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The Professor's House
On the eve of his move to a new, more desirable residence, Professor Godfrey St. Peter finds himself in the shabby study of his former home. Surrounded by the comforting, familiar sights of his past, he surveys his life and the people he has loved — his wife Lillian, his daughters, and Tom Outland, his most outstanding student and once, his son-in-law to be. Enigmatic and courageous—and a tragic victim of the Great War — Tom has remained a source of inspiration to the professor. But he has also left behind him a troubling legacy which has brought betrayal and fracture to the women he loves most.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1925
About the author
Willa Cather
644 books2,452 followersWilella Sibert Cather was born in Back Creek Valley (Gore), Virginia, in December 7, 1873.
She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.
After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.
Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, 'One of Ours' (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments.
She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 in New York City.
She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.
After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.
Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, 'One of Ours' (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments.
She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 in New York City.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 893 reviews
May 3, 2021
I can't believe I hadn't read this before! Such a wonderful American classic which explores themes of perception & greed really well.
June 18, 2018
Professor St Peter and his family are finally moving to the new house after the success of the professor’s historical books on Spanish explorers. But when the time comes to abandon his old, rather uncomfortable and chilly office, St Peter can’t stand the thought, and so he decides to continue working there, bringing back uncalled memories revolving around Tom Outland, a mysterious but highly talented student of his, who broadened his horizons but also his family’s.
Willa Cather embodies the wild beauty of the landscape and the proud honor of the American pioneers in the figure of Tom Outland -quite a symbolic surname, indeed - a man devoted to the old world and its traditions. Even though his outline is never clear-cut but rather hazy, sort of dilluted in the professor’s recollections, he arises as the real protagonist of this unusual story.
My main issue with the novel is the fragile and conformist attitude in which Cather draws St Peter. He is presented as a passive actor, a middle aged man who has definitely lost his zest for life and the love for his family. His thoughts move slowly, even with reluctance, and his grey mood is transmitted to the reader.
There are sections of undeniable literary quality that brought me back to the magnificence of “The Song of the Lark”, but they are sporadic and fragmented, undermined by the shady tone of a narrator who has lost his spirit in the obscure remembrances of a glorified past. Regretfully, not the novel I would recommend to get acquainted with Cather’s works.
Willa Cather embodies the wild beauty of the landscape and the proud honor of the American pioneers in the figure of Tom Outland -quite a symbolic surname, indeed - a man devoted to the old world and its traditions. Even though his outline is never clear-cut but rather hazy, sort of dilluted in the professor’s recollections, he arises as the real protagonist of this unusual story.
My main issue with the novel is the fragile and conformist attitude in which Cather draws St Peter. He is presented as a passive actor, a middle aged man who has definitely lost his zest for life and the love for his family. His thoughts move slowly, even with reluctance, and his grey mood is transmitted to the reader.
There are sections of undeniable literary quality that brought me back to the magnificence of “The Song of the Lark”, but they are sporadic and fragmented, undermined by the shady tone of a narrator who has lost his spirit in the obscure remembrances of a glorified past. Regretfully, not the novel I would recommend to get acquainted with Cather’s works.
June 2, 2017
This popular Cather novel has a slightly different feel than her other novels. Godfrey St. Peter, the professor, has a cynical outlook on his future, his relationship with his wife, his two married daughters and their husbands, and especially the new house they are moving into. St. Peter wants his old house, his old study, and his memories. Especially the memories of his old student and friend, Tom Outland. The middle section of the book about Outland's earlier life in the American west was perfect Cather.
The beauty of Cather's novels is in her writing and her characters. She captured a time and a slice of American life and history that is unequaled by any writer in her generation. Truly an national treasure.
The beauty of Cather's novels is in her writing and her characters. She captured a time and a slice of American life and history that is unequaled by any writer in her generation. Truly an national treasure.
August 24, 2017
I can't remember (and that's not saying much, as my memory's not what it used to be) the last time I dithered so long before writing a review. Perhaps it's because I ended up strongly identifying with the professor, who is the same age as I am. No, I don't have the issues with my spouse or my adult offspring that he does, but there are other things that can make one feel distant and drained (even temporarily) at such a time in life.
The title notwithstanding, this book could also be called "Outland" (that would make it sound sci-fi, though, wouldn't it), the surname of the young man at the literal center of the book, a young man who through not much fault of his own has influenced the lives of all the characters, for good or for bad.
Though I prefer those in The Song of the Lark, Cather's descriptions of the mesas and cliff-dwellings in the Southwest shine. These are healing places and in stark contrast to ineffective, even debilitating, urban areas. Outland's futile excursion into post-WWI D.C. not only illustrates the latter, but points out to us today that nothing has changed in the political arena. (To paraphrase a movie title: Mr. Smith hasn't gone to Washington yet; but when he does, we know his positive effect can only be temporary.)
A transformative scene near the end reminds me of an episode with a similar purpose near the end of Bleak House. Cather not only excels with her sense of place in terms of character, she excels at getting to the heart, soul and mind of her professor.
The title notwithstanding, this book could also be called "Outland" (that would make it sound sci-fi, though, wouldn't it), the surname of the young man at the literal center of the book, a young man who through not much fault of his own has influenced the lives of all the characters, for good or for bad.
Though I prefer those in The Song of the Lark, Cather's descriptions of the mesas and cliff-dwellings in the Southwest shine. These are healing places and in stark contrast to ineffective, even debilitating, urban areas. Outland's futile excursion into post-WWI D.C. not only illustrates the latter, but points out to us today that nothing has changed in the political arena. (To paraphrase a movie title: Mr. Smith hasn't gone to Washington yet; but when he does, we know his positive effect can only be temporary.)
A transformative scene near the end reminds me of an episode with a similar purpose near the end of Bleak House. Cather not only excels with her sense of place in terms of character, she excels at getting to the heart, soul and mind of her professor.
September 26, 2019
Published in 1925, The Professor’s House is Willa Cather’s seventh book. Compared to the Great Plains Trilogy, written between 1913 and 1918, it is a less satisfying read for me. Cather’s prose retained its spare, clear, and vivid quality. It was at its finest when it was applied to capturing a sense of place or a state of mind. This novel about the emotional dislocation of a middle-aged professor and his growing estrangement from his wife and family had a sadness hanging like a damp cloud that refused to lift.
This is the story of Godfrey St Peter, a History Professor who has gained recognition for his research and writing on the Spanish Adventures. A few volumes, energized with input of substance from an outstanding graduate student, Tom Outland, won the prestigious Oxford prize for history and money that paid for a new house. However, he has no desire to live in it even though it is more befitting his stature. Godfrey continues to spend his days in the old, ugly house, laboring over his writing in the spartan study. He is content with a life of simplicity and frugality. . His nouveau riche family flaunts their new furs, jewelry, and expensive holidays. Public magnificence and petty jealousy make life in the new house claustrophobic. Godfrey senses his wife’s growing disdain and impatience with his aloofness and disengagement from the pursuits of his family. Godfrey reflects, ‘The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.’ He is unmoored and abjectly lonely. Cather was adapt at giving expression to the amorphous turns of mind that precipitated Godfrey’s low moods. Was Godfrey himself at fault? Truth be told, he has been neglectful, and too preoccupied with his career to have time for his family. It is hard to feel enthusiastic about a story where the lead character does little other than staring out a window or running to the lake no matter how sorry I feel for him.
The more compelling story in this novel belonged to Tom Outland, the disadvantaged orphan with a late start in formal schooling who became an American scientist and inventor. An outlandish accomplishment! It is gratifying to follow Tom’s passage from being a ward of a French family, to earning his own keep as a call boy, discovering the Cliff Tower, and eventually becoming Godfrey’s graduate student – one of the brightest he has ever taught. Tom’s resilience, spirit of adventure, and resourcefulness take the reader outdoors for a whiff of fresh air.
Some of the loveliest writing was found in the chapters that documented Tom’s serendipitous discovery of the Cliff Tower in Blue Mesa, the habitat of the Pueblo natives in New Mexico. Coincidentally, while reading about Tom’s adventures, I was thrilled to see some pictures of cliff dwelling taken by a friend who was hiking in Mesa Verde, Colorado. The timing could not be more perfect.
The novel ended quite abruptly on an ambiguous note It also felt unfinished as a couple of issues were left unresolved (e.g., the law suit involving Tom’s patent and the whereabouts of Tom’s buddy, Rodney Blake, who shared the discovery of the Blue Mesa.)
Readers who are interested in the historicity of ancient landscapes or archeology will enjoy reading about the Blue Mesa which I found most fascinating. Cather is a good writer but this, in my view, is not her best work.
This is the story of Godfrey St Peter, a History Professor who has gained recognition for his research and writing on the Spanish Adventures. A few volumes, energized with input of substance from an outstanding graduate student, Tom Outland, won the prestigious Oxford prize for history and money that paid for a new house. However, he has no desire to live in it even though it is more befitting his stature. Godfrey continues to spend his days in the old, ugly house, laboring over his writing in the spartan study. He is content with a life of simplicity and frugality. . His nouveau riche family flaunts their new furs, jewelry, and expensive holidays. Public magnificence and petty jealousy make life in the new house claustrophobic. Godfrey senses his wife’s growing disdain and impatience with his aloofness and disengagement from the pursuits of his family. Godfrey reflects, ‘The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.’ He is unmoored and abjectly lonely. Cather was adapt at giving expression to the amorphous turns of mind that precipitated Godfrey’s low moods. Was Godfrey himself at fault? Truth be told, he has been neglectful, and too preoccupied with his career to have time for his family. It is hard to feel enthusiastic about a story where the lead character does little other than staring out a window or running to the lake no matter how sorry I feel for him.
The more compelling story in this novel belonged to Tom Outland, the disadvantaged orphan with a late start in formal schooling who became an American scientist and inventor. An outlandish accomplishment! It is gratifying to follow Tom’s passage from being a ward of a French family, to earning his own keep as a call boy, discovering the Cliff Tower, and eventually becoming Godfrey’s graduate student – one of the brightest he has ever taught. Tom’s resilience, spirit of adventure, and resourcefulness take the reader outdoors for a whiff of fresh air.
Some of the loveliest writing was found in the chapters that documented Tom’s serendipitous discovery of the Cliff Tower in Blue Mesa, the habitat of the Pueblo natives in New Mexico. Coincidentally, while reading about Tom’s adventures, I was thrilled to see some pictures of cliff dwelling taken by a friend who was hiking in Mesa Verde, Colorado. The timing could not be more perfect.
The novel ended quite abruptly on an ambiguous note It also felt unfinished as a couple of issues were left unresolved (e.g., the law suit involving Tom’s patent and the whereabouts of Tom’s buddy, Rodney Blake, who shared the discovery of the Blue Mesa.)
Readers who are interested in the historicity of ancient landscapes or archeology will enjoy reading about the Blue Mesa which I found most fascinating. Cather is a good writer but this, in my view, is not her best work.
March 2, 2014
Willa Cather has moved into my group of favorite authors: those who create characters and worlds that are consistently intriguing, human, interesting--in the best sense of the word, and real. She also writes in a way that is both simple and beautiful. The Professor's House is my third of her books, after Death Comes for the Archbishop and, more recently, O Pioneers!.
In this novel, the titled Professor is actually conflicted, caught between two worlds, that of his old house with the study he has used to write books for years, and his new house, largely designed by his wife and a great step up. The differences between the two are signs of the growing discomfort in St. Peter's life: his occasional discomfort with his eldest daughter, his wonderment at his wife, his increased love of playing hookey from his regular life of teaching and socializing.
Within this story we also learn of a young man who is very influential on the entire St.Peter clan, Tom Outland, a man who died too young during WWI. He's almost mythic to some and is awarded his own section to narrate some of his own history, especially his time on the mesas of New Mexico.
Far up above me, a thousand feet or so, set in a great
cavern in the face of a cliff, I saw a little city of
stone, asleep. It was as still as sculpture---and something
like that. It all hung together, seemed to have a kind of
composition: pale little houses of stone nestling close
to one another, perched on top of each other, with flat
roofs, narrow windows, straight walls, and in the middle
of the group, a round tower....The village sat looking down
into the canyon with the calmness of eternity. The falling
snow-flakes, sprinkling the pinons, gave it a special kind
of solemnity. I can't describe it. It was more like sculpture
than anything else. I knew at once that I had come upon
the city of some extinct civilization, hidden away in this
inaccessible meas for centuries, preserved in the dry air
and almost perpetual sunlight like a fly in amber, guarded
by the cliffs and the river and the desert. (pp179-180)
Cather also describes natural surroundings in St. Peter's midwest setting: the gardens, the colors of the changing seasons and changing skies and lakes.
But most central is St. Peter's changing sense of himself---or perhaps his regaining his past sense of self. This is a quiet novel. There is no Virginia Woolf to be afraid of here. There is introspection and discovery, remembrance of people and things lost.
I've now decided that I will try to read everything that Cather has written. I have several on hand and will gradually make my way through them.
Highly recommended
P.S. Anyone who has visited the Southwest, even in these modern times, has probably had a touch of the experience written by Cather for Tom when seeing cliff dwellings. Even with tourists swarming, they are something "other".
In this novel, the titled Professor is actually conflicted, caught between two worlds, that of his old house with the study he has used to write books for years, and his new house, largely designed by his wife and a great step up. The differences between the two are signs of the growing discomfort in St. Peter's life: his occasional discomfort with his eldest daughter, his wonderment at his wife, his increased love of playing hookey from his regular life of teaching and socializing.
Within this story we also learn of a young man who is very influential on the entire St.Peter clan, Tom Outland, a man who died too young during WWI. He's almost mythic to some and is awarded his own section to narrate some of his own history, especially his time on the mesas of New Mexico.
Far up above me, a thousand feet or so, set in a great
cavern in the face of a cliff, I saw a little city of
stone, asleep. It was as still as sculpture---and something
like that. It all hung together, seemed to have a kind of
composition: pale little houses of stone nestling close
to one another, perched on top of each other, with flat
roofs, narrow windows, straight walls, and in the middle
of the group, a round tower....The village sat looking down
into the canyon with the calmness of eternity. The falling
snow-flakes, sprinkling the pinons, gave it a special kind
of solemnity. I can't describe it. It was more like sculpture
than anything else. I knew at once that I had come upon
the city of some extinct civilization, hidden away in this
inaccessible meas for centuries, preserved in the dry air
and almost perpetual sunlight like a fly in amber, guarded
by the cliffs and the river and the desert. (pp179-180)
Cather also describes natural surroundings in St. Peter's midwest setting: the gardens, the colors of the changing seasons and changing skies and lakes.
But most central is St. Peter's changing sense of himself---or perhaps his regaining his past sense of self. This is a quiet novel. There is no Virginia Woolf to be afraid of here. There is introspection and discovery, remembrance of people and things lost.
I've now decided that I will try to read everything that Cather has written. I have several on hand and will gradually make my way through them.
Highly recommended
P.S. Anyone who has visited the Southwest, even in these modern times, has probably had a touch of the experience written by Cather for Tom when seeing cliff dwellings. Even with tourists swarming, they are something "other".
December 22, 2015
I've recently started listening to a few reading/book podcasts, now that I'm almost two years into my own. I've grown quite fond of The Readers and Books on the Nightstand, and the four hosts of the two shows have some interaction. They will all be at Booktopia this month, and each of them picked a favorite book to discuss that will hopefully also turn into a podcast episode for those of us not at the event. This was one of the books mentioned, selected by Thomas from The Readers. It's funny how books or authors come back around, because one reading friend mentioned Willa Cather after I waxed (eloquently, I'm sure) on Laura Ingalls Wilder and her effect on my childhood.
This novel follows a professor in the "midwest," as far as I can tell an unnamed state, but one that must be near Lake Michigan. Two of the three sections of the novel are about him, his family, their recent fortunes, and his writing space in the older home (which he refuses to leave.) The other section, the one in the middle, is the story of Tom, a student of his who died young and left money to his daughter, allowing her to live quite comfortably with her new husband.
I may have rated this a full five stars had I not so recently read Stoner by John Williams, which is just a more deeply impactful novel for me. But I suspect this novel is more complex than it seems on the surface. I wonder about the relationship between the professor and Tom; at some point he mentions plans they were making together that seemed like lovers' plans. How would a novel from 1925 treat such a topic except for with great delicacy and vague mentions?
The midwest is not satisfactorily written as a place anyone would want to live, but the professor and his family are clearly in their home there. The professor's wife is very much enjoying her new status and comforts of having a rich son-in-law and daughter, and the professor is being left pretty much alone in his old house as he wishes. He feels he has worn out all the newness of life, regardless.
Discussed on Episode 042 of the Reading Envy Podcast.
This novel follows a professor in the "midwest," as far as I can tell an unnamed state, but one that must be near Lake Michigan. Two of the three sections of the novel are about him, his family, their recent fortunes, and his writing space in the older home (which he refuses to leave.) The other section, the one in the middle, is the story of Tom, a student of his who died young and left money to his daughter, allowing her to live quite comfortably with her new husband.
I may have rated this a full five stars had I not so recently read Stoner by John Williams, which is just a more deeply impactful novel for me. But I suspect this novel is more complex than it seems on the surface. I wonder about the relationship between the professor and Tom; at some point he mentions plans they were making together that seemed like lovers' plans. How would a novel from 1925 treat such a topic except for with great delicacy and vague mentions?
The midwest is not satisfactorily written as a place anyone would want to live, but the professor and his family are clearly in their home there. The professor's wife is very much enjoying her new status and comforts of having a rich son-in-law and daughter, and the professor is being left pretty much alone in his old house as he wishes. He feels he has worn out all the newness of life, regardless.
"'My dear,; he sighed when the lights were turned on and they both looked older, 'it's been a mistake, our having a family and writing histories and getting middle-aged. We should have been picturesquely shipwrecked together when we were young.'"He also isn't much of a fan of his family, his wife as she acclimates to her new role, his daughters as they grow up with their own opinions.
and later...
"It's not wholly a matter of the calendar. It's the feeling that I've put a great deal behind me, where I can't go back to it again - and I don't really wish to go back. The way would be too long and too fatiguing. Perhaps, for a home-staying man, I've lived pretty hard. I wasn't willing to slight anything - you, or my desk, or my students. And now I seem to be tremendously tired. A man has got only just so much in him."
and later...
"He did not regret his life, but he was indiffernt to it. It seemed to him like the life of another person."
"I was thinking about Euripedes; how, when he was an old man, he went and lived in a cave by the sea, and it was thought queer, at the time. It seems that houses had become insupportable to him. I wonder whether it was because he had observed women so closely all his life."If the midwest seems boring, it might only be in contrast to Cather's descriptions of the landscape of New Mexico. That is the backdrop (and a character) to Tom's story of cattle driving, archaeology, and museum capers.
Discussed on Episode 042 of the Reading Envy Podcast.
September 14, 2019
Professor Godfrey St. Peter's family is moving to a larger and more beautiful home in the midwestern university town of Hamilton. It is a home more reflective of St. Peter's status and accomplishments, but it is not what he wants.
This move causes the professor to reflect on his past and contemplate his future. Is he happy? "The university, his new house, his old house, everything around him, seemed insupportable, as the boat on which he is imprisoned seems to a sea-sick man." Frequently throughout his musings we are told of the church bell tolling. A symbol of his life passing or an awakening?
Buried in his memories are recollections of his former student, Tom Outland.
Book II is told by Tom Outland. He tells of his time in New Mexico and his discovery of ancient cliff dwellings. I found this book fascinating and much faster-paced. Not only did this section allow me to know this mysterious man, but I gained understanding as to why he is so pivotal to the whole book. I again felt Cather's love of this geographical area. Her descriptions of New Mexico are beautiful. "And the air, my God, what air!- Soft, tingling, gold, but with an edge of chill on it, full of the smell of pinions-
it was like breathing the sun, breathing the color of the sky".
This is the 4th or 5th Cather book I have read. I will continue to read any others. I love her style. The subtle humor which seems to be in many books written a century ago, caused me to smile, if not chuckle often. Written in 1925 it has remained relevant for nearly 100 years. How many highly lauded books of today will be read for that long?
Other quotes I liked
about the nose of his son-in-law "It was not at all an unpleasing feature, but it grew out of his face with masterful strength, well-rooted, like a vigorous oak tree growing out of a hillside."
"His round pink cheeks and round eyes and round chin made him rather look like a baby grown big. All these years had made little difference, except that his curls were now quite grey, his rosy cheeks even rosier, and his mouth drooped a little at the corners, so that he looked like a baby suddenly grown old and rather cross about it."
This move causes the professor to reflect on his past and contemplate his future. Is he happy? "The university, his new house, his old house, everything around him, seemed insupportable, as the boat on which he is imprisoned seems to a sea-sick man." Frequently throughout his musings we are told of the church bell tolling. A symbol of his life passing or an awakening?
Buried in his memories are recollections of his former student, Tom Outland.
Book II is told by Tom Outland. He tells of his time in New Mexico and his discovery of ancient cliff dwellings. I found this book fascinating and much faster-paced. Not only did this section allow me to know this mysterious man, but I gained understanding as to why he is so pivotal to the whole book. I again felt Cather's love of this geographical area. Her descriptions of New Mexico are beautiful. "And the air, my God, what air!- Soft, tingling, gold, but with an edge of chill on it, full of the smell of pinions-
it was like breathing the sun, breathing the color of the sky".
This is the 4th or 5th Cather book I have read. I will continue to read any others. I love her style. The subtle humor which seems to be in many books written a century ago, caused me to smile, if not chuckle often. Written in 1925 it has remained relevant for nearly 100 years. How many highly lauded books of today will be read for that long?
Other quotes I liked
about the nose of his son-in-law "It was not at all an unpleasing feature, but it grew out of his face with masterful strength, well-rooted, like a vigorous oak tree growing out of a hillside."
"His round pink cheeks and round eyes and round chin made him rather look like a baby grown big. All these years had made little difference, except that his curls were now quite grey, his rosy cheeks even rosier, and his mouth drooped a little at the corners, so that he looked like a baby suddenly grown old and rather cross about it."
March 21, 2015
Willa Cather pops the big question : How do we
keep living when there's nothing to look forward to?
Midwest prof in his 50s has finished his book.
With 2 married daughters, a bizee wife and the
memory of a prized student killed in WW1, he
scalpels his soul.
"He knew that life is possible, may even be
pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs.
But it had never occurred to him that he might have
to live like that."
keep living when there's nothing to look forward to?
Midwest prof in his 50s has finished his book.
With 2 married daughters, a bizee wife and the
memory of a prized student killed in WW1, he
scalpels his soul.
"He knew that life is possible, may even be
pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs.
But it had never occurred to him that he might have
to live like that."
December 20, 2019
“This book is a mess!” is the thought that popped into my head on completion of the book!
On the other hand, it does have some good lines. Cather writes best when describing a landscape, a place, a natural phenomenon. She aces when describing the American Southwest. She draws a person’s appearance with finesse too.
In this novel, the middle section has the feel of a separate story. In fact, it was the first part written and was a short story. It is entitled “Tom Outland’s Story”. In this part, Tom speaks of his past. Here the writing is fluid. This section is good. As one might guess, it is set on a mesa in the Southwest. It is about the discovery of ancient cliff dweller communities in New Mexico.
The problem is that later Cather clamped on another story to the first. She split the second story in half, set the first half at the beginning, the second half at the end, with the original short story sandwiched in the middle. In the clamped on parts, Tom is dead but idolized by the characters of the second story. The whole is unwieldy. It does not hold together properly. One might argue that the middle section is to be viewed as a flashback, but it just does not work. The different sections divide rather than pull the story together.
Looking at the novel as a whole, what is it saying? What is its point? It’s a story of a man’s mid-life crisis. Both the characters and the themes pull the reader in different directions. The author does not successfully draw the themes together. Neither is it made clear what Cather is trying to say. The conclusions one draws will depend upon a reader’s own way of looking at life. One can argue this way or that because the book itself lacks conclusive guidelines.
I want to believe Cather is criticizing a money oriented society. I want to believe she is speaking out for the rights of indigenous people. I presume she favors the preservation of a land’s natural, physical, historical and cultural resources. The problem is you can argue each issue in diametrically opposed ways. Is she saying the elderly must cede to the young? Academics and workers, which group should be favored? How does one best promote a productive healthy society? In a way Cather is voicing antisemitic views! One is pushed to ask her view of homosexuality. She hints but fails to speak clearly. All of these issues are touched upon, but a reader has difficulty pinpointing what exactly Cather is saying. This lack of clarity gives me trouble. Rather than egging a reader to consider these issues she leaves the reader hanging in midair.
I could cite point after point where turns are taken and then dropped. Why was the professor so attached to the seamstress’ sewing mannequins? This was a dead end. The connection between Tom’s interest in cliff dwellers’ habitation and his work related to the “Outland vacuum” don’t fit. Is this the same person? Yes, it is, but it doesn’t make sense. The book is full of loose ends and unresolved issues. For me it’s a mess; it would have been better had Cather simply left “Tom Outland’s Story” alone!
I am giving the book two rather than one star because I like Tom’s story. As always, Cather has good descriptive lines.
Sean Runnette narrates the audiobook. The central character, the guy going through his midlife crisis, is sad, depressed and despondent. Runnette does succeed in capturing his mood, but it is such a drag to listen to. I could follow the story, so I am willing to give the narration performance two stars.
**********************
*My Ántonia 5 stars
*Death Comes for the Archbishop 4 stars
*One of Ours 4 stars
*The Song of the Lark4 stars
*Shadows on the Rock 3 stars
*Lucy Gayheart 3 stars
*O Pioneers! 3 stars
*Sapphira and the Slave Girl 2 stars
*A Lost Lady 2 stars
*The Professor's House 2 stars
*Alexander's Bridge TBR
*My Mortal Enemy TBR
On the other hand, it does have some good lines. Cather writes best when describing a landscape, a place, a natural phenomenon. She aces when describing the American Southwest. She draws a person’s appearance with finesse too.
In this novel, the middle section has the feel of a separate story. In fact, it was the first part written and was a short story. It is entitled “Tom Outland’s Story”. In this part, Tom speaks of his past. Here the writing is fluid. This section is good. As one might guess, it is set on a mesa in the Southwest. It is about the discovery of ancient cliff dweller communities in New Mexico.
The problem is that later Cather clamped on another story to the first. She split the second story in half, set the first half at the beginning, the second half at the end, with the original short story sandwiched in the middle. In the clamped on parts, Tom is dead but idolized by the characters of the second story. The whole is unwieldy. It does not hold together properly. One might argue that the middle section is to be viewed as a flashback, but it just does not work. The different sections divide rather than pull the story together.
Looking at the novel as a whole, what is it saying? What is its point? It’s a story of a man’s mid-life crisis. Both the characters and the themes pull the reader in different directions. The author does not successfully draw the themes together. Neither is it made clear what Cather is trying to say. The conclusions one draws will depend upon a reader’s own way of looking at life. One can argue this way or that because the book itself lacks conclusive guidelines.
I want to believe Cather is criticizing a money oriented society. I want to believe she is speaking out for the rights of indigenous people. I presume she favors the preservation of a land’s natural, physical, historical and cultural resources. The problem is you can argue each issue in diametrically opposed ways. Is she saying the elderly must cede to the young? Academics and workers, which group should be favored? How does one best promote a productive healthy society? In a way Cather is voicing antisemitic views! One is pushed to ask her view of homosexuality. She hints but fails to speak clearly. All of these issues are touched upon, but a reader has difficulty pinpointing what exactly Cather is saying. This lack of clarity gives me trouble. Rather than egging a reader to consider these issues she leaves the reader hanging in midair.
I could cite point after point where turns are taken and then dropped. Why was the professor so attached to the seamstress’ sewing mannequins? This was a dead end. The connection between Tom’s interest in cliff dwellers’ habitation and his work related to the “Outland vacuum” don’t fit. Is this the same person? Yes, it is, but it doesn’t make sense. The book is full of loose ends and unresolved issues. For me it’s a mess; it would have been better had Cather simply left “Tom Outland’s Story” alone!
I am giving the book two rather than one star because I like Tom’s story. As always, Cather has good descriptive lines.
Sean Runnette narrates the audiobook. The central character, the guy going through his midlife crisis, is sad, depressed and despondent. Runnette does succeed in capturing his mood, but it is such a drag to listen to. I could follow the story, so I am willing to give the narration performance two stars.
**********************
*My Ántonia 5 stars
*Death Comes for the Archbishop 4 stars
*One of Ours 4 stars
*The Song of the Lark4 stars
*Shadows on the Rock 3 stars
*Lucy Gayheart 3 stars
*O Pioneers! 3 stars
*Sapphira and the Slave Girl 2 stars
*A Lost Lady 2 stars
*The Professor's House 2 stars
*Alexander's Bridge TBR
*My Mortal Enemy TBR
August 5, 2022
Reread. While it wasn't that long time since I read it (December last year I think) it's definitely proof on why I love rereading so much. I didn't as you can read from the review below, like this and gave it 2 stars the first time. But in this read I enjoyed it a lot more. Perhaps because I hadn't read any Willa Cather recently and fell in love with her writing style again. Need to pick up more works by her
---
I've read Willa Cather trilogy earlier this year and loved each book very much. I was hopeful that I would love this as well but didn't fully connect with the story. It's still very talented written and I can see why it works for many others but it wasn't my cup of tea
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I've read Willa Cather trilogy earlier this year and loved each book very much. I was hopeful that I would love this as well but didn't fully connect with the story. It's still very talented written and I can see why it works for many others but it wasn't my cup of tea
August 13, 2011
I would say that this is a very "clean" novel. The characters are respectful, their dialogues are polished, and there's not a hint of any major mischief in the plot. Professor Godfrey St. Peter is fifty-two. He has two married daughters and a wife (Lillian) of many years. He teaches and writes history books. His family is financially secure, one of his daughters is even rich, having been the beneficiary of his (St.Peter's) former student's posthumous wealth from a gas-related invention. this former student, Tom Outland, died very young during the first world war.
There are some minor tensions in several places mainly brought about by this gas money. But one can see for himself that these can't possibly be unsolvable problems or things one can base a tragic novel on. You would have preferred to see these come to some sort of a resolution, but Willa Cather probably fell asleep going towards the ending, woke up still lethargic, then decided to just let everything hang.
Why do I like this novel very much? Because I fortunately read it at the proper time. A couple of years more and I may see all of my children married too and no longer asking me for money. They will have their own homes and one day, like Professor St. Peter and his wife Lillian, me and my wife would be watching something (here, the professor and his wife are watching a play) and we'll also have an introspective moment like this:
"When the curtain fell on the first act, St. Peter turned to his wife. 'A fine cast, don't you think? And the harps are very good. Except for the wood-winds, I should say it was as good as any performance I ever heard at the Comique.'
"'How it does make one think of Paris, and of so many half-forgotten things!' his wife murmured. It had been long since he had seen her face so relaxed and reflective and undetermined.
"Through the next act he often glanced at her. Curious, how a young mood could return and soften a face. More than once he saw a starry moisture shine in her eyes. If she only knew how much more lovely she was when she wasn't doing her duty!
"'My dear, ' he sighed when the lights were turned on and they both looked older, 'it's been a mistake, our having a family and writing histories and getting middle-aged. We should have been picturesquely shipwrecked together when we were young.'
"'How often I've thought that!' she replied with a faint, melancholy smile.
"'You? But you're so occupied with the future, you adapt yourself so readily,' he murmured in astonishment.
"'One must go on living, Godfrey. But it wasn't the children who came between us.' There was something lonely and forgiving in her voice, something that spoke of an old wound, healed and hardened and hopeless.
"'You, you too?' he breathed in amazement. He took up one of her gloves and began drawing it out through his fingers. She said nothing, but she saw her lip quiver, and she turned away and began looking at the house through the glasses. He likewise began to examine the audience. He wished he knew just how it seemed to her. He had been mistaken, he felt. The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own. Presently the melting music of the tenor's last aria brought their eyes together in a smile not altogether sad.
"That night, after he was in bed, among unaccustomed surroundings and a little wakeful, St. Peter still layed with his idea of a picturesque shipwreck, and he cast about for the particular occasion he would have chosen for such a finale. Before he went to sleep he found the very day, but his wife was not in it. Indeed, nobody was in it but himself, and a weather-dried little sea captain from the Hautes-Pyrenees, half a dozen spry seamen, and a line of gleaming snow peaks, agonizingly high and sharp, along the southern coast of Spain."
"The heart of another is a dark forest, always..."--could this be true? And will there really be a time--after you've succeeded in every aspect of your ordinary life--that all you'd want to do is to get away from everyone who had been a part of you, even from your spouse or partner, like the one I have right there on the top left hand portion of this review?-
"He (Professor St. Peter) loved his family, he would make any sacrifice for them, but just now he couldn't live with them. He must be alone. That was more necessary to him than anything had ever been, more necessary, even, than his marriage had been in his vehement youth. He could not live with his family again--not even with Lillian. Especially not with Lillian! Her nature was intense and positive; it was like a chiselled surface, a die, a stamp upon which he could not be beaten out any longer. If her character were reduced to an heraldic device, it would be a hand (a beautiful hand) holding flaming arrows--the shafts of her violent loves and hates, her clear-cut ambitions.
"'In great misfortunes,' he told himself, 'people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in.'
Will we, as we grow old, and as claim have been universally observed, go back to the young boys and girls we all had been? Will we meet them again and embrace them, tightly, until we are them again? Is this the common great misfortune those of us who will not die young shall suffer in the end?
"St. Peter had always laughed at people who talked about 'day-dreams,' just as he laughed at people who naively confessed that they had an 'imagination.' All his life his mind had behaved in a positive fashion. When he was not at work, or being actively amused, he went to sleep. He had no twilight stage. But now he enjoyed this half-awake loafing with his brain as if it were a new sense, arriving late, like wisdom teeth. He found he could lie on his sand-spit by the lake for hours and watch the seven motionless pines drink up the sun. In the evening, after dinner, he could sit idle and watch the stars, with the same immobility. He was cultivating a novel mental dissipation--and enjoying a new friendship. Tom Outland had not come back again through the garden door (as he had so often done in dreams!), but another boy had: the boy the Professor had long ago left behind him in Kansas, in the Solomon Valley--the original, unmodified Godfrey St. Peter.
"This boy and he had meant, back in those far-away days, to live some sort of life together and to share good and bad fortune. They had not shared together, for the reason that they were unevenly matched. The young St. Peter who went to France to try his luck, had a more active mind than the twin he left behind in the Solomon Valley. After his adoption into the Thierault household, he remembered that other boy very rarely, in moments of home-sickness. After he met Lillian Ornsley, St. Peter forgot that boy had ever lived.
"But now that the vivid consciousness of an earlier state had come back to him, the Professor felt that life with this Kansas boy, little as there had been of it, was the realest of his lives, and that all the years between had been accidental and ordered from the outside. His career, his wife, his family, were not his life at all, but a chain of events which had happened to him. All these things had nothing to do with the person he was in the beginning.
"The man he was now, the personality his friends knew, had begun to grow strong during adolescence, during the years when he was always consciously or unconsciously conjugating the verb 'to love'--in society and solitude, with people, with books, with the sky and open country, in the lonesomeness of crowded city streets. When he met Lillian, it reached its maturity. From that time to this, existence had been a catching at handholds. One thing led to another and one development brought on another, and the design of his life had been the work of this secondary social man, the lover. It had been shaped by all the penalties and responsibilities of being and having been a lover. Because there was Lillian, there must be marriage and a salary. Because there was marriage, there were children. Because there were children, and fervour in the blood and brain, books were born as well as daughters. His histories, he was convinced, had no more to do with his original ego than his daughters had; they were a result of the high pressure of young manhood.
"The Kansas boy who had come back to St. Peter this summer was not a scholar. He was a primitive. He was only interested in earth and woods and water. Wherever sun sunned and rain rained and snow snowed, wherever life sprouted and decayed, places were alike to him. He was not nearly so cultivated as Tom's old cliff-dwellers must have been--and yet he was terribly wise. He seemed to be at the root of the matter; Desire under all desires, Truth under all truths. He seemed to know, among other things, that he was solitary and must always be so; he had never married, never been a father. He was earth, and would return to earth. When white clouds blew over the lake like bellying sails, when the seven pine-trees turned red in the declining sun, he felt satisfaction and said to himself merely: 'That is right.' Coming upon a curly root that thrust itself across his path, he said: 'That is it.' When the maple-leaves along the street began to turn yellow and waxy, and were soft to the touch,--like the skin on old faces,--he said: 'That is true; it is time.' All these recognitions gave him a kind of sad pleasure.
"When he was not dumbly, deeply recognizing, he was bringing up out of himself long-forgotten, memories of his early childhood, of his mother, his father, his grandfather. His grandfather, old Napoleon Godfrey, used to go about lost in profound, continuous meditation, sometimes chuckling to himself. Occasionally, at the family dinner-table, the old man would try to rouse himself, from motives of politeness, and would ask some kindly question--nearly always absurd and often the same one he had asked yesterday. The boys used to shout with laughter and wonder what profound matters could require such deep meditation, and make a man speak so foolishly about what was going on under his very eyes. St. Peter thought he was beginning to understand what the old man had been thinking about, though he himself was but fifty-two, and Napoleon had been well on his eighties. There are only a few years, at the last, in which man can consider his estate, and he thought he might be quite as near the end of his road as his grandfather had been in those days.
"The Professor knew, of course, that adolescence grafted a new creature into the original one, and that the complexion of a man's life was largely determined by how well or ill his original self and his nature as modified by sex rubbed on together.
"What he had not known was that, at a given time, that first nature could return to a man, unchanged by all the pursuits and passions and experiences of his life; untouched even by the tastes and intellectual activities which have been strong enough to give him distinction among his fellows and to have made for him, as they say, a name in the world. Perhaps this reversion did not often occur, but he knew it had happened to him, and he suspected it had happened to his grandfather. He did not regret his life, but he was indifferent to it. It seemed to him like the life of another person.
"Along with other states of mind which attended his realization of the boy Godfrey, came a conviction (he did not see it coming, it was there before he was aware of its approach) that he was nearing the end of his life...."
Ah, let us all grow old. Then, we will know if this story is true.
There are some minor tensions in several places mainly brought about by this gas money. But one can see for himself that these can't possibly be unsolvable problems or things one can base a tragic novel on. You would have preferred to see these come to some sort of a resolution, but Willa Cather probably fell asleep going towards the ending, woke up still lethargic, then decided to just let everything hang.
Why do I like this novel very much? Because I fortunately read it at the proper time. A couple of years more and I may see all of my children married too and no longer asking me for money. They will have their own homes and one day, like Professor St. Peter and his wife Lillian, me and my wife would be watching something (here, the professor and his wife are watching a play) and we'll also have an introspective moment like this:
"When the curtain fell on the first act, St. Peter turned to his wife. 'A fine cast, don't you think? And the harps are very good. Except for the wood-winds, I should say it was as good as any performance I ever heard at the Comique.'
"'How it does make one think of Paris, and of so many half-forgotten things!' his wife murmured. It had been long since he had seen her face so relaxed and reflective and undetermined.
"Through the next act he often glanced at her. Curious, how a young mood could return and soften a face. More than once he saw a starry moisture shine in her eyes. If she only knew how much more lovely she was when she wasn't doing her duty!
"'My dear, ' he sighed when the lights were turned on and they both looked older, 'it's been a mistake, our having a family and writing histories and getting middle-aged. We should have been picturesquely shipwrecked together when we were young.'
"'How often I've thought that!' she replied with a faint, melancholy smile.
"'You? But you're so occupied with the future, you adapt yourself so readily,' he murmured in astonishment.
"'One must go on living, Godfrey. But it wasn't the children who came between us.' There was something lonely and forgiving in her voice, something that spoke of an old wound, healed and hardened and hopeless.
"'You, you too?' he breathed in amazement. He took up one of her gloves and began drawing it out through his fingers. She said nothing, but she saw her lip quiver, and she turned away and began looking at the house through the glasses. He likewise began to examine the audience. He wished he knew just how it seemed to her. He had been mistaken, he felt. The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own. Presently the melting music of the tenor's last aria brought their eyes together in a smile not altogether sad.
"That night, after he was in bed, among unaccustomed surroundings and a little wakeful, St. Peter still layed with his idea of a picturesque shipwreck, and he cast about for the particular occasion he would have chosen for such a finale. Before he went to sleep he found the very day, but his wife was not in it. Indeed, nobody was in it but himself, and a weather-dried little sea captain from the Hautes-Pyrenees, half a dozen spry seamen, and a line of gleaming snow peaks, agonizingly high and sharp, along the southern coast of Spain."
"The heart of another is a dark forest, always..."--could this be true? And will there really be a time--after you've succeeded in every aspect of your ordinary life--that all you'd want to do is to get away from everyone who had been a part of you, even from your spouse or partner, like the one I have right there on the top left hand portion of this review?-
"He (Professor St. Peter) loved his family, he would make any sacrifice for them, but just now he couldn't live with them. He must be alone. That was more necessary to him than anything had ever been, more necessary, even, than his marriage had been in his vehement youth. He could not live with his family again--not even with Lillian. Especially not with Lillian! Her nature was intense and positive; it was like a chiselled surface, a die, a stamp upon which he could not be beaten out any longer. If her character were reduced to an heraldic device, it would be a hand (a beautiful hand) holding flaming arrows--the shafts of her violent loves and hates, her clear-cut ambitions.
"'In great misfortunes,' he told himself, 'people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in.'
Will we, as we grow old, and as claim have been universally observed, go back to the young boys and girls we all had been? Will we meet them again and embrace them, tightly, until we are them again? Is this the common great misfortune those of us who will not die young shall suffer in the end?
"St. Peter had always laughed at people who talked about 'day-dreams,' just as he laughed at people who naively confessed that they had an 'imagination.' All his life his mind had behaved in a positive fashion. When he was not at work, or being actively amused, he went to sleep. He had no twilight stage. But now he enjoyed this half-awake loafing with his brain as if it were a new sense, arriving late, like wisdom teeth. He found he could lie on his sand-spit by the lake for hours and watch the seven motionless pines drink up the sun. In the evening, after dinner, he could sit idle and watch the stars, with the same immobility. He was cultivating a novel mental dissipation--and enjoying a new friendship. Tom Outland had not come back again through the garden door (as he had so often done in dreams!), but another boy had: the boy the Professor had long ago left behind him in Kansas, in the Solomon Valley--the original, unmodified Godfrey St. Peter.
"This boy and he had meant, back in those far-away days, to live some sort of life together and to share good and bad fortune. They had not shared together, for the reason that they were unevenly matched. The young St. Peter who went to France to try his luck, had a more active mind than the twin he left behind in the Solomon Valley. After his adoption into the Thierault household, he remembered that other boy very rarely, in moments of home-sickness. After he met Lillian Ornsley, St. Peter forgot that boy had ever lived.
"But now that the vivid consciousness of an earlier state had come back to him, the Professor felt that life with this Kansas boy, little as there had been of it, was the realest of his lives, and that all the years between had been accidental and ordered from the outside. His career, his wife, his family, were not his life at all, but a chain of events which had happened to him. All these things had nothing to do with the person he was in the beginning.
"The man he was now, the personality his friends knew, had begun to grow strong during adolescence, during the years when he was always consciously or unconsciously conjugating the verb 'to love'--in society and solitude, with people, with books, with the sky and open country, in the lonesomeness of crowded city streets. When he met Lillian, it reached its maturity. From that time to this, existence had been a catching at handholds. One thing led to another and one development brought on another, and the design of his life had been the work of this secondary social man, the lover. It had been shaped by all the penalties and responsibilities of being and having been a lover. Because there was Lillian, there must be marriage and a salary. Because there was marriage, there were children. Because there were children, and fervour in the blood and brain, books were born as well as daughters. His histories, he was convinced, had no more to do with his original ego than his daughters had; they were a result of the high pressure of young manhood.
"The Kansas boy who had come back to St. Peter this summer was not a scholar. He was a primitive. He was only interested in earth and woods and water. Wherever sun sunned and rain rained and snow snowed, wherever life sprouted and decayed, places were alike to him. He was not nearly so cultivated as Tom's old cliff-dwellers must have been--and yet he was terribly wise. He seemed to be at the root of the matter; Desire under all desires, Truth under all truths. He seemed to know, among other things, that he was solitary and must always be so; he had never married, never been a father. He was earth, and would return to earth. When white clouds blew over the lake like bellying sails, when the seven pine-trees turned red in the declining sun, he felt satisfaction and said to himself merely: 'That is right.' Coming upon a curly root that thrust itself across his path, he said: 'That is it.' When the maple-leaves along the street began to turn yellow and waxy, and were soft to the touch,--like the skin on old faces,--he said: 'That is true; it is time.' All these recognitions gave him a kind of sad pleasure.
"When he was not dumbly, deeply recognizing, he was bringing up out of himself long-forgotten, memories of his early childhood, of his mother, his father, his grandfather. His grandfather, old Napoleon Godfrey, used to go about lost in profound, continuous meditation, sometimes chuckling to himself. Occasionally, at the family dinner-table, the old man would try to rouse himself, from motives of politeness, and would ask some kindly question--nearly always absurd and often the same one he had asked yesterday. The boys used to shout with laughter and wonder what profound matters could require such deep meditation, and make a man speak so foolishly about what was going on under his very eyes. St. Peter thought he was beginning to understand what the old man had been thinking about, though he himself was but fifty-two, and Napoleon had been well on his eighties. There are only a few years, at the last, in which man can consider his estate, and he thought he might be quite as near the end of his road as his grandfather had been in those days.
"The Professor knew, of course, that adolescence grafted a new creature into the original one, and that the complexion of a man's life was largely determined by how well or ill his original self and his nature as modified by sex rubbed on together.
"What he had not known was that, at a given time, that first nature could return to a man, unchanged by all the pursuits and passions and experiences of his life; untouched even by the tastes and intellectual activities which have been strong enough to give him distinction among his fellows and to have made for him, as they say, a name in the world. Perhaps this reversion did not often occur, but he knew it had happened to him, and he suspected it had happened to his grandfather. He did not regret his life, but he was indifferent to it. It seemed to him like the life of another person.
"Along with other states of mind which attended his realization of the boy Godfrey, came a conviction (he did not see it coming, it was there before he was aware of its approach) that he was nearing the end of his life...."
Ah, let us all grow old. Then, we will know if this story is true.
June 23, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
When I think of Willa Cather I think of My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop, both books that I loved. I think this book is not nearly as well-known although Wikipedia says it was a commercial success when published in 1925.
The protagonist in this novel is Godfrey St. Peter, a professor at a small university in the town of Hamilton with a view of Lake Michigan. The book is structured somewhat unusually. Part one is titled “Family,” part two is “Tom Outland’s Story,” and part three is “The Professor.”
In the first section, St. Peter reflects on his marriage, his daughters and, largely, the past, when a young man named Tom Outland came into his professional and family life. Tom Outland was a brilliant student who had a very unconventional upbringing whom the reader comes to know in part two. In the last part St. Peter reflects on the here and now and his current dissatisfaction with his family, his wife and his circumstances.
Without giving the entire plot away suffice it to say I found this book to be much deeper psychologically than Cather’s earlier works although her lyrical description of places is as strong as in her earlier works.
The ATY Goodreads challenge
Prompt #26 - Two books with the same word in title. (The other book will be The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa)
When I think of Willa Cather I think of My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop, both books that I loved. I think this book is not nearly as well-known although Wikipedia says it was a commercial success when published in 1925.
The protagonist in this novel is Godfrey St. Peter, a professor at a small university in the town of Hamilton with a view of Lake Michigan. The book is structured somewhat unusually. Part one is titled “Family,” part two is “Tom Outland’s Story,” and part three is “The Professor.”
In the first section, St. Peter reflects on his marriage, his daughters and, largely, the past, when a young man named Tom Outland came into his professional and family life. Tom Outland was a brilliant student who had a very unconventional upbringing whom the reader comes to know in part two. In the last part St. Peter reflects on the here and now and his current dissatisfaction with his family, his wife and his circumstances.
Without giving the entire plot away suffice it to say I found this book to be much deeper psychologically than Cather’s earlier works although her lyrical description of places is as strong as in her earlier works.
The ATY Goodreads challenge
Prompt #26 - Two books with the same word in title. (The other book will be The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa)
April 24, 2022
Willa Cather shines when she writes about landscapes and weather, and in the Professor’s House she continues to glorify the American southwest, and then adds the tranquility of Lake Michigan and the beauty of the coast of Spain.
The book is divided into three parts. The first and last sections are reflective of Professor St. Peter’s life, the middle section returns to the ancient Indian cliff dwellers and the relationship between two cowboys. This section bursts with history, larger than life characters, and, of course, the interaction between man and nature.
It’s thoughtful writing with strong themes from the early 1900’s in America. I did not find the Professor’s attitude fatalistic as some did, but a state of self-knowledge and self-awareness and that in spite of all the influences on his life, he is alone.
It was published in 1925 and, embarrassingly, there are some statements that reflect prejudices of the times. The structure of the book is also somewhat questionable but Cather’s writing keeps this at a 4.5 star.
The book is divided into three parts. The first and last sections are reflective of Professor St. Peter’s life, the middle section returns to the ancient Indian cliff dwellers and the relationship between two cowboys. This section bursts with history, larger than life characters, and, of course, the interaction between man and nature.
It’s thoughtful writing with strong themes from the early 1900’s in America. I did not find the Professor’s attitude fatalistic as some did, but a state of self-knowledge and self-awareness and that in spite of all the influences on his life, he is alone.
It was published in 1925 and, embarrassingly, there are some statements that reflect prejudices of the times. The structure of the book is also somewhat questionable but Cather’s writing keeps this at a 4.5 star.
August 7, 2023
"إن قلب الآخر غابة مُعتمة دائماً، أياً تكن درجة قُربك منه."
رواية "منزل البورفيسور" للكاتبة الأمريكية "ويلا كاثر" تُعد واحدة من كلاسيكيات الأدب الأمريكي، للعديد من الأسباب، لم أرى أياً منهم صراحة! رواية عادية وأقل من ذلك، شديدة الملل، حاولت أن أندمج مع عالمها عدة مرات حتى استسلمت لحقيقة أنها ليست رواية جيدة من وجهة نظري، رغم أن هناك عدة عوامل براقة، ولكن كلما حاولت الإنجذاب لتلك العوامل، تاهت وسط الملل المُسيطر، والإسهاب في الوصف لأشياء بعيدة عن الموضوع الأساسي، شعرت في عدة مرات أنني أقرأ رواية من أيام دراستي في الجامعة، لا بد أن أنظر إلى جميع التشبيهات والرمزيات ولولا ذلك لما تصبح الرواية رواية بشكلاً ما.
ليست لوني على الإطلاق، وأكثر ما أحبطني أن الترجمة جيدة جداً، مبذول فيها جهداً كبيراً، وهوامش توضيحية للكلمات المُختلفة، ولكن للآسف كانت لرواية أقل من التطلعات.
February 14, 2020
A tough one for Cather readers. She‘s subtle, mixes styles abruptly, leaves the seams, and appears open ended, inconclusive. But does that make it a kind of masterwork or a kind of failure? Any way you look at it, she‘s poking holes in the materialistic roaring twenties and somehow admiring the mystery of American prehistory. Not recommended to the unwary or quick to judge, it maybe rewards openness and reflection.
That was my Listy post three days ago. Cather is such an interesting author to track. Under appreciated in her time, and this work here was apparently panned and neglected until the 1980's. It's a loose work with an arguable flaw. Cather took a short story she wrote paralleling the discovery Mesa Verde, and the disinterest by American leading archaeologists, and wrote a different story around it, leaving the original stuck it in middle. In the surrounding story the mostly uneducated discoverer shows up in small college town along Lake Michigan, introduces himself to a professor, quotes the Aeneid in Latin at length, he's memorized it. He becomes a kind of spiritual guide to this professor, leaving behind a very mixed legacy after graduating and then dying fighting in WWI.
Tom Outland, our discoverer, turned into an inventor, and left behind a very valuable invention, the Outland Vacuum. But the rest of the book, the part outside that short story, isn't about Tom. It's about Napoleon Godfrey St. Peter, that professor, who had become a close friend of Tom, and whose daughter was even engaged to Tom. Godfrey's daughter is married now, and her husband has turned the rights to Tom's work in to real wealth, a 1920's burst of wealth story. But Godfrey isn't so comfortable with all this money, and, when he and his wife get a new house (using his own money), he doesn't want to be there in that house with his wife, he wants to stay in his old house in a closet where he hid away and did all his academic writing.
Cather is a strong prose artist, but up to this point her stories always have a pretty direct flow, and some distinct character paths that you can trace and put your finger on. But here with our professor, nothing is so clear. He's hovering between worlds, many worlds once you think about it, and his own uncertainty demands a light touch and great deal of subtly. The resulting novel is open-ended. It's clearly dealing with a new rich/poor divided and dishonest world, but it's also maybe doing several other things - maybe spiritual, maybe touching on homosexuality, Tom is maybe actually Virgil (making the Professor Dante touring the underworld). Whatever is happening, it's strained by finances and personalities that are doing more than what's on the surface. And, as this is Cather, these are all rich and rewarding personalities to spend time with.
This is recommended to those who already like Cather, and are willing to risk some uncertainty. You might love this book, you might find a great deal to think about (I hope most readers do). But also there is an anticlimactic feel that might leave you unsatisfied.
-----------------------------------------------
6. The Professor's House by Willa Cather
published: 1925
format: 258-page Paperback
acquired: December
read: Jan 13 – Feb 3
time reading: 6 hr 37 min, 1.5 min/page
rating: 3½
locations: somewhere along Lake Michigan, New Mexico with a fictionalized Mesa Verde, Washington, D.C.
about the author American, December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947
June 26, 2008
I actually read this before. I have a habit of re-reading books I like during the summer. Why? Who knows?
I read this for a grad class on Cather and it blew me away. Strangely intense little book. At first, it doesn't seem to be about much, but it's worth a close reading.
Her best known books (O Pioneers, My Antonia) aren't really her best. They are often taught at the high school level, and I think people often think of her as slight. But some of her books, like The Professor's House, pack a real intellectual punch.
Highly recommended.
I read this for a grad class on Cather and it blew me away. Strangely intense little book. At first, it doesn't seem to be about much, but it's worth a close reading.
Her best known books (O Pioneers, My Antonia) aren't really her best. They are often taught at the high school level, and I think people often think of her as slight. But some of her books, like The Professor's House, pack a real intellectual punch.
Highly recommended.
March 13, 2019
"The Professor’s House" foi publicado em 1925, quando Willa Cather tinha acabado de passar os 50, idade relevante pela temática de fundo escolhida: a crise existencial de meia-idade. O livro, como indica o título, foca-se num professor universitário, no topo da carreira, resignado pela falta de objetivos, passando os seus dias a rememorar um passado que não volta. Não tem, nem de perto, a acuidade psicológica de "Stoner" (1965) de John Williams, mas o modo como Cather desenrola os personagens e as suas tramas, em tempos diferentes e provoca a intersecção entre mundos aparentemente desconexos, acaba gerando uma reflexão rica e imensamente desafiante.
O início da obra começa de um modo algo lento, com personagens pedantes, pouco atrativos, mas vai-se tornando familiar, até que na segunda parte muda completamente de registo. O segundo momento é preenchido por um texto que começou por ser um conto e Cather depois transformou neste livro. Quando descobri o processo de construção do livro, fiquei reticente quanto à sua leitura, já que me soava a aproveitamento e potencial extensão artificial do mesmo. Contudo o facto de se tratar de um campus novel, género que me interessa particularmente, acabou fazendo com que o lesse. E assim, iniciado esse segundo momento, senti inicialmente que não fazia qualquer sentido, que era um rasgo completamente ao lado. Mas o texto vai evoluindo, o personagem vai-se mostrando e dando, e vamos compreendendo o que está Cather a tentar fazer. No momento em que ligamos aquilo que parecem ser duas histórias diferentes, a leitura eleva-se, algo que é ainda mais enfatizado pela terceira parte, a final do livro.
Não vou detalhar nada do que acontece, menos ainda da experiência, já que os sentimentos proporcionados me tocaram de forma bastante pessoal e profunda, algo que não tenho interesse em discutir aqui de forma pública. Contudo, conto voltar ao livro num outro texto a propósito da comparação entre o sistema universitário em 1925 e hoje.
Publicado no VI:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
O início da obra começa de um modo algo lento, com personagens pedantes, pouco atrativos, mas vai-se tornando familiar, até que na segunda parte muda completamente de registo. O segundo momento é preenchido por um texto que começou por ser um conto e Cather depois transformou neste livro. Quando descobri o processo de construção do livro, fiquei reticente quanto à sua leitura, já que me soava a aproveitamento e potencial extensão artificial do mesmo. Contudo o facto de se tratar de um campus novel, género que me interessa particularmente, acabou fazendo com que o lesse. E assim, iniciado esse segundo momento, senti inicialmente que não fazia qualquer sentido, que era um rasgo completamente ao lado. Mas o texto vai evoluindo, o personagem vai-se mostrando e dando, e vamos compreendendo o que está Cather a tentar fazer. No momento em que ligamos aquilo que parecem ser duas histórias diferentes, a leitura eleva-se, algo que é ainda mais enfatizado pela terceira parte, a final do livro.
Não vou detalhar nada do que acontece, menos ainda da experiência, já que os sentimentos proporcionados me tocaram de forma bastante pessoal e profunda, algo que não tenho interesse em discutir aqui de forma pública. Contudo, conto voltar ao livro num outro texto a propósito da comparação entre o sistema universitário em 1925 e hoje.
Publicado no VI:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
October 19, 2022
How The Imagination Persists
Willa Cather's early novels of life on the American prairie, such as "My Antonia" and "O Pioneers" are well known. Her novel "The Professor's House" is much less familiar, but it is Cather at her best.
The book tells the story of Professor Godfrey St. Peter. When we meet St. Peter, he is a respected academic and scholar, age 52, who has written an eight volume history called "Spanish Explorers" dealing with the Spanish in Mexico and the American Southwest. He has persevered in his writing and received awards. As a result, St. Peter and his family are able to build a new house and move away from the ramshackle rented quarters in which the Professor and his wife have lived and raised their family.
The family consists of two daughters who, when we meet them, have married and gone their own ways. The younger daughter is married to a struggling news reporter who has impressed his bosses by his ability to turn out hack prose-poems for the paper on a daily basis.
The older daughter was at one time engaged to a man named Tom Outland who is, perhaps the real hero of the book. Outland invented an important scientific device and willed it to her upon his death in WW I. She then marries an engineer and entrepreneur who develops and markets Outland's invention. The couple build a large home and name in "Outland".
The book tells a story of change, frustration and acceptance. The Professor is unhappy with the new home and refuses to leave his old study. His relationship with his wife and daughters has cooled. He is unhappy with the modernization of the university and of academic learning with its emphasis on technology and business rather than study and reflection. Most importantly, he is dissatisfied with his honors, his leisure, and his comforts. He thinks of his youth of promise and study, of his life of solitude, and yearns for adventure and meaning.
The first part of the book tells the story of the Professor and his family. The second, shorter, part is a flash-back and tells the story of Tom Outland whom Professor St. Peter befriended many years before and who grew up in mysterious circumstances in New Mexico. We learn in the second part of the book of Outland's life on the railroad and on the range. We see his somewhat ambiguous friendship with an older man and their discovery of an ancient Indian village on the mesas. There is a wonderfully drawn picture of Washington D.C. as Tom tries, without success, to interest officials in his discovery.
In the third part of the book, the Professor reflects on Tom and on his own life. It seems to me that Tom's life mirrors the theme of the Professor's lengthy studies in "Spanish Explorers" It is the kind of life in its rawness, closeness to nature, and independence that the Professor thinks he would have liked to lead rather than settling for a middle-class life of conformity, comfort, and boredom. We see how the Professor tries to struggle on.
There is a frustration built into life when we learn we are not the persons we dreamed of becoming. This is a poignant, beautifully-written story of American life and of how and why people fall short of themselves.
Robin Friedman
Willa Cather's early novels of life on the American prairie, such as "My Antonia" and "O Pioneers" are well known. Her novel "The Professor's House" is much less familiar, but it is Cather at her best.
The book tells the story of Professor Godfrey St. Peter. When we meet St. Peter, he is a respected academic and scholar, age 52, who has written an eight volume history called "Spanish Explorers" dealing with the Spanish in Mexico and the American Southwest. He has persevered in his writing and received awards. As a result, St. Peter and his family are able to build a new house and move away from the ramshackle rented quarters in which the Professor and his wife have lived and raised their family.
The family consists of two daughters who, when we meet them, have married and gone their own ways. The younger daughter is married to a struggling news reporter who has impressed his bosses by his ability to turn out hack prose-poems for the paper on a daily basis.
The older daughter was at one time engaged to a man named Tom Outland who is, perhaps the real hero of the book. Outland invented an important scientific device and willed it to her upon his death in WW I. She then marries an engineer and entrepreneur who develops and markets Outland's invention. The couple build a large home and name in "Outland".
The book tells a story of change, frustration and acceptance. The Professor is unhappy with the new home and refuses to leave his old study. His relationship with his wife and daughters has cooled. He is unhappy with the modernization of the university and of academic learning with its emphasis on technology and business rather than study and reflection. Most importantly, he is dissatisfied with his honors, his leisure, and his comforts. He thinks of his youth of promise and study, of his life of solitude, and yearns for adventure and meaning.
The first part of the book tells the story of the Professor and his family. The second, shorter, part is a flash-back and tells the story of Tom Outland whom Professor St. Peter befriended many years before and who grew up in mysterious circumstances in New Mexico. We learn in the second part of the book of Outland's life on the railroad and on the range. We see his somewhat ambiguous friendship with an older man and their discovery of an ancient Indian village on the mesas. There is a wonderfully drawn picture of Washington D.C. as Tom tries, without success, to interest officials in his discovery.
In the third part of the book, the Professor reflects on Tom and on his own life. It seems to me that Tom's life mirrors the theme of the Professor's lengthy studies in "Spanish Explorers" It is the kind of life in its rawness, closeness to nature, and independence that the Professor thinks he would have liked to lead rather than settling for a middle-class life of conformity, comfort, and boredom. We see how the Professor tries to struggle on.
There is a frustration built into life when we learn we are not the persons we dreamed of becoming. This is a poignant, beautifully-written story of American life and of how and why people fall short of themselves.
Robin Friedman
January 28, 2020
My first book by Willa Cather was O Pioneers!, about about which I felt very lukewarm. I picked this up at the annual library book sale, but due to that other experience, I've let it languish. My GR friends have said they like how she writes, and that was sort of the one thing I remember didn't especially impress me. But they are right, because that was the thing I recognized in the very first pages of this. It is varied and interesting.
This novel is separated into three parts. The first, and longest is The Family. Cather introduces and develops her characters. The middle section is Tom Outland's Story. Cather gives us back story on one character, told in the first person. It is an interesting story and the most western/rural of the three. The final section is The Professor. At barely 25 pages, it brings us to the present when the professor dwells on how life has brought him to this point in time. Each of these parts was different from the others. Although I liked them all, my favorite was Tom Outland's Story. It is a story that centers on the beauty of the west and respects those who lived there before Europeans crossed the Atlantic.
I also have on my shelf, Death Comes for the Archbishop. I hope I don't wait as long for it as I did for this novel. This one grew on me, getting better with every page turn, eventually climbing into the 5-star group.
This novel is separated into three parts. The first, and longest is The Family. Cather introduces and develops her characters. The middle section is Tom Outland's Story. Cather gives us back story on one character, told in the first person. It is an interesting story and the most western/rural of the three. The final section is The Professor. At barely 25 pages, it brings us to the present when the professor dwells on how life has brought him to this point in time. Each of these parts was different from the others. Although I liked them all, my favorite was Tom Outland's Story. It is a story that centers on the beauty of the west and respects those who lived there before Europeans crossed the Atlantic.
I also have on my shelf, Death Comes for the Archbishop. I hope I don't wait as long for it as I did for this novel. This one grew on me, getting better with every page turn, eventually climbing into the 5-star group.
January 2, 2015
Well, this was very pleasant and all, but...have you ever heard of a bridge version of a book? Don't feel bad if you haven't; I just made it up. What it is is you know how there are abridged versions of books, where they include the important and exciting parts and chop out some of the meandering and tangential stuff? Have you ever wondered what happens to that stuff they chop out? Well, that ends up in a bridge version of the book, and that must be the version I read because nothing fucking happened.
July 3, 2023
Well, this was interesting. If I hadn’t liked it I would have had plenty to criticise, esp in the structure. But I loved it. It definitely feels like two stories tacked together, but they do go together very well. With Cather, it is her poignant wistfulness which stays with you. It’s a kind of contented sadness. Her tone feels more important than the stories themselves in the end.
February 4, 2012
On the face of it, Professor Godfrey St. Peter has a good life. As Cather’s novel opens, he is married, with two grown daughters, Rosamund and Kathleen, who are also married. He has for many years taught at a small college in Ohio, where he is respected and esteemed. He has produced his magnum opus – a multi-volume work on the Spanish explorers of North America – which has won him a distinguished literary prize. With the money from that prize, St. Peter has built his wife Lillian a grand new home.
But there is a problem. He does not want to live there.
He prefers the older house. More specifically, he prefers the room that has served, for many years, as his study. It is on the top floor:
"The low ceiling sloped down on three sides, the slant being interrupted on the east by a single square window, swinging outward on hinges and held ajar by a hook in the sill.This was the sole opening for light and air. Walls and ceiling alike were covered with a yellow paper which had once been very ugly, but had faded into inoffensive neutrality. The matting on the floor was worn and scratchy. Against the wall stood an old walnut table, with one leaf up, holding piles of orderly papers. Before it was a cane-backed office chair that turned on a screw."
The professor is not always alone in this room: he shares it for some weeks in the spring and the fall with Augusta, the dressmaker who outfits his wife and daughters. As an aid to this work, Augusta uses two dress forms, which are stored in the attic study year round. St. Peter enjoys Augusta’s company; likewise, the two dress forms. When she offers to remove them, he objects vehemently. And so they remain there.
There is a young man in this novel whose character acts as a bridge between two worlds. He is Tom Outland. Having spent his youth in New Mexico, Tom comes east to acquire an education. (It is this intention that brings him to the attention of Godfrey St. Peter.) There’s much more to this aspect of the novel, but I won’t dwell upon it now. I will only say that along with his friend Rodney Blake, Tom Outland had the great good fortune to discover and explore a deserted city atop a mesa. The details of this extraordinary adventure are contained in the second section of the novel, “Tom Outland’s Story.”
Tom’s descriptions of this otherworldly place are intensely lyrical, yet even so, he feels that words fail him, or very nearly so. Here he first catches sight of the city on the mesa:
"It was such rough scrambling that I was soon in a warm sweat under my damp clothes. In stopping to take breath, I happened to glance up at the canyon wall. I wish I could tell you what I saw there, just as I saw it, on that first morning, through a veil of lightly falling snow. Far up above me, a thousand feet or so, set in a great cavern in the face of a cliff, I saw a little city of stone, asleep. It was as still as sculpture–and something like that….
There was something symmetrical and powerful about the swell of the masonry. The tower was the fine thing that held all the jumble of houses together and made them mean something. It was red in colour, even on that grey day. In sunlight in was the color of winter oak-leaves. A fringe of cedars grew along the edge of the cavern, like a garden. They were the only living things. Such silence and stillness and repose–immortal repose. That village sat looking down into the canyon with the calmness of eternity. The falling snow-flakes, sprinkling the pinons, gave it a special kind of solemnity. I can’t describe it."
But of course he is describing it, very effectively and very vividly. He concludes with this stunning realization:
"I knew at once that I had come upon the city of some extinct civilization, hidden away in this inaccessible mesa for centuries, preserved in the dry air and almost perpetual sunlight like a fly in amber, guarded by the cliffs and the river and the desert."
(In the novel, this place of incredibly pristine beauty is called the Blue Mesa. It was actually modeled on Mesa Verde, which was discovered in 1888 by Colorado rancher Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law Charlie Mason. It became a national Park in 1906; Willa Cather first went there in 1915.)
I remember that the first time I read The Professor’s House, I felt slightly impatient with Tom Outland��s narrative. It represents a complete break with the story of Godfrey St. Peter, his family, and his university colleagues. I had become very absorbed in the professor’s professional and personal challenges, and I resented this sudden change of focus. But I now realize that it was very artfully done. Tom Outland’s story is of a whole different order of magnitude, and Tom Outland himself is that rarest of beings, possessed as he is of a great intellectual curiosity matched with an equally great intelligence. These qualities are coupled with a natural warmth and almost unbounded enthusiasm. He seems destined for great things. Upon meeting him, St. Peter perceives all this almost at once. He perceives it, and he sees in this extraordinary young man a mirror of his own youthful aspirations.
What has become of those aspirations? And what is there now in the professor’s world that can infuse his life with new meaning? How much of ourselves are we called upon to sacrifice in order to insure the well being of those close to us? These are the crucial questions that dominate the novel’s brief and powerful final section.
Critic E.K. Brown sums up the problem this way:
"In the first part it was plain that the professor did not wish to live in his new house, and did not wish to enter into the sere phase of his life correlative with it. At the beginning of the third part it becomes plain that he cannot indefinitely continue to make the old attic study the theatre of his life, that he cannot go on prolonging or attempting to prolong his prime, the phase of his life correlative with that. The personality of his mature years–the personality that had expressed itself powerfully and in the main happily in his teaching, his scholarship, his love for his wife, his domesticity–is now quickly receding, and nothing new is flowing in."
(Such a beautifully apt locution, “the sere phase of his life.” I have no idea who E.K. Brown is, but the eloquence and insight that characterize this brief piece remind the reader that literary criticism can be a noble calling. The essay can be found in Modern Critical Views: Willa Cather, a collection is edited and introduced by Harold Bloom, whose life’s work serves as a similar reminder.)
I’ve been deeply moved by my third reading of The Professor’s House. I may read it yet again. For one thing, the writing is wonderful, transcendent with out being the least bit extravagant.
The critic E.K. Brown encourages the reader to ponder the true significance of houses in this novel: the professor’s dwelling places, both the old and the new, the grand country house being built by Rosamund and her husband – and the community of small houses atop the Blue Mesa.
And then, of course, there is that final house, that final bed, the inevitable ending that S.t Peter finds occupying his thoughts more and more. At one point, these lines of verse come to him:
For thee a house was built
Ere thou wast born;
For thee a mould was made
Ere thou of woman camest.
Alone in his attic study, the professor meditates on this:
"Lying on his old couch, he could almost believe himself in that house already. The sagging springs were like the sham upholstery that is put in coffins. Just the equivocal American way of dealing with serious facts, he reflected. Why pretend that it is possible to soften that last hard bed?"
And oh, the leaden weight of those last four monosyllables!
But there is a problem. He does not want to live there.
He prefers the older house. More specifically, he prefers the room that has served, for many years, as his study. It is on the top floor:
"The low ceiling sloped down on three sides, the slant being interrupted on the east by a single square window, swinging outward on hinges and held ajar by a hook in the sill.This was the sole opening for light and air. Walls and ceiling alike were covered with a yellow paper which had once been very ugly, but had faded into inoffensive neutrality. The matting on the floor was worn and scratchy. Against the wall stood an old walnut table, with one leaf up, holding piles of orderly papers. Before it was a cane-backed office chair that turned on a screw."
The professor is not always alone in this room: he shares it for some weeks in the spring and the fall with Augusta, the dressmaker who outfits his wife and daughters. As an aid to this work, Augusta uses two dress forms, which are stored in the attic study year round. St. Peter enjoys Augusta’s company; likewise, the two dress forms. When she offers to remove them, he objects vehemently. And so they remain there.
There is a young man in this novel whose character acts as a bridge between two worlds. He is Tom Outland. Having spent his youth in New Mexico, Tom comes east to acquire an education. (It is this intention that brings him to the attention of Godfrey St. Peter.) There’s much more to this aspect of the novel, but I won’t dwell upon it now. I will only say that along with his friend Rodney Blake, Tom Outland had the great good fortune to discover and explore a deserted city atop a mesa. The details of this extraordinary adventure are contained in the second section of the novel, “Tom Outland’s Story.”
Tom’s descriptions of this otherworldly place are intensely lyrical, yet even so, he feels that words fail him, or very nearly so. Here he first catches sight of the city on the mesa:
"It was such rough scrambling that I was soon in a warm sweat under my damp clothes. In stopping to take breath, I happened to glance up at the canyon wall. I wish I could tell you what I saw there, just as I saw it, on that first morning, through a veil of lightly falling snow. Far up above me, a thousand feet or so, set in a great cavern in the face of a cliff, I saw a little city of stone, asleep. It was as still as sculpture–and something like that….
There was something symmetrical and powerful about the swell of the masonry. The tower was the fine thing that held all the jumble of houses together and made them mean something. It was red in colour, even on that grey day. In sunlight in was the color of winter oak-leaves. A fringe of cedars grew along the edge of the cavern, like a garden. They were the only living things. Such silence and stillness and repose–immortal repose. That village sat looking down into the canyon with the calmness of eternity. The falling snow-flakes, sprinkling the pinons, gave it a special kind of solemnity. I can’t describe it."
But of course he is describing it, very effectively and very vividly. He concludes with this stunning realization:
"I knew at once that I had come upon the city of some extinct civilization, hidden away in this inaccessible mesa for centuries, preserved in the dry air and almost perpetual sunlight like a fly in amber, guarded by the cliffs and the river and the desert."
(In the novel, this place of incredibly pristine beauty is called the Blue Mesa. It was actually modeled on Mesa Verde, which was discovered in 1888 by Colorado rancher Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law Charlie Mason. It became a national Park in 1906; Willa Cather first went there in 1915.)
I remember that the first time I read The Professor’s House, I felt slightly impatient with Tom Outland��s narrative. It represents a complete break with the story of Godfrey St. Peter, his family, and his university colleagues. I had become very absorbed in the professor’s professional and personal challenges, and I resented this sudden change of focus. But I now realize that it was very artfully done. Tom Outland’s story is of a whole different order of magnitude, and Tom Outland himself is that rarest of beings, possessed as he is of a great intellectual curiosity matched with an equally great intelligence. These qualities are coupled with a natural warmth and almost unbounded enthusiasm. He seems destined for great things. Upon meeting him, St. Peter perceives all this almost at once. He perceives it, and he sees in this extraordinary young man a mirror of his own youthful aspirations.
What has become of those aspirations? And what is there now in the professor’s world that can infuse his life with new meaning? How much of ourselves are we called upon to sacrifice in order to insure the well being of those close to us? These are the crucial questions that dominate the novel’s brief and powerful final section.
Critic E.K. Brown sums up the problem this way:
"In the first part it was plain that the professor did not wish to live in his new house, and did not wish to enter into the sere phase of his life correlative with it. At the beginning of the third part it becomes plain that he cannot indefinitely continue to make the old attic study the theatre of his life, that he cannot go on prolonging or attempting to prolong his prime, the phase of his life correlative with that. The personality of his mature years–the personality that had expressed itself powerfully and in the main happily in his teaching, his scholarship, his love for his wife, his domesticity–is now quickly receding, and nothing new is flowing in."
(Such a beautifully apt locution, “the sere phase of his life.” I have no idea who E.K. Brown is, but the eloquence and insight that characterize this brief piece remind the reader that literary criticism can be a noble calling. The essay can be found in Modern Critical Views: Willa Cather, a collection is edited and introduced by Harold Bloom, whose life’s work serves as a similar reminder.)
I’ve been deeply moved by my third reading of The Professor’s House. I may read it yet again. For one thing, the writing is wonderful, transcendent with out being the least bit extravagant.
The critic E.K. Brown encourages the reader to ponder the true significance of houses in this novel: the professor’s dwelling places, both the old and the new, the grand country house being built by Rosamund and her husband – and the community of small houses atop the Blue Mesa.
And then, of course, there is that final house, that final bed, the inevitable ending that S.t Peter finds occupying his thoughts more and more. At one point, these lines of verse come to him:
For thee a house was built
Ere thou wast born;
For thee a mould was made
Ere thou of woman camest.
Alone in his attic study, the professor meditates on this:
"Lying on his old couch, he could almost believe himself in that house already. The sagging springs were like the sham upholstery that is put in coffins. Just the equivocal American way of dealing with serious facts, he reflected. Why pretend that it is possible to soften that last hard bed?"
And oh, the leaden weight of those last four monosyllables!
May 29, 2017
A beautifully introspective little novel, in The Professor’s House Cather introduces us to Godfrey St. Peter a mid-western university professor. St Peter and his family have lived for many years in an ugly though rather loved house which they are finally moving out of – their two daughters married and off their hands, finally Mrs St Peter can have the house she has dreamed of. As the contents of the old house are moved into the new house, the Professor remains in his study in the old house – surrounded by the objects he has lived with for so long. Books, papers, his old couch, and the dress making forms left behind by Augusta with whom Professor St Peter has shared his study twice a year – and now feels oddly at home with.
“The low ceiling sloped down on three sides, the slant being interrupted on the east by a single square window, swinging outward on hinges and held ajar by a hook in the sill. Walls and ceiling alike were covered with a yellow paper which had once been very ugly, but had faded into inoffensive neutrality. The matting on the floor was worn and scratchy. Against the wall stood an old walnut table, with one leaf up, holding piles of orderly papers. Before it was a cane-backed office chair that turned on a screw. This dark den had for many years been the Professor’s study.”
As the summer continues the Professor is less and less inclined to make that one last move – and relocate his attic study to the new house. Instead he keeps on the old house, making his way each day to his beloved study – surrounding himself with the objects with which he is most familiar.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2017/...
“The low ceiling sloped down on three sides, the slant being interrupted on the east by a single square window, swinging outward on hinges and held ajar by a hook in the sill. Walls and ceiling alike were covered with a yellow paper which had once been very ugly, but had faded into inoffensive neutrality. The matting on the floor was worn and scratchy. Against the wall stood an old walnut table, with one leaf up, holding piles of orderly papers. Before it was a cane-backed office chair that turned on a screw. This dark den had for many years been the Professor’s study.”
As the summer continues the Professor is less and less inclined to make that one last move – and relocate his attic study to the new house. Instead he keeps on the old house, making his way each day to his beloved study – surrounding himself with the objects with which he is most familiar.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2017/...
October 17, 2015
This is my first Willa Cather book and I am not sure I will read another. The first chapter was boring, but the book picked up after that. Professor St. Peter is a successful professor and author. He seems to have a successful marriage with two married daughters. But St. Peter is not content or satisfied with what he has accomplished. He starts reviewing his life and finds he has lost an essential part of himself.
I found there were pieces of the story line that just disappeared without resolution. One section wasn't even about the professor, but about Tom Outland, a protegee of the professor. I am unsure why it was included in the book; it didn't seem necessary.
I'm hoping that my Goodread's group will help me put the pieces together.
I found there were pieces of the story line that just disappeared without resolution. One section wasn't even about the professor, but about Tom Outland, a protegee of the professor. I am unsure why it was included in the book; it didn't seem necessary.
I'm hoping that my Goodread's group will help me put the pieces together.
May 14, 2022
Willa Cather’s The Professor House really evokes all the feelings a professional has toward the end of a satisfying career. It also examines the issues of a long marriage and relationships with adult children.
Beautiful writing. With part of the novel set in the majestic southwestern United States, and part of the novel set in the Midwest, readers can experience the contrast between the two parts of the country following the First World War.
This is just one of many Cather novels that I have read. A Lost Lady is my favorite, but The Professor’s House is a close second.
Beautiful writing. With part of the novel set in the majestic southwestern United States, and part of the novel set in the Midwest, readers can experience the contrast between the two parts of the country following the First World War.
This is just one of many Cather novels that I have read. A Lost Lady is my favorite, but The Professor’s House is a close second.
January 17, 2020
Five stars for the writing. Three stars for what I felt were some structural issues. So four stars as a happy medium but that doesn't do justice to Cather's prose.
It's rare in this day that I wish for a novel to be longer--terse and compact seems to be my thing, now--but for Cather's gorgeous, elegiac novel of regret, rumination, and solitude, I would have gladly read more pages.
It's rare in this day that I wish for a novel to be longer--terse and compact seems to be my thing, now--but for Cather's gorgeous, elegiac novel of regret, rumination, and solitude, I would have gladly read more pages.
July 2, 2023
Since 2012, "The Professor's House" has been on my to-read list. But I couldn't find this book anywhere. At that time, I found an incomplete .pdf version of the book, which was very confusing to me. Then last month, I finally found it in the library and started reading it a couple of days ago.
Honestly, this book takes some time to get used to, at least for me. The language is very different from now. Published in 1925, people spoke differently back then, more polite and more flowery. We meet St. Peter, a professor, whose life was actually quite smooth. He has found stable work as a professor at his hometown's university, he has a long and happy marriage with Lillian, when he was young, he spent brilliant years in France, he has two daughters who are married and lead their own lives, and during his lifetime he met an extraordinary young man named Tom Outland. Somehow the book reminded me of Stoner, or Stoner was heavily inspired by this. Maybe it's the academic setting and the professor protagonist.
Anyway, the structure of the book is interesting. There are three big chapters. The story is first told in the voice of St. Peter, but then shifts to a 3rd person narration. The second chapter is entirely dedicated to the adventures of Tom Outland and the last chapter is the shortest and a conclusion of St. Peter's thoughts. From what I understood, he is not very happy with how life turned out even though, he was very lucky in many aspects (work, marriage, money). Yet he is not happy, but he comes to terms with it at the end of the book. Maybe the ending was a bit too sentimental for me. I feel like I didn't get it.
But there's a certain tone and mood in this book that held my attention. I just recently watched the Mexican film Roma, and it also held my attention this way even though the story was a bit slow-going. I loved the parts when Tom Outland discovers a village on the mesa. I never heard of this and it is something I want to read more about definitely. So many things to discover.
Honestly, this book takes some time to get used to, at least for me. The language is very different from now. Published in 1925, people spoke differently back then, more polite and more flowery. We meet St. Peter, a professor, whose life was actually quite smooth. He has found stable work as a professor at his hometown's university, he has a long and happy marriage with Lillian, when he was young, he spent brilliant years in France, he has two daughters who are married and lead their own lives, and during his lifetime he met an extraordinary young man named Tom Outland. Somehow the book reminded me of Stoner, or Stoner was heavily inspired by this. Maybe it's the academic setting and the professor protagonist.
Anyway, the structure of the book is interesting. There are three big chapters. The story is first told in the voice of St. Peter, but then shifts to a 3rd person narration. The second chapter is entirely dedicated to the adventures of Tom Outland and the last chapter is the shortest and a conclusion of St. Peter's thoughts. From what I understood, he is not very happy with how life turned out even though, he was very lucky in many aspects (work, marriage, money). Yet he is not happy, but he comes to terms with it at the end of the book. Maybe the ending was a bit too sentimental for me. I feel like I didn't get it.
But there's a certain tone and mood in this book that held my attention. I just recently watched the Mexican film Roma, and it also held my attention this way even though the story was a bit slow-going. I loved the parts when Tom Outland discovers a village on the mesa. I never heard of this and it is something I want to read more about definitely. So many things to discover.
February 15, 2016
The Professor’s House is essentially an exploration of change and regret. Godfrey St. Peter, is a professor at a small mid-western college. He has reached a transition point where he has completed his life’s work (a multi-volume history called "Spanish Adventurers in North America"), achieved a considerable amount of recognition and status in his field, and finally has the funds to build a new house for his wife. But as the time comes to move to the new house, St. Peter is more and more reluctant to leave the old one, in particular the attic study where he spent so many hours writing his book. On the surface, there’s no reason for St. Peter to be other than happy, but it’s clear he has regrets and reservations about moving forward with his life as it is.
The book is very minimalistic. You are given a limited amount of information about the characters and selected events in their lives. The characters are intriguing and I continually wanted more detail, more background. But there’s only just enough to tell the story, and in the end I guess it was sufficient for me to understand and draw my own conclusions, if not totally satisfying.
I have read and loved many of Cather’s books, but never got around to reading this one. As always I appreciate her simple prose and characters that are complex, interesting and human.
The book is very minimalistic. You are given a limited amount of information about the characters and selected events in their lives. The characters are intriguing and I continually wanted more detail, more background. But there’s only just enough to tell the story, and in the end I guess it was sufficient for me to understand and draw my own conclusions, if not totally satisfying.
I have read and loved many of Cather’s books, but never got around to reading this one. As always I appreciate her simple prose and characters that are complex, interesting and human.
November 28, 2021
I love Willa Cather but this was not my favorite. Seemed to be missing something that I usually enjoy in her writing.
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