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A review by graywacke
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
5.0
Cather wasn’t supposed to be my theme this year, but here I am finishing a third book and committed to reading more. I always imagined her as a prairie writer, but each book has covered a different kind of atmosphere. Here we begin on the plains, in the sand hills of Eastern Colorado, in a small railroad town where we follow one of the daughters of a local minister. But then we make our way to 1890’s Chicago, the Arizona desert and the opera world of New York City. A young Thea Kronberg stands out in Moonstone, Colorado, drawing interest from a series of admirers. She doesn’t get along so well with those of her own age or of the small-town mentality. She seems to have the mindset and determination that can lead something important in her life and seems to draw those who want to help her.
Thea’s life is roughly based on the life of a Swedish-born American Opera singer Olive Fremsted, a quirky genius who grew up Minnesota and trained in Germany. In interviews, Cather was struck by her simplicity and deep focus on her work and saw parallels with the plains character she wanted to capture. So, Cather created her own variety of master opera singer, an artist of shear will and determination and focus, grounded in the plains, led by a variety of well-meaning men who all watch her move on. Not lovers, all of them, but admirers of the arts and of Thea. And then Cather throws in a detour to the Canyons of Arizona and the Anasazi cliff-dwellings. Arizona canyons…sun, sky, desert, mystery, isolation – this personal spiritual detour is the best part of this book and of anything I’ve read by Cather so far.
Cather is a writer of her time in terms of her ideas of art and culture, but she is a timeless prose artist and master at capturing the nature and experience of the landscape, the light and space and the mixture of permanence and change. She is also an especially good character builder and seems to make it her mission to create untraditional strong women characters. In the later, Thea is a classic example. This book is far more sophisticated than O Pioneers or Death Comes for the Archbishop (which are what I’ve read). Here she is trying to capture a stubborn powerful mind becoming an artist, almost always through the eyes of the beholders, her many mentors. She is there to be watched and experienced, and Cather uses a number of tricks to allow the reader to do just this. The result isn’t exactly a happy success story. There is a cost to all this. Her success depends on capricious iffy public taste. And one can feel Thea’s isolation, physical exhaustion, and her inability to bond with anyone who isn’t an admirer, her unwillingness to look around and take in the world. She is focused.
I’ve developed into a big fan of Cather. I love her prose, her characters and the landscape through her eyes. Looking forward to My Antiona. Recommended to anyone interested.
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27. The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
published: 1915
format: 334 pages within the ebook [b:The Prairie Trilogy: O Pioneers!; The Song of the Lark; My Antoniá|22320878|The Prairie Trilogy O Pioneers!; The Song of the Lark; My Antoniá|Willa Cather|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1401052421s/22320878.jpg|47166]
acquired: May
read: May 12 – June 8
time reading: 16 hr 28 min, 3.0 min/page
rating: 4
Thea’s life is roughly based on the life of a Swedish-born American Opera singer Olive Fremsted, a quirky genius who grew up Minnesota and trained in Germany. In interviews, Cather was struck by her simplicity and deep focus on her work and saw parallels with the plains character she wanted to capture. So, Cather created her own variety of master opera singer, an artist of shear will and determination and focus, grounded in the plains, led by a variety of well-meaning men who all watch her move on. Not lovers, all of them, but admirers of the arts and of Thea. And then Cather throws in a detour to the Canyons of Arizona and the Anasazi cliff-dwellings. Arizona canyons…sun, sky, desert, mystery, isolation – this personal spiritual detour is the best part of this book and of anything I’ve read by Cather so far.
Cather is a writer of her time in terms of her ideas of art and culture, but she is a timeless prose artist and master at capturing the nature and experience of the landscape, the light and space and the mixture of permanence and change. She is also an especially good character builder and seems to make it her mission to create untraditional strong women characters. In the later, Thea is a classic example. This book is far more sophisticated than O Pioneers or Death Comes for the Archbishop (which are what I’ve read). Here she is trying to capture a stubborn powerful mind becoming an artist, almost always through the eyes of the beholders, her many mentors. She is there to be watched and experienced, and Cather uses a number of tricks to allow the reader to do just this. The result isn’t exactly a happy success story. There is a cost to all this. Her success depends on capricious iffy public taste. And one can feel Thea’s isolation, physical exhaustion, and her inability to bond with anyone who isn’t an admirer, her unwillingness to look around and take in the world. She is focused.
I’ve developed into a big fan of Cather. I love her prose, her characters and the landscape through her eyes. Looking forward to My Antiona. Recommended to anyone interested.
-----------------------------------------------
27. The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
published: 1915
format: 334 pages within the ebook [b:The Prairie Trilogy: O Pioneers!; The Song of the Lark; My Antoniá|22320878|The Prairie Trilogy O Pioneers!; The Song of the Lark; My Antoniá|Willa Cather|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1401052421s/22320878.jpg|47166]
acquired: May
read: May 12 – June 8
time reading: 16 hr 28 min, 3.0 min/page
rating: 4