May Read: Willa Cather

So maybe May will be the month I finally read Willa Cather. I'm planning to start with O Pioneers! What are others planning to read or re-read?

Thanks to Belva for the bio below which she posted on an earlier Virago remembrance thread.



"Willa Cather was born on December 7, 1873 in Back Creek Valley (a small farming community close to the Blue Ridge Mountains) in Virginia. She was the eldest child of Charles Cather, a deputy Sheriff, and Mary Virginia Boak Cather. The family came to Pennsylvania from Ireland in the 1750's.

In 1883 the Cather family moved to join Willa's grandparents William and Caroline and her uncle George in Webster County, Nebraska. At the time her family included Willa's two brothers, a sister, and her grandmother. Ayear later they moved to Red Cloud, a nearby railroad town, where her father opened a loan and insurance office. The family never became rich or influential, and Willa attributed their lack of financial success to her father, whom she claimed placed intellectual and spiritual matters over the commercial. Her mother was a vain woman, mostly concerned with fashion and trying to turn Willa into "a lady", in spite of the fact that Willa defied the norms for girls and cut her hair short and wore trousers. While living in the town Willa met Annie Sadilek, whom she later used for the Antonia character in My Antonia. Many of Willa's characters are inspired by people she met in her youth. Another notable example is Olive Fremstad, an opera singer, who inspired the character Thea Kronborg in The Song of the Lark.

Willa graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1890. She soon moved to the state capitol in Lincoln in order to study for entrance at the University of Nebraska. At this time Willa was actually interested in studying medicine. In Red Cloud she had spent time with and learned from a local doctor, and she dreamed of becoming a physician. But, when one of Willa's stories for a writing class got published, she discovered a passion for writing had been fermenting within her. In college, Willa spent time editing the school magazine and publishing articles and play reviews in the local papers. In 1892 she published her short story "Peter" in a Boston magazine, a story that later became part of her novel My Antonia. After graduating in 1895, she returned to Red Cloud until she was offered a position editing Home Monthly in Pittsburgh.

While editing the magazine, she wrote short stories to fill its pages. Between 1901 and 1906, Willa worked as a high school English teacher. During this time The Troll Garden (1905). These stories brought her to the attention of S.S. McClure, owner of one of the most widely read magazines of the day. In 1906 Cather moved to New York to join McClure's Magazine, initially as a member of the staff and ultimately as its managing editor. During this time she met Sara Orne Jewett, a woman from Maine who inspired her to later write about Nebraska. In 1912, after five years with McClure's, she left the magazine to have time for her own writing. After the publication of Alexander's Bridge, also in 1912, Cather visited the Southwest where she was fascinated by the Anasazi cliff dwellings.

In 1913 O Pioneers was published and in 1917 she wrote My Antonia while living in New Hampshire. By 1923 she had won the Pulitzer Prize for her One of Ours, and in this year her modernist book A Lost Lady was published. At the time her novels focused on the destruction of provincial life and the death of the pioneering tradition.

Perhaps overwhelmed by so much success, Cather suffered a period of despair reflected in the darker tones of the novels written during this period. Despite her problems, she wrote some of her greatest novels during this period, such as The Professor's House (1925), My Mortal Enemy (1926), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

Willa Cather’s fiction is infused with many of her deeply-held beliefs and values. Among these values are a reverence for art, for history, and for the “pomp and circumstance” of organized Catholic and Episcopalian religion. Cather also felt strongly that peoples and civilizations who live in harmony with their natural environments are, and should be, sources of inspiration. She decried materialism and the advent of modern mass culture, which she believed blunted human intellectual achievement and polluted public taste.

From early on in her career, Cather received not only with widespread popular success, but also astonishing critical success. This pattern began to change in the 1930s with the advent of Marxist Criticism. Marxist critics suggested that Cather did not understand or show concern for modern social issues, and they made fun of the romanticism which infused her stories. Whether or not Cather was affected by such criticism, these years were made more difficult by the death of her mother, brothers and her good friend Isabelle McClung.

Cather maintained an active writing career, publishing novels and short stories for many years until her death on April 24, 1947. At the time of her death, she ordered her letters burned. Though thousands of letters escaped destruction, Cather's will prevents their publication. Willa Cather was buried in New Hampshire; in Red Cloud, the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Foundation was created to honor her memory."

~.gradesaver

I've read several of Cather's books, but it's been nearly 3.5 years since my last one ... eek. I have 4 unread on my shelves and have chosen Lucy Gayheart for this month. I have a couple of library books to read first.

Dee, I loved O Pioneers!. Here's an enticing snippet from my review:

O Pioneers! paints a vivid picture of prairie life over about two decades in the late 19th century. I became fully vested in the lives of Alexandra, Emil, Marie, and others. The story ambles along gently through the seasons and the years. But don’t be fooled by these easy rhythms: there’s an emotional current underpinning this story, which Cather taps to deliver an emotional punch that I had not anticipated, and which vaulted this book from "just another farming story" to something much more meaningful.

Thank you for putting this up, Dee!

I have started to pull out my Cathers and find I have a surprising amount. I'm not sure what I'm going to read yet, but I'll probably put some pictures of my books on my blog.

>2 lauralkeet: Oh that does sound good, excited to get started now!

>3 kaggsy: You're welcome, and I had technology that worked and bank holidays at the right time this month! Looking forward to seeing your pics.

I have also chosen to read O Pioneers! for my Cather read in May; as I have only read My Antonia of her Prairie Trilogy. Hopefully I will find time over the course of the summer to read the other two. I am sure that My Antonia will read differently once I've read the first two.

Thank you for putting this up, Dee.

>2 lauralkeet:
Laura, I loved Lucy Gayheart. She was a 5* read for me. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

>5 rainpebble: that's good to know, Belva!!

I hope to read The Professor's House it's the last of her novels I have to read. I also have a massive volume of Willa Cather's letter thanks to my VSS - which I may dip into - but I won't get the whole volume read.

I agree O Pioneers! is superb - as is Lucy Gayheart.

I have borrowed A Lost Lady and Alexander's Bridge from the library. I also hope to read Death Comes for the Archbishop and Lucy Gayheart, and possibly also Hermione Lee's biography, Willa Cather: A Life Saved Up.

>8 europhile: I'll be interested to hear what you think of the Hermione Lee bio if you do get to it, Grant. I have a copy found in a charity shop some years back.

I really liked The Professor's House, which makes an interesting pairing with Stoner. The other Cather book I have read is Shadows on the Rock, which I felt was not as successful, not really capturing the feel of the time and place. Not sure which one(s) I will be reading in May, which looks like a hectic month and we're only on day one!

Still thinking about it :)

I too have A life saved up on my pile for the month. I've also set aside A lost lady (which will be a reread) and The professor's house. Yesterday I had a couple of long train journeys and managed to finish Lucy Gayheart which was very good. It's extremely effective at capturing both the Chicago and small prairie town settings, and the characters come fully to life.

I am going to start Sapphira and the Slave Girl. I only have that and The Professor's House left to read.

The pix of my books are now up here:

https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/viragoauthorofthemonth-...

Grateful for any recommendations about which one to read!

The thing is Karen - what are you in the mood for? The skinny ones are throwaway and I read them both during AVAA - not throw away in the content sense but in the time commitment sense. My Antonia is her most famous. Alexander's Bridge is good. Death Comes for the Archbishop is not easy or quick and requires time but is very spiritual and is - IMHO - a masterpiece. Someone else above just highly recommended Lucy Gayheart. I am 60 pages into Sapphira and finding it excellent... Does that help? :)

>14 kaggsy: I strongly recommend Death comes for the archbishop, but My Antonia is a good one to start with. Many of your choices are very short though, and fast reads, so if you want to you can probably fit in 2 or 3 quite easily.

>15 romain: Thanks Barbara - and I think you have a point. I'm not intending to start one of the books at this exact moment so it might be best to let the mood at the time guide me. Certainly Death Comes for the Archbishop sounds intriguing...

>16 Sakerfalcon: Thanks Claire - and yes, as some of them are slim I might well be able to fit in more than one!

This is going to be an easy decision for me since I have just the one Cather - My Antonia. It's been sat on the shelves for about 4 years so is very happy to have its moment in the spotlight at last

>15 romain: well said :)
I agree with comments about the spiritual nature of Death Comes for the Archibishop. I found that book very moving.

I'm impressed how many of you read multiple books by our monthly author. I typically read only one, because I have so many other books queued up. So my Cather-of-the-month is patiently waiting for me, and I'm enjoying the conversation here because it keeps a lovely sense of anticipation going.

I am also impressed! I'm finding that I am binge-reading these authors and gaining an appreciation of their individual qualities, and making a noticeable impact on my unread piles (as well as borrowing all I can find of their books from the library). This gives me a feeling of satisfaction. Also I'm reading more books in total because it is not preventing me from reading other books, in fact my overall reading has increased also.

I found Alexander's Bridge to be very well written and such easy reading that I finished it in just part of an evening. The VMC edition has quite large print, making it look longer than it really is - perhaps as one reviewer mentioned it's closer to a novella than a novel. Some of the engineering metaphors were a bit overdone but I do not really understand the author's disparagement of this book in her preface. It seemed to me a good book and quite a contrast in style to last month's author. A Lost Lady is next.

Finished Sapphira and the Slave Girl. This novel was Cather's last and is not considered one of her best. I liked it. A bit top heavy with stereotypes but the central character - Sapphira, the slave owner - is an interesting mix of good and bad. Genuinely fond of her slaves, but downright vicious when crossed. Very easy reading and, at times, quite the page turner as Sapphira sets out to destroy the slave girl who has captured her husband's heart.

I'm going to read One of Ours -- I've loved My Antonia, Oh Pioneers and especially The Song of the Lark. I thought this one appropriate to the WWI centennial. We'll see.

Here's a link to the Willa Cather House in Red Cloud, especially for anyone reading the Nebraska novels:

https://www.willacather.org/

We were there a few years ago on a road trip, and the rooms were as she described them in several of her novels.

This is Cather's childhood bedroom, exactly as she described it in The Song of the Lark

>23 janeajones: >24 janeajones:
Thank you so much for posting that link & the photo, Jane. They make me look forward all the more to my Cather read of O Pioneers! when I get to it. And I loved One of Ours & found it quite brilliant.

Is that a hat box she's using as a nightstand?

I finished A Lost Lady yesterday and liked it a lot. The characters were more substantial than those in Alexander's Bridge, particularly that of Mrs Forrester, who is very appealing for all her faults. The descriptions of the natural setting were so well done that it made me think I'm going to have to try to read at least one of Willa Cather's "prairie novels" this month too. Next up, though, will probably be The Old Beauty and Others which I picked up from the library yesterday along with a few other old editions of her books from the stackroom.

I just started reading The Professor's House I already really like it.

I'm hoping to read The Professor's House, will maybe have to borrow it from Ali!

I've just started A lost lady and am enjoying it so far. I really didn't remember much about it - especially the very unpleasant scene of sadistic cruelty near the beginning. Cather's writing is almost too effective here!

I clearly remember reading The Professor's House several years ago and yet can remember not a thing about the book. I may have to give it another go.

>27 europhile:
Grant, The Old Beauty and Others seems to come very highly rated. I will be anxious to read what you think of this one. I don't think I have heard of it before. Enjoy.....

>31 rainpebble: Hi Belva! The Old Beauty and Others is a small collection of three stories published posthumously. The stories are quite different in setting and tone but very easy to read. I particularly liked the second story, "The Best Years", which was set in rural Nebraska. It is quite atmospheric and moving and well worth a reread. The title story is set in southern France and is about what has become of a famous Edwardian beauty in old age (her French husband had been killed in the First World War). It reminded me of Vita Sackville-West's writing for some reason! The last story is shorter and set on a remote island off the coast of Canada. It seemed a bit less interesting to me though it had slight humorous overtones.

>32 europhile:
It is on my wishlist, Grant. I hope to find it somewhere. It does sound good and I find Cather's writing so easy to fall into. Thanks for the rec.

>32 europhile:
edited to say: No longer on my wishlist. I found that Amazon had the kindle edition for 3 bucks. :-)

I finished A lost lady and realised I had forgotten much of the book. Marian is a complex character, and makes for a fascinating subject. I also loved Cather's descriptions of the Forrester house and its surroundings.

Now I've started The professor's house, which is new to me.

The Song of the Lark is my favourite, perhaps partly because it was my first. I love the photo above: thank you janeajones

Others I've enjoyed are My Antonia and A Lost Lady, My Mortal Enemy and Paul's Case and Other Stories, Alexander's Bridge and the Hermione Lee biography. A Lost Lady has stayed with me longest of those though.

There's also a volume of pictures by Lucia Woods called Willa Cather: A Pictorial Memoir which I remember enjoying when I first discovered her work.

For those who enjoy A.S. Byatt, Cather is one of the writers about whom she has a conversation in Imagining Characters as well.

I'm hoping to try Shadows on the Rock this month, but I'm awfully late starting and have several more contemporary reads on the go which sometimes interfere with my classic reading (I find it hard to shift gears sometimes) and the beginning seems really descript-y and explain-y, so I need to have a good sit with it and reconsider. My next pick would be Death Comes for the Archbishop.

But part of me is thinking maybe I should just rally all my Margaret Laurence reading and start on time next month!

I found Lucy Gayheart a compelling read - I started and finished it yesterday evening. Willa Cather is an amazing descriptor of weather and landscape, not just rural Nebraska but urban Chicago also. I loved the characters of Lucy, Clement Sebastian and Harry Gordon, and the moving epilogue too. As there was no introduction in my edition, I made the mistake of reading A. S. Byatt's afterword first, so I knew what had happened to Lucy. Although it is foreshadowed right at the beginning of the story, I would still not recommend doing this! The next on my pile is Shadows on the Rock.

One of Ours is a splendid novel, well deserving of the Pulitzer Prize it received in 1923.

Claude Wheeler is a, idealistic, restless young farmer, pulled from a small religious college to be put in charge of his father's Nebraska farmlands. He feels he has no purpose in life, hemmed in by a narrow education and an American materialism that he finds meaningless.

It is only when he enlists in the Army as the US is pulled into WWI that he feels he finds a purpose and sense of the wider world. He is sent to France and as a lieutenant leads his men into the horrors of trench warfare.

The novel has been criticized, most notably by Hemingway, as idealizing war, but I didn't see it that way at all. Certainly Cather is sympathetic to a young man's idealism that leads him to enlist to fight such a war, but her descriptions of the trenches and war-ravaged France leave no such impression.

The prose is gorgeous and her characterizations are subtle and multi-faceted, even of minor characters. At times I was reminded of DH Lawrence's layers in a novel such as Women in Love.

When Ernest left, Claude walked as far as the Yoeder's place with him, and came back across the snow-drifted field, under the frosty brilliance of the winter stars. As he looked up at them, he felt more than ever that they must have something to do with the fate of nations, and with the incomprehensible things that were happening in the world. In the ordered universe there must be some mind that read the riddle of this one unhappy planet, that knew what was forming in the dark eclipse of this hour. A question hung in the air; over all this quiet land about him, over him, over his mother, even. He was afraid for his country, as he had been that night on the State House steps in Denver, when this war was undreamed of, hidden in the womb of time.

Oh dear, I was leaving that one till last because of its length but I may have to change my mind! At the moment I'm about a third of the way through Shadows on the Rock and liking it so far, though it's very different from the others of hers I've read. I've also picked up from the library Willa Cather: Collected Short Fiction 1892-1912. This will keep me going for quite a while as it combines three collections plus some other stories.

I finished The professor's house and loved it. It's a beautiful, quiet, subtle story that's really a character study rather than having a plot. There are storylines hinted at, which Cather doesn't bring to fruition, which may frustrate some readers, but drama wasn't her intention. Although this is a short book I found myself reading it slowly so as to absorb Cather's prose and imagery. As usual, they physical settings are brilliantly evoked and inspire the reader to travel and see the places for themselves.

Now I've started Hermione Lee's bio of Cather, A life saved up. Thankfully it seems not to be as overstuffed with extraneous detail as her Wharton one.

I've just started My Mortal Enemy which I'm liking very much so far.

I posted my review of The Professor's House the other day. I loved it.

https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2017/05/15/the-professors-house-willa-cather-192...

This morning was cold, windy and wet so I stayed in bed to finish Shadows on the Rock. It has stayed with me since, as I reread A. S. Byatt's introduction, then read the chapter covering it in Hermione Lee's biography. I loved the combination of atmosphere, setting, historic detail and characters, and wanted to know more about the time and place (Quebec in the late 17th century), so I had to look up information on the minor characters who were historical figures, as well as find pictures of the city to see what it looks like now as I have not been there (yet).

Suffice it to say I have added Willa Cather to my list of favourite authors and now want to read any other novels and stories I can get hold of (perhaps I'll skip Margaret Laurence altogether and have a second Willa Cather month?)

I started Lucy Gayheart last night, and while only 20 pages in I already like Lucy a lot. And Cather is so good at setting a scene, I really feel like I'm there alongside Lucy.

42> Shadows on the Rock was my mother's favorite Cather. Its Quebec setting and historical angle are quite different from her other books.

The nominations thread for the July, August and September monthly reads is here.

I just started A Lost Lady, the first novel in the LoA's Willa Cather: Later Novels. Over the years I've read all of her earlier work – Willa Cather: Early Novels and Stories along with some of the later stories – but Death Comes for the Archbishop is the only one of her later novels that I've ever read.

If I have time, and if I can find it around the house, I might also do a reread of My Antonia using the relatively new Norton Critical Edition with its supplementary materials.

I have today reread Neighbour Rosicky, which I would have first read sometime in the 1980s as one of The Penguin Book of American Short Stories. This would have been my first introduction to Willa Cather's writing. It did not leave a strong impression on me then but, as soon I started it, it all came back to me. Obviously I'm much older and wiser now so I recognise its qualities...I also reread "Paul's Case: A Study in Temperament" from The Secret Self anthology of women's short stories edited by Hermione Lee.

Now I have started Hermione Lee's Willa Cather: A Life Saved Up, from the beginning, having already read chapter 13 and some other short extracts. My fiction read will be The Professor's House. I will read Ali's review after I have finished it but I already know I will like the novel and that the review will say exactly what I thought, but in much better words!

My Mortal Enemy tells the tale of Myra Henshawe, who defied her great-uncle/guardian and lost her inheritance to elope with the love of her life in a grand gesture. The story is narrated by Nellie, niece of Lydia, Myra's childhood friend. In Part One, Nellie is 15 when she first meets Myra, now in her 40's. Part Two takes place 10 years later as Myra is dying, bitterly regretting much of her life. As narrator, Nellie is part innocent observer, part judge of character, and part authorial voice. There are the usual strengths in Cather's writing, but I found the novella rather truncated, stingy almost. I prefer Cather in her amplitude, rather than in a condensed, short form.

Lucy Gayheart is amazing. I was enjoying Lucy's coming of age in Chicago when suddenly Cather dropped a huge bombshell. I had about 100 pages to go and I read them almost all in one sitting. There was a second bombshell too. I didn't see either of them coming and they were both quite dramatic and emotional. This was an excellent character study.

I'm enjoying the biography A life saved up but should warn people - it is full of spoilers for her work. After the first few chapters the focus is on analysis of the books rather than on Cather's life, which I don't mind, but I'm glad I've read most of her novels or there would be no surprises left.

>50 Sakerfalcon: When I read One of Ours, I made the mistake of reading the dust jacket copy which, in the first sentence, let go a major major spoiler. That would have been okay if the spoiler had happened in the first chapter but no, it was THE BIG EVENT that changes everything and occurs well into the book. This undoubtedly affected my impressions. Instead of enjoying the writing or the story, I could only wonder how THE BIG EVENT was going to be handled. Why why why did the publisher do this?

Finished A Lost Lady (4****) , which reminds me of My Ántonia for its male narrator, although Jim Burden of My Ántonia is dimwitted (like Lockwood of Wuthering Heights) and Niel Herbert of A Lost Lady is not. I absolutely do have to reread My Ántonia using the new Norton Critical Edition edited by Sharon O'Brien, if I can find it around the house.

Next I'm on to The Professor's House, the second in the Library of America's Willa Cather: Later Novels volume.

>50 Sakerfalcon: Because of that possibility I'm reading the later chapters of A Life Saved Up out of order - I read the sections or chapters relating to each novel or story after I've read said novel/story. It seems to be working so far.

ETA: I finished The Professor's House last night. I liked it as I knew I would. Ali's review says it all really, but I have to say how impressed I am that Willa Cather could write so easily and convincingly from a man's perspective. The marvellously evocative "Tom Outland's story" from this novel, in particular, reads as though only a man could have written it. The same applies to some of the early short stories I've been reading. How did she do it?

I'm going to have to go back and re-rate these books after this month as I don't think I have the relativities between them quite right. Next will be Sapphira and the Slave Girl but I have to read another book from the library first as it's due in a few days.

As I was unable to find my copy of O Pioneers! I chose to read My Mortal Enemy for this month. This was a reread for me but I had forgotten how powerful this small novel is. Cather writes so sparingly; without wasting a single word.
My review is here:
https://www.librarything.com/work/19530/book/100712727

I can see that I'm going to have to reread My Mortal Enemy too. I didn't really appreciate it properly even though I only read it about a year ago. It would be interesting to try it again in the light of what I've been reading by and about Willa Cather this month.

I've finished My Mortal Enemy too - short, but remarkably powerful!

>54 rainpebble:, >55 europhile:, >56 kaggsy: Duly noted. I have this one on my shelves and clearly have to read it, although I won't get to it this month.

Laura - every now and then a book is completely spoiled by advanced knowledge of the plot. One time a woman on a train leaned over and said to me about the Christie I was reading - Oh that's the one where... and told me the name of the murderer. But to have the publisher do it...!

>51 lauralkeet: Spoilers on the dustjacket are unforgivable! I can understand them occurring in commentary or even the introduction (though I'd rather it be an afterword in that case) but not where you can't avoid it!

>53 europhile: That's a good strategy for reading A life saved up. I am enjoying Lee's insights into Cather's writing.

>51 lauralkeet: >59 Sakerfalcon: The worst spoiler I ever saw on a cover was a picture on a copy of Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue which gave away the killer and the solution....

I'm on my way. Finished The Professor's House (3½***), second title in the LoA edition of Cather's later novels.

As an aside, I just finished Paula Blanchard's Sarah Orne Jewett: Her World and Her Work (5*****) which, in the concluding chapter, discusses briefly the Jewett-Cather relationship and Jewett's influence on Cather.

Having now read A Life Saved Up, and learned a bit more about their friendship, I would also be interested in that one. I have not yet read anything by or about Sarah Orne Jewett, but the library only has a couple of collections of her short stories available. I will perhaps try these after Willa Cather: Collected Short Fiction 1892-1912, which is quite a thick volume and will take me well into next month to get through.

In the meantime I've also finished Sapphira and the Slave Girl, her last published novel. It is rather different, being set in pre-Civil War Virginia (with an epilogue 25 years later), and involving slave ownership and attitudes which are rather hard to comprehend at this distance in time and place. Still, both the attitudes and the language used regarding the slaves are rendered convincingly (to me anyway). It is hard to say I 'liked' it but it read well and I definitely wanted to know how it would turn out for the main characters. A difficult one to rate, however. I may have to reflect on it for a while.

I was saving Death Comes for the Archbishop for last because it has been called a masterpiece and included in various 'best of' lists. My reaction to it was much the same as that for Shadows on the Rock (see >42 europhile: above). In short, it was well up to my expectations. Since I found it so compelling I read it very quickly. I still had a few days left to read one of the so-called Prairie Trilogy, and I'm now about a third of the way through O Pioneers!.

ETA: I've now finished "O Pioneers!" and enjoyed it too. This gives me time to start on My Antonia before the end of the month.

As a sidenote, my dear friend Margaret has been telling people with some amusement that I'm obsessed with Willa Cather. Most people don't know who she's talking about. I've been reading the early short stories aloud to her and I also gave her Lucy Gayheart to read. She's enjoying it so far and has been wondering aloud if Willa Cather is on the reading list for our alma mater's American Literature course (and, if not, why not). We may ask the course coordinator for their list of prescribed texts as it's not available online.

I finished A life saved up and enjoyed it, though I think if you really want to read a bio of Cather you would do better to look elsewhere, as Lee concentrates on literary analysis rather than her life story. It also just seemed to stop very suddenly at the end. As a source of background information to the books it was excellent though.

Here at last is my review of Cather!

https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/the-price-of-love-virag...

And I have to agree with what others have said - this monthly author read is doing wonders for my Virago TBR! :)

I've been very much enjoying The Professor's House (now I've managed to see Ali and borrow her copy) although it won't be finished today.

>67 LyzzyBee: Thank you for reminding me that it is June tomorrow!

Margaret Laurence's thread is now up. Sorry no link yet.

I just finished Shadows on the Rock (4****), which reminds me a bit of Death Comes for the Archbishop. I'm reading in order through Willa Cather: Later Novels (Library of America), excluding Death Comes for the Archbishop, which I read a few years ago. I don't think I have any Margaret Laurence, so for the sake of ROOTing and the Big Fat Book challenge I'm going to finish up the LoA of Cather in June.

I'm a bit late to the game but reviewed The Professor's House, which I loved. I've heard there were mixed reviews of it, but I personally greatly enjoyed it. I think I only have Lucy Gayheart and the short stories to go now. https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2017/06/02/book-review-willa-cather-the-prof...

I finally finished My Antonia last night, a few days later than planned. Enjoyed it as much as O Pioneers! but perhaps not as much as Shadow on the Rock and Death Comes for the Archbishop. We're about halfway through the 500+-page short story collection now so will continue with those. I also have The Song of the Lark from the library so hope to read that next, then on to Margaret Laurence.

I just finished Lucy Gayheart (3***) which was alright but not terribly impressive. Its ending just isn't handled as well as, say, Archbishop or even Shadows on the Rock and I had a lot of difficulty developing sympathy for these characters, some of whom (Mockford in particular) come dangerously close to caricatures. Not a bad book, but I can understand why some critics among Cather's own contemporaries thought it too sentimental.

I'll be turning now to Sapphira and the Slave Girl, which will wrap up my LoA edition of Willa Cather: Later Novels. I'm continuing my Cather read into June since I don't think I have anything by Margaret Laurence – though interestingly I did on Sunday see a couple non-Virago collections of short stories in a used book store I often frequent, but I'm trying not to buy anything more right now! {Yeah, yeah, yeah}

This morning I finally finished The Song of the Lark. It's a hardcover edition from 1963 so I would be interested to know if it differs in any way from the VMC edition (which I now want to own a copy of), apart from not having an introduction. Interestingly there is a short preface from the author dated 1932 in which she expresses her dissatisfaction with it and says she would have structured it differently if she had written it later on.

This was much longer than the other Cather novels but still easy reading and quite compelling, especially the second half. I would rate it highly relative to the other novels which have some aspects in common with it, such as The Professor's House and Lucy Gayheart. Some of her early short stories also have related themes. I will be continuing to read these for a while yet but, after 10 novels and countless short stories read in the last 6 weeks or so, I am finally ready to move on to Margaret Laurence, for my novel reading anyway. I will be leaving One of Ours unread for now.

>73 europhile:
You have saved an excellent read for another time, Grant. I Loved One of Ours. I also love your ability to focus so whole-heartedly on a single author at one time. I envy you that. I hope you love your Margaret Laurence reads.

Thank you, Belva, I'm not usually so focused on single authors. In fact my reading tends to be rather random, with one book or author leading to another, added to by recommendations/reviews from LT members, or speculative finds on the library shelves. What is happening at the moment is that these author reads are being added on top of the usual reading pattern, instead of my doing other things like housework, watching TV, Internet browsing etc. etc. It gives me a greater sense of achievement to finish a book than doing these other things. Having said all that, Willa Cather and her writing have definitely become an obsession. From reviews I've seen it seems that other people have also been affected in this way. Yesterday I even picked up The Selected Letters of Willa Cather from the library to add to my piles, because I wanted to find out how these came to published when she had expressly forbidden it.

>73 europhile: According to the Hermione Lee book, Cather reworked The song of the lark considerably but it sounds as though she still wasn't satisfied. I really enjoyed it and think it's one of her best novels.

I finally finished Willa Cather: Collected Short Fiction, 1892-1912 last night. This contains three collections of stories plus several stories published under pseudonyms, and an extensive introduction about Cather's life and the genesis of the stories and their links to her later works (by Mildred Bennett). What makes it particularly valuable to me is the appendices listing all her stories and their dates and places of publication. This has enabled me to track down those I hadn't read in either this book or The Old Beauty. Fortunately they are all available online, as are the essays from Not Under Forty, of which I've read just two so far.

ETA: I also read her longtime companion Edith Lewis' memoir, Willa Cather Living. This was a quick overview of her life, much of which would have come from Cather herself, particularly the first few sections about her early life. I would still like to read a full biography though, and as the library only has that by E. K. Brown from 1953, I suppose this will have to do.

It took a while but I've now read all of Willa Cather's short stories, most of them twice because I've also been reading them aloud to a friend. The last two were a bit more difficult to track down than I expected but I found one of them, 'Double Birthday', in an anthology in the library called The Best American Short Stories of the Century edited by John Updike (there is a version of this story online but it's incomplete).

My best find of this month's annual bookfair was The Short Stories of Willa Cather edited by Hermione Lee and published in 1989, presumably in conjunction with Willa Cather: A Life Saved Up. This contained the remaining short story, 'Uncle Valentine', which I had not been able to find anywhere else. It was one of her best and an excellent one to end with.

Having also read The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, which were very interesting, all that remains in my "Willa Cather Strategic Reading Plan" is One of Ours and Willa Cather, the biography by E. K. Brown which was completed by Leon Edel. I hope to be able to complete these by the end of the year.

>78 europhile:
Good for you Grant. I appreciate the writing of Willa Cather so much and am ever thankful to this group else I would have only been exposed to a couple. I commend you for your devotion to the reading of her works.
I hope you LOVE her One of Ours as much as I did. It was a 4 1/2 star read for me. It is so good!