published?
I read this 8 years ago because I was forced to to fulfill an English Honors requirement, and the book still haunts me until today. I continually refer to this as "the worst book I have ever read" in conversation, and have met MANY others who agree. And there are so many terrible books out there today! The biggest crime is just that this one is called a "world classic", which honestly seems like the overstatement of the century.

There is more plot in a directions manual for assembling a piece of furniture than there is in this entire novel. Willa abandons the plot to describe the prairie, the grass, the cows, anything. Even she is so unengaged in the plot that she wanders away from it, looking for other ideas.

Now, there are times when a descriptive book is necessary. Once again, if you are reading a set of directions, but to spend pages upon pages describing landscape without any regard to plot or character development (everyone remains one dimensional and Antonia is only background music to the symphony Cather writes on the splendor of blades of prairie grass...) leaves you feeling like you've honestly wasted your time. You feel cheated. You stop and say, "okay, now I'm 70 pages into the novel and...nothing has happened." And that is why people hate this book.

Now, I'm sure many "enjoy" this based on the hype. The fact that this book got published, let alone highly reviewed, astounds me. I would not give this anything greater than a C- if a 12 year old wrote this. I think that this is an example of people believing it should be good because it is old and widely read, and so institutions blindly add this onto school reading lists with actual great books, like Shakespeare, Dickens, Twain, Poe, Chaucer,etc. This book belongs no where on that list!

As for metaphors and descriptions, I enjoy poetry, and I enjoy it when it is labeled as poetry and not disguised as a novel with no direction or purpose.

Please spare yourself the agony and read the one-star reviews on here before purchasing. If you have to read this book for school, however, I hope that you can somehow join with me and the others in getting this off the classics list...

2010-05-26 (Chicago,IL) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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A remarkable story
On the surface, this book tells a perfectly ordinary story, about children who grow up in the remote plains, move to town as youths, and, as adults, careen apart and sometimes reconnect. What makes the book remarkable is the honest way the characters relate to each other and to the land itself. As I see it, the book becomes a meditation on the endurance of memory and nature. Cather builds the story in layer upon layer of shared and separate personal history that, while set in an older time, we will all recognize.

Highly recommended, although it's not likely that teens or young adults will fully appreciate it.

2010-05-22 (PA, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Absorbing oersonal view of frontier life
This "classic" book depicts plains frontier life in the mid 1800's with stark descriptions of the hardships encountered by two groups of pioneers, Americans emigrating from eastern states and immigrants from abroad. The detailed footnotes add background and color to the engrossing narrative without being intrusive. The title heroine is presented by an observer and has only moderate direct information presented. The story is tightly woven and moves forward at a brisk pace with interludes that mimic the plains life tempo.

2010-04-19 | Friend (Reading, PA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays

Description

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Short Stories;

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O Pioneers!

Description

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Nebraska; Swedish Americans; Brothers and sisters; Women immigrants; Women farmers; Women pioneers; Farm life; Pioneers; Fiction / Literary;

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Customer Reviews

Not quite a crashing bore, but very much a woman's book
Good points:

1. The prose in this book was very nice. It is easy to forget that the book is only just 100 years old-- but it seems even older than that. For example: The use of the word "country" to describe "countryside" instead of "nation" was something that took a few references for me to catch.

Bad points:

1. The book was overwrought with detail/ drama. It was just under 200 pages, but it read more like 300.
2. I can see that the point of the author's jumps in time was to show a characters development over some number of decades. But what I thought the book would show was the logistics of building a farm from the ground up. Instead, we went something like .....Intro........Three years later........Sixteen years later.
3. The environment seems a bit.......tribal. Was America ever this way?
4. The development of the characters was a bit lacking. Some characters were there (Old Ivar) and they seemed to act as just filler. There seems to have been a lot of foreshadowing about how something *might* happen to Ivar at the hands of the two slimy brothers, but nothing did happen. So, that brought up the question of why was he there. As far as character development, I always learned that, at a minimum, one should discuss the Speech, Actions, Appearance, Thoughts, Opinions of Others as a way of developing that character. Either that method had not been invented or if it had Cather just never got around to studying it.

In summary, this book is highly overrated (1) and I'm glad that I got it for free (2), because if I had to come off of my own money for it, it might have been worth about $2 plus the cost of shipping.

2010-05-30 | Libertarian/ Empiricist (Chengdu, Sichuan (China)) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Hey! These are MY people!
Swedes homesteading on the short grass prairie! How come I'd never read this book?

Actually, this comes close to being the true story of my mother's immigrant farmer family, who were Germans of a sort. Alexandra, the powerful woman at the heart of Cather's story, the one pictured on the cover of this edition, reminds me powerfully of my great-grandmother, who was just a generation younger than Willa Cather. Alexandra's two selfish and small-minded brothers, Lou and Oscar, are spitting-images of my grandfather and his brother. Frank Shabata, the sorry husband, is 'awful close' to a portrayal of my father. The verisimilitude of Cather's characters, so fair and square in depicting both their strength and their frailty, is her best accomplishment as a writer. You won't need family photos of these characters to recognize them as real people.

The part that's not true to the history of my family as pioneers and sod-busters is also what's not true about the novel. The real people were more ordinary, lived more one-day-at-a-time, didn't have the luxury to leaping across a flat and commonplace decade from one chapter to the next. They had to get up in the morning, drudge through the day, cut their toe nails and scrape their corns, go to bed too worried about chores and bills to dream big dreams. But who would want to read about them?

"O Pioneers!" is a triple love story, starring three handsome men and two beautiful women. One couple ends up happy... as happy as they're able to be, anyway. There's plenty of passion, frustration, jealousy, misunderstanding to make a Hollywood blockbuster on the scale of "Giant". For all I know, there have been ten films of this novel already. That's weakness of the book, one way it falls short of really deserving to be called a "world's classic", that it was ripe for Hollywood when it was published in 1913, even before Hollywood was ripe for it.

"O Pioneers!" is also a love song to the Land, to the beauty and bounty of the short grass prairie. It begins with a description of the hard-scrabble homestead and it ends with a paean to the "...fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Alexandra's into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!" Now that's a 'right pretty' sentiment, but it's not terribly accurate. Teachers, don't assign this book as a depiction of the history of the Midwest. Some few sodbusters may have felt ennobled by their land, but a lot more of them were plenty ready to sell to greenhorns and move farther west or south. That's the true story of the agricultural frontier in America, from colonial days through the Ohio Valley and onward to the Dakotas; those who got rich did so more by selling than by clinging to the soil. Cather herself may have loved the western skies but she wrote under the skies of eastern and European cities. Those shining-eyed Young have been fleeing to either coast since the first pioneers gave birth to them. The prosperity that Cather portrayed among the Swedes and Bohemians of Nebraska in the years before WW1 was an artifact of the world economy. It was a bubble. It collapsed soon enough. Nebraska and the Dakotas haven't thrived in the way "O Pioneers!" envisioned. Declining populations, stagnant and dying towns, narrow-minded reactionary social and political grudges against the very sort of people that Willa Cather became! The story of Alexandra and Carl ends at the brink of their future; I can almost promise you that if they'd lived as long as my great-grandmother, they'd have retired in Arizona.

But there is a resonant grandeur to "O Pioneers!" It's worth reading, in order to sense the courage and hardihood of the farmer-immigrants who built the heartland of America. It's not as colorful or touching as the work of Ole Rolvaag; "Giants in the Earth" and its sequels are the greatest 'world's classics' of the American West. It's not as honest and accurate as Hamlin Garland's "Main-Traveled Roads". It's nowhere near the epic adventure, the magniloquent sweep, of the four Emigrant novels of the Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg. But once you pick it up, you won't be tempted to read anything else until you finish it, and once you finish it, the woman Alexandra will stick in the family-photo album of your mind.

2009-12-18 (Wherever I am, I am.) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 4

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Review of O'Pioneers
CD was in good shape but seemed to skip around chapters .. It is an MP3 so couldn't decide if it was the player we used or the CD ... used in several different players.

2009-12-08 | Amazon | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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For a Dream, There is a Price
Cather published her second novel, O Pioneers, in 1913 at the age of 40. Together with My Antonia it is the novel for which she is best known. Years after writing the book, Cather wrote of it " Since I wrote this book for myself, I ignored all the situations and accents that were then thought to be necessary."
The book takes place on the plains of Nebraska in the late 19th Century as the Prairie is settled be Swedish, Bohemian, and French immigrants trying to eke out a living from what appears to be a harsh, inhospitable land. The heroine of the book is Alexandra Bergson who inherits her father's farm as a young woman, raises his three sons and stays with the farm through the harsh times to become a successful landowner and farmer.

The books speaks of being wedded to the land and to place. In this sense it is an instance of the American dream of a home. It also speaks of a strong woman, not in cliched, late 20th Century terms but with a sense of ambiguity, difficulty and loss.

This is a story as well of thwarted love, of the difficult nature of sexualtiy, and of human passion. There is also the beginning of what in Cather's works will become an increased sense of religion, Catholicism in particular, as a haven and a solace for the sorrow she finds at the heart of human endeavor. Above all it is a picuure of stark life in the midwest.

There is almost as much blood-letting in this short book as in an Elizabethan tragedy. Cather's picture of American life on the plains, even in her earliest books, is not an easy or simple one. Some readers may quarrel with the seemingly happy ending of the book. I don't think any will deny that Alexandra's happiness is dearly bought or that it is bittersweet.

I tendend to shy away from this book in favor of Cather's later novels. I feared that it would be conventional and trite. The stereotyping was mine,however. This is a thoughtful, well written story of immigrant life on the plains and of the sorrow pain, and strength of the American experience.

Robin Friedman

2009-11-30 (Washington, D.C. United States) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Midwest's Classic
This novel revolves around Alexandra Bergson, a Swedish immigrant tilling land in Nebraska. Few female characters in American literature have her feminine strength. Maybe Dagny Taggart of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged?" Or Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara of "Gone With the Wind." Scarlett and Alexandra are the adhesive, business-minded, matronly women who run things in an otherwise man's world.

Having lived in the midwest for numerous years, albeit in the 1970's, I met people who mirrored the mannerisms and had the backgrounds of Alexandra. Like Alexandra, their parents left continental or scandinavian Europe for Nebraska's farmland. These people are as pure as the black loess within which the corn and wheat survive.

Like many novels of this generation, this tale involves tragedy. A great tragedy. And, like Rand, many conversations about the seemingly obvious include contrarian statements which loudly ring otherwise unobserved truths. For instance, Alexandra seeks to pardon the murderer of those closest to her - she seeks to pardon someone whose single act clouded and depressed her soul forever. But, when you read this novel, you will agree with her decision. One hundred percent.

Agrarian life, sometimes subjected to nature's entropy, is more than a seemingly simple venture. The character of Alexandra also is more complex than her appearance. She was a genius at farming. Today's farmers rotate to keep the land's fertility alive - grow alfalfa (to put nitrogen in the soil) to replenish what corn depletes. Alexandra speaks about rotating her soil because she heard about the concept from a "college boy." They laughed at her. She grew wheat as the revenue stream from the land would increase. They laughed at her. Like Taggart and O'Hara, she was right while the dumb men around her were not. Unlike Taggart or O'Hara, Alexandra moves without confrontation, without eddy, without notice.

She writes without wasting words, many details are delivered with few words. Her style reminds me of J.M. Coetzee or V.S. Naipaul. She is in very good company. She is a novelist I will read again.

2009-11-12 | Resurgent Reading (Miami, FL United States) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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The Professor's House

Description

The classic by Willa Cather.

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Customer Reviews

A Book with Lots of Meaning
This is a great book with lots of hidden meaning. I am sure I didn't get them all, may read again.

2010-02-05 | weser (Houston, TX USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Texbook review
This was a textbook for a college class. It came quickly and in good shape

2010-02-03 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A House with Many Levels
I had a hard time deciding how to review The Professor's House. The plot itself is very straightforward and easy to describe. The characters are vivid and well-defined which adds to the realism of the novel. But it seems to me that the meat of this novel is in the themes and nuances.

I have read some of Cather's short stories many years ago and only have vague memories of them other than a memory that she had exquisite attention to detail. As I read this book I found that memory to be true. The writing vibrantly presents minute details to the reader...from the shape and texture of a hand to the nature of a dress or necklace to the depiction of setting both in and out of doors.

Her characters are likewise detailed. We are held at a close third person so we don't actually get into the characters' heads, but the detailed account of appearance and action allows the reader to feel very intimate with the characters.

The layout of the book is interesting in that it consists of three "books." The first book is entitled "The Family" and follows the Professor as he works to finish his own writing while teaching and balancing the various dramas unfolding in his life and the lives of his family members. The second book is "Tom Outland's Story" and is the first person narrative of Tom, an old student of the Professor and friend of the family who is now dead (from WWI) but left behind an invention and legacy that resulted in great wealth for one of the Professor's daughters. The final book is entitled "The Professor" and is a very short wrap up of the novel which focusses on thoughts, emotions and actions of the professor after he reads and ponders Outland's story.

The overarching plot of the book is interesting if not terribly engaging. There were moments of drama and emotion that drew me in, but there were other segments that were almost boring with the mundane interactions.

As I mentioned initially, the meat of the novel though isn't the plot itself, but the themes and emotions it instills.

Looking to these themes, part of this book seems to be an exploration of emotional displacement and emotional paralysis or release. The Professor is very attached to his old house and his work and doesn't want to move into the new house with his family. Outland is almost a portrayal of a return to the past for the professor and in the end, Outland's story provides an almost existential release to the professor. The claustrophobia of the old house and the room in which the professor works serve as a metaphorical trap that is holding the professor hostage in his current/past life/behavior and causing emotional turmoil and angst from which he can't see a clear escape.

At a higher, more sociological level, the novel portrays some interesting counterpoints on society. The Professor is doing well enough off teaching at the university and does even better once he receives an award for his writing. His two daughters are well enough off as well though one is moving into the "upper class" while the other is sitting fairly "middle." The family interactions and conversations give interesting insight into the class reactions of the era and some of the internal and external results of class mobility. As the professor's daughter and son-in-law gain their wealth and rise to a higher social status, there are jealousies and even some resentment and anger both within and outside of the family.

Looking at the writing, it is clear that there are MANY levels at work in this novel. Cather's frequent use of color helps categorize different themes or values. Her descriptions of the houses, rooms and other settings set the balance between the different classes or social situations. To further illustrate that NOTHING appears to be arbitrary in this book, it was pointed out to me that there is particular significance in the name of the ship that Outland takes to the war, the name of the ship that the Professor's family returns home on, and even the book that Outland uses to study latin.

So, even though the book's plot isn't terribly engaging, I can see this work as having a lot of valuable insight into the social and mental ideas of the 1920s, many of which have relevance today especially given the almost parallel economic situation around us.

While it's not likely something I'd read over and over, it is something I can recommend to those interested in human behavior, the 1920s, or life in general. Cather paints a vivid and beautiful picture of a family...not a perfectly adjusted and blissfully happy family, but a realistic, flawed and interesting family.

2009-10-13 | Okie (Bountiful, UT United States) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

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very good but not five stars
The Professor's House is a very good novel but not one of the five novels by Cather that I would rate 5 stars. The novel is a critical look at higher education in one way. The college in America was once a fountain of basic knowledge in the humanities arts and basic sciences. The college education at the undergraduate level was not about job training but developing intellect. The liberal arts and basic sciences were at the center of a college or university.Cather critiques the change into a job training center and the change in attitude from being motivated by a search for knowledge to being motivated by money. Even the professors are affected and it shows most clearly when the title character talks to a close faculty friend whose anger at ebeing denied money from a discovery of one of his students stuns the professor becausehe thought his friend was a physicist to learn the secrets of the universe not make money fro mpractical applications of discoveries.The whole novel is a critique of the American emphasis on money and possessions. The professor rejects his nicer and brand new house because it has no soul .The main reason he consented to buy it was his wifes desire to be upscale and the financial success of his books enable that but the professor didd research out of love of knowledge which is why he so loved and admired the other main character Tom Outland who after he dies has his research as a student turned into something practical and wealth creating by oo professors son in law or one of them . He and his wife represent greed while the other daughter and son inlaw represent osmething more noble but they too are affected by a love of money they just dont have much. Only Outland the Professor ST.Peter put love of knowledge for money. The book is quite good but the middle section on Tom Outland in New Mexico so I RATE IT 4 STARS

2009-10-01 | tdlockwood (lINCOLN NE) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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Great Novel - Terrible Edition
As much as I loved reading this novel, I can't stand this edition. The publisher seems to have written the text in about three minutes flat: "your" becomes "you", "my" becomes "me" (except during Henry's dialogue - then it's supposed to happen). There are also a large amount of accented letters ( like "é") that ended up being something like "é" which makes reading words as simple as "Opéra" very difficult as it now reads "Opéra". The publisher didn't even bother to put in the standard chapters that other editions have, which leaves you reading approximately 89 pages without any place to rest the eyes. PLEASE get yourself a different edition: one preferably not from this publisher. A simple publisher's mistake should not detract from such a marvelous text.

2009-09-11 (Rockford, Illinois) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 1

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