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reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
On s'imagine très bien le visage de Thea Kronborg en lisant le récit que Cather fait de sa trajectoire trébuchante : la mâchoire volontaire, le front buté ; quelque chose de doux dans les tempes, aussi, qui surprend. She was going to have a few things before she died (p. 197), se dit Thea à mi-parcours ; on n'en doute jamais. Même si le roman nous promène du Colorado jusqu'aux hivers venteux de Chicago, barouette sa protagoniste & sa voix de l'Arizona jusqu'en Allemagne, il n'en dessine pas moins une courbe claire, ascendante malgré ses essoufflements occasionnels. Le livre traîne par bouts, il s'enfarge un peu dans ce qu'il essaie de dire ; pas grave. À la fin, il reste ce sentiment immense, celui que l'art est difficile, qu'on s'écorche à s'y dédier, mais qu'il demeure ce qui réchauffe le mieux l'existence, toutes catégories confondues. Difficile de s'obstiner avec ça.
Astonishing. Portrait of the artist as a young girl, almost stumbling upon her gift, emerging as a great. I can think of no other book like it, not even Joyce's. We understand that Deadalus is to become Joyce, but Thea Kronborg's growth from sick, but brilliant, prairie girl to a Wagnerian force makes the Young Man seem small.
Where has Willa Cather been my whole life?
Where has Willa Cather been my whole life?
"You can't try to do things right and not despise the people who do them wrong."
The story of a young girl who parties on the Mexican side of town in Colorado and grows up to become a true diva.
If only she saw the look on Spanish Johnny's face at the end...
The story of a young girl who parties on the Mexican side of town in Colorado and grows up to become a true diva.
If only she saw the look on Spanish Johnny's face at the end...
challenging
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ironically, it is, in and of itself, a masterful work of art!
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
This is not one of my favorites of Cather's, though her novels are always worth reading. I felt it was a little baggy in the middle, a little hurried at the end. But as in all of her novels, I felt as if I knew all the characters intimately; in her small prairie towns, every character is important, with a fully realized persona.
I fell in love with The Song of the Lark the first time I read it about twenty years ago. I was in my twenties and read it for a graduate seminar. As a budding feminist, I was captivated by the depiction of a young girl who has talent and passion and who pursues her dreams into adulthood, eventually achieving great success in her field. She didn't give it all up to get married or die tragically young. I admired how Cather slowed the action down to detail the influences in Thea's younger life, her hard work, and the sacrifices that she made for her art. My favorite part of the book remains Part IV: The Ancient People. I think it's one of the most beautiful and unusual pieces in American literature and I've often re-read that section just for the pleasure of it.
With this reading I was blown away by the character of the tramp. It's not that he commits suicide by drowning himself in the well and contaminating the town water supply with typhoid that captured my imagination, but the fact that he performs as a clown. As someone who used my high school math classes back in the early 80s as time to read the latest Stephen King novel, I can't believe I didn't pick up on the utter creepiness of the tramp as clown in my earlier reading. From the first scene where Thea watches him walk into town and can smell him from the safety of her porch, it's pretty unsettling. You know he's a bad omen. But then Thea catches his smell and covers her nose with her handkerchief: "A moment later she was sorry, for she knew that he had noticed it." The tramps notices her disgust, looks away, "and shuffled a little faster" past her house. In a horror novel, Thea would have been a marked woman. A few days later Thea sees him performing in front of one of the saloons: "his bony body grotesquely attired in a clown's suit, his face shaved and painted white,--the sweat trickling through the paint and washing it away,--and his eyes wild and feverish." Part of me feels compassion for the man, but I also hear horror music screeching in the background. Cather so gracefully creates a powerful, yet subtle aura of horror with this character. It makes me wish she would have tried her hand at the ghost story.
More interested than ever to see this.
Overall, however, I admit that it was hard for me to get through The Song of the Lark this time. Part of the problem was I started reading it in ebook format and that was just not a good fit for me with this novel. Once I switched over to a hard copy the reading went a bit better, but the book still wore me out at times. I'm still pondering whether that's due to the variety of literary styles and imagery Cather used or whether it boils down to the fact that I no longer admire the myth or archetype of the Great Artist who gives up their humanity for their art.
One of the big discussions that I recall from the seminar where I first encountered Thea, was whether or not Thea is selfish, and whether we'd even ask such a question if the story were about a man. From my twenty-something perspective, I did not think Thea was selfish. I thought her drive and self-discipline was admirable. I was excited by her commitment to her passion and figured her mom understood why Thea did not come home to visit when she was on her deathbed. And it's not like she's begging Dr. Archie and Ottenburg to flutter about like they do. With this reading I saw the older Thea not so much as selfish, but as heartless and cold.
In her preface to the Autograph Edition in 1937 Cather wrote that she was portraying one type of artist, the type whose "personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer." I was relieved to read this because it means that perhaps there are healthier and happier ways to be an artist. One doesn't have to end up a washed-up alcoholic like Wunsch, or be driven periodically insane by one's passion like Spanish Johnny, or live in emotional isolation like Thea. Or--shudder--end up completely mad like the clown.
With this reading I was blown away by the character of the tramp. It's not that he commits suicide by drowning himself in the well and contaminating the town water supply with typhoid that captured my imagination, but the fact that he performs as a clown. As someone who used my high school math classes back in the early 80s as time to read the latest Stephen King novel, I can't believe I didn't pick up on the utter creepiness of the tramp as clown in my earlier reading. From the first scene where Thea watches him walk into town and can smell him from the safety of her porch, it's pretty unsettling. You know he's a bad omen. But then Thea catches his smell and covers her nose with her handkerchief: "A moment later she was sorry, for she knew that he had noticed it." The tramps notices her disgust, looks away, "and shuffled a little faster" past her house. In a horror novel, Thea would have been a marked woman. A few days later Thea sees him performing in front of one of the saloons: "his bony body grotesquely attired in a clown's suit, his face shaved and painted white,--the sweat trickling through the paint and washing it away,--and his eyes wild and feverish." Part of me feels compassion for the man, but I also hear horror music screeching in the background. Cather so gracefully creates a powerful, yet subtle aura of horror with this character. It makes me wish she would have tried her hand at the ghost story.
More interested than ever to see this.
Overall, however, I admit that it was hard for me to get through The Song of the Lark this time. Part of the problem was I started reading it in ebook format and that was just not a good fit for me with this novel. Once I switched over to a hard copy the reading went a bit better, but the book still wore me out at times. I'm still pondering whether that's due to the variety of literary styles and imagery Cather used or whether it boils down to the fact that I no longer admire the myth or archetype of the Great Artist who gives up their humanity for their art.
One of the big discussions that I recall from the seminar where I first encountered Thea, was whether or not Thea is selfish, and whether we'd even ask such a question if the story were about a man. From my twenty-something perspective, I did not think Thea was selfish. I thought her drive and self-discipline was admirable. I was excited by her commitment to her passion and figured her mom understood why Thea did not come home to visit when she was on her deathbed. And it's not like she's begging Dr. Archie and Ottenburg to flutter about like they do. With this reading I saw the older Thea not so much as selfish, but as heartless and cold.
In her preface to the Autograph Edition in 1937 Cather wrote that she was portraying one type of artist, the type whose "personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer." I was relieved to read this because it means that perhaps there are healthier and happier ways to be an artist. One doesn't have to end up a washed-up alcoholic like Wunsch, or be driven periodically insane by one's passion like Spanish Johnny, or live in emotional isolation like Thea. Or--shudder--end up completely mad like the clown.
Another delightful read by Cather. Not quite as haunting as "My Antonia" but an interesting tale of a young woman's climb with talent to fame.