Thoughts from my book nook: A Cather Annual

I've been reading through several of Willa Cather's novels with a lovely group of ladies. This read-along is not of my organizing, but I am so glad to be a member of it! Willa Cather's novels are so rich. And it is phenomenal getting to follow and explore the ideas and themes she explores over and over.

October 2020: O! Pioneers

O Pioneers!, Willa Cather * I love Cather. Her writing, her characters. I accidentally finished this month's book for #ACatherAnnual well ahead of schedule. I just couldn't stop myself. So good. And it's short!! (Please ignore the Hallmark movie cover of my copy. You never know what you're gonna get with thrifted online book purchases 🙃) ⁠

November 2020: A Lost Lady

“He came to be very glad that he had known her, and that she had had a hand in breaking him in to life. He has known pretty women and clever ones since then,— but never one like her, as she was in her best days. Her eyes, when they laughed for a moment into one's own, seemed to promise a wild delight that he has not found in life. 'I know where it is,' they seemed to say, 'I could show you!'” ― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady⁠ 🌹 A Lost Lady is short, but packs a punch. And fascinating tidbit: one of the main characters, Mrs. Marian Forrester was an inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Daisy Buchanan character in The Great Gatsby.⁠

December 2020: Death Comes for the Archbishop

“The old man smiled. 'I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.'” ― Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop⁠ ⁠☀️ I love Death Comes for the Archbishop. Revisiting this story this month with other #ACatherAnnual readers has been delightful. Cather has such a way with words. And how can your soul not soar a little with sentences like this?: “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!” I'm instantly transported to the land of enchantment. ⁠

January 2021: The Professor's House

“And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own individual lives.” ― Willa Cather, The Professor's House⁠

February 2021: Lucy Gayheart

"What did it mean,—that she wanted to go on living again? How could she go on alone?⁠ ∙ Suddenly, something flashed into her mind, so clear that it must have come from without, from the breathless quiet. What if—what if Life itself were the sweetheart?" — Willa Cather, Lucy Gayheart⁠ ❇︎⁠ The power went out no less than three times while I was reading Lucy Gayheart. (It went out more than three times last week, but I somehow managed to time my reading with three of the power outages.) The chill of an unheated house did pair rather nicely with certain scenes, particularly our introduction to Lucy skating at the beginning of the book, and a shocking tragedy at the end of Book II. As I'm finding Cather is wont to do, she superbly subverted expectations throughout the novel. And she does so with real artistry. Melancholic, a touch existential, and looking not only at memory, but how we hold those memories, Lucy Gayheart gives much to mull over. ⁠

March 2021: Song of the Lark

“Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.” ― Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark⁠ 🎵🐦🎵🐦 Cather's The Song of the Lark was soring and beautiful, just like one of the arias that Thea, the novel's aspiring singer, would sing. In some of my own hunting and researching, I stumbled across an original review of The Song of the Lark that ran in The State Journal (Raleigh, NC, December, 1915). Here's a little snippet: ⁠∙ ⁠"But these are faults that are easily forgiven in consideration of the story’s merits: its seriousness and utter sincerity, its painstaking workmanship, its large free pictures of the Western plains and the Arizona canyons, the simplicity and restraint with which the more emotional parts are handled.⁠ ∙ The faults are of the kind that can be overcome; the merits are of the kind that make fine things in fiction." ∙ ⁠Seemed fitting to pair my print of "Prairie Song" with Song of the Lark for this photo.