As a student of literature, I found this to be an insightful and delightful investigation into the works of one of America's least understood authors. Willa Cather's works, as Middleton points out, lead directly into the Modernist genre. Jo Ann Middleton has constructed an excellent analysis of this too often overlooked American author. Drawing on Cather's uniques writing style, Middleton explains Cather's techniques and style in a manner that is beneficial for literature scholar and neophyte alike.

This landmark work is an insightful and brilliant analysis of the work of Cather. Valuable for Cather fans and newbies alike!

This is quite simply the most breathtaking performance by a narrator that I've ever heard. This collection of truly great American short stories, most of which were written in the last 75 years, ranges throughout the country...north, south, east and west. It is just unbelievable to me that any single person could sit down and perform all these stories with an all-encompassing depth of comprehension and a complete mastery of accents...and then on top of that to provide absolutely believable voice characterizations that are totally distinct from the voice of the narrator. This guy Griffin can do a completely convincing child or woman, and then in the next breath he's either back to the narrator voice or that of a male character. I teach literature classes at the high school and junior college level and I have received outstanding results in getting my students to listen to these fine stories without complaint where previously I had to beg and cajole them to read. These recordings have engendered many a lively classroom discussion. The music and sound effects are perfect, never intruding...always in the background when you most appreciate them. You'll never hear Faulkner done better than here. Absolutely fabulous work!

In this pathbreaking analysis of Cather's major novels, D.C. Peck sets a new standard for placing and understanding Cather in her historical context. A must read for both Cather scholars and anyone who has enjoyed her fiction.

William Gass recently observed that participants in contemporary writing workshops are not interested in literature. They are interested in writing, in "expressing a self as shallow as a saucer." Willa Cather was interested in literature, in art, in permanence, and the essays in Not Under Forty memorably illustrate her beliefs. Her seriousness and integrity are very much needed in an era when acclaimed young novelists use their acknowledgements to thank Mom for reading their manuscripts and correcting their punctuation.

This compelling saga of torrid passion, blood-curdling murder, and greed immediately seized my attention, and I am convinced that Willa Cather's adroit rhetoric will have the same effect on all the other skeptical readers out there. Ingeniously composed O Pioneers paints an ineffable vignette of the backdrop of the enigma more commonly known as the prairie. Growing up in this environment is Alexandra and her three brothers, who have struggled against the hardships and toils of the untamed land all their lives. It is through these afflictions and all of life's tribulations that the Bergsons grow robust in the soul as well as in the body.

The realistic fiction novel begins thirty years ago in the provincial town of Hanover, anchored on the outskirts of the Nebraska tableland. Here, two protagonists are introduced: Alexandra, a headstrong adolescent and her frail, five-year-old brother Emil who, at the time is fully dependent on his sister. The latter shows so much compassion for a kitten clutching the top of a pole in fear that he brings his tender heart and vulnerability into awareness. The sister on the other hand is completely different. " . . . His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she walked rapidly and resolutely, as if she knew exactly where she was going and what she was going to do next." When the father, John Bergson dies, it is with this sort of resolution that Alexandra makes the fateful decision to purchase two homesteads by the money collected in selling their cattle and crops. "Under the shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring."

It is now sixteen years after John Bergson has died, and the white shaft beside his grave signifies that his wife now lies beside him. Were he to rise from the shaggy coat of the prairie, he would not know the "country under which he has been asleep" for it has vanished forever. " . . . One looks out over a vast checkerboard, marked off in squares of wheat and corn; light and dark, dark and light . . . The rich soil yields heavy harvests; the dry, bracing climate and the smoothness of the land makes labor easy for man and beasts." The previous passage conveys the effect that barely two decades makes on the unpredictable land as well as Cather's virtuoso storytelling skills and unique way of adding life and color to her words. The inevitable time takes its toll on the inhabitants of this country as well. Emil Bergson is now barely recognizable for his stormy gray eyes peer out from under an intent brow. He is not quite the delicate child he was years ago, because now he is a splendid figure of a boy, with a body as stocky and built as a young pine tree. Though caught up with Emil's transformation, one should not forget Alexandra, though she has changed very little. In spite of turning into a sunny, vigorous woman, one can sense in her eyes that she is still the deliberate and placid girl she used to be. Marie Shabata was once Emil's favorite playmate in their childhood, and their friendship has remained even after all those years. Jovial Marie's dancing tiger-lily eyes and delightful nature has earned her the adoration of all that knows her. Formerly Marie Tovesky, the cheerful girl is now married to Frank Shabata. Though quite a handsome man, even in his agitation, Frank is a rash and violent man and altogether the contrary of his charming wife. In this section of the book, we are also introduced to a long-lost friend, Carl Linstrum, who is travelling back from St. Louis. Out of the group, this young man is probably the most changed. One distinctly recognizes the many rings under the boy's eyes, marking trouble and desperation. Carl almost appears to "shrink within himself" as if to hold something back that is too painful to be divulged.

Throughout the book, the reader may sense an obscure barricade between Marie Shabata and Emil Bergson that are restraining them from one another. That certain barrier is Frank Shabata. It is not difficult for one to conjecture why that barricade is there in reading this passage: "Marie, when she was alone or when she sat sewing in the evening, often thought about what it must be like down there where Emil was . . . 'And if it had not been for me,' she thought, 'Frank might still be free like that . . . Poor Frank, getting married wasn't very good for him either . . . It seems as if I always make him just as bad as he can be.' " Willa Cather has such an extensive knowledge of life's inexplicable emotions that she makes this novel all the more realistic. The author portrays such tenderness, desperation, and resolution, and she words her passages so powerfully and effectively that a reader is fully convinced by the end of the book that the events actually took place. So what happens at the end of this highly esteemed novel? One might be pondering after reading this review: How does Frank react to Emil and Marie's bond? What becomes of them? Well, patient reader, the conclusion of O Pioneers! Is up to you to unravel, and do not be surprised if it catches you off guard.

In conclusion to my book review, I would like to quote my favorite lines from the novel. "They went into the house together, leaving the Divide behind them, under the evening star. Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Alexandra's into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!" This fictitious anecdote of French, Bohemian, and Swedish settlers in America is truly appealing. It draws its readers into the world of farming and frontier life, while offering an authentic and at times amusing glance at the dynamics of pioneer life. While providing a historical background, O Pioneers! Also relates to the turmoil of one's mind in troublesome times and predicaments. I can relate to and learn valuable lessons from this book though it takes place approximately one hundred years ago. This quality makes the novel so much more realistic and engrossing to read. Willa Cather stressed much of the book into analyzing the differences in personality in each of the characters as time went on. Now, I understand the purpose of this - indistinguishable "gears" are silently turning to lead up to the explosive culmination of this saga. Packed with warmth and poignancy, both children and their parents are privileged to step into the rich world of the Bergsons as the hardships they endure strengthen their souls. Filled with moving descriptions, vibrant settings, and strong characters, O Pioneers! will be the ideal book for readers of different styles. Seldom can one say that a book is destined to become a classic, but in O Pioneers! 's case, that problem is not presented because a classic is what it already is!

Every single one of these stories is a real work of art. These were written when Cather was at her peak. I didn't want any of these stories to end. They were all so perfect. Cather really takes you away and makes you feel like you're right there with her.

With great economy and acerbic wit Joan Acocella takes on the Amazons of feminist theory and vanquishes the lot. Her research is detailed and her sources impressive, and for once we have a critic who loves literature and the people who make it more than the ideologies they represent or the dogmas they profess. Acocella skewers anti-scholarly scholarship and retrieves one of America's great writers from the dark grip of the dogmatists. Her account of Cather's early life and preparation is concise and filled with understanding; what's more in the briefest space she tells the story of that life in the context of the age and gives us Cather's achievement without the burden of spurious literary theories. Students of literature and literary criticism must read this as an example of good writing and clear thinking. Excellent bibliography, marvelous notes!

As the previous reviewers have noted, this is a clever, wonderfully written book that makes sense of Cather and mincemeat of decades of politically oriented criticism. It is disheartening to read of all the absurdity that has been written about Cather (and, by extension, so many other wonderful writers)and realize the amount of dreadful criticism, narrow thinking and senseless writing that is being generated and propagated by the academic presses. This book is a breath of fresh air, showing that the Emperor of Academia really has no clothes.

In a lucid, readable style Acocella explains how in the field of Cather studies, common sense has left the building and the lunatic fringe has set up camp. To many, it does not matter how fine a author Cather was but whether she was enough of a lesbian and leftist to qualify as an Approved Writer for the academy. Acocella explains with great panache how one can be a Republican and self-styled old maid like Cather and still be a great American writer. Riveting reading.

The Professor's House is a novel that I read and re-read, in the same way that one turns again and again to a good friend, for solace. Middle age is a time of change and this novel's main character is going through the Change of Life (as surely as if he were a woman...)

After reading this novel about 4 years ago, I went on to devour almost every other published work by this author. If you are Canadian, like me, I urge you to read Shadows on the Rock. This is a Cather novel set in 18th century Quebec City. A real gem.

But back to The Professor's House: Cather draws us in with the singularity of her main character. The professor is set apart from his wife and one of his daughters, disconnected from them by a lifetime of having to listen to and observe their pettiness. Connected to Tom Outland and to his youngest daughter, the professor flourishes. Aren't we all like this? There are kindred spirits and there are those who are not kindred spirits.

Because I love the landscape of New Mexico, I was thrilled with the descriptions of the ruins. Cather's love of this part of the world is reflected in much of her work. She is able to capture the emptiness and beauty of this stark landscape in her writing.

I have found some of Cather's work to be a bit ponderous. The Professor's House is one of her best novels. It has stood the test of time, which is what makes it literature. I'm also thrilled that a woman writer can be so successful at creating male characters. This is an art that many writers do not have.

Somewhere I read that Cather will eventually top Hemingway as America's finest and most esteemed writer. This book floated Cather above Hemingway in my estimation and this was only the fourth book of hers that I have read. A wonderful, timeless story set in the early twenties (could very well be today!). A remarkable tale of how the appearance of a young man in the lives of one family can have such impact. Cather develops each character around their reaction to the man, Outland. Outland, a perfect name for a character that sweeps in, lives intensely, whose intellectual capabilities create wonder and who gives it all away.

The main character, the Professor, begins by tutoring Outland, even as Outland tutors the Professor's own daughters. Outland betrothes the eldest who benefits from Outland's creations with enormous riches. The youngest daughter languishes in the shadow of her older daughter's consumerism, which the mother encourages, much to the disinterest and dissatisfaction of the Professor.

The middle and last sections of this three-part book are wondrous and provide the ultimate redemption and "tutoring" for the Professor who is "saved" by the life which Outland has lived.

The setting for this book moves from the attic-office of the Professor in a small college town set on Lake Michigan to the mesas of the southwest. Each setting is beautifully described, in economical and lovely language.

This novel is a wonder! Perfect, and the best that I have read in a very, very long time.

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 is Cather at her best.

The book tells the story of Professor Godfrey St. Peter. When we meet him, 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, he and his family are able to build a new house and move away from the ramshakle 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 Outlaw who is, perhaps the real hero of the book. Outlaw 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 Outlaw's invention. The couple build a large home and name in "Outlaw".

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 technowlogy 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 Outlaw who 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 Outlaw'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 lenghty 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.

This book is from Willa Cather's middle period of writing -- between My Antonia and Death Comes to the Archbishop. This may be the least known but best portion of her output.

As does My Antonia, The Lost Lady pictures the American frontier in the middle west and its closing due to urbanization, the demise of the pioneer spirit, and commercialization.

Together with its picture of the changing of the West, the book is a coming of age novel of a special sort and a portrait of a remarkable, because human and flawed, woman.

As with many of Cather's works the story is told by a male narrator, Neil Herbert. We see him from adolescence as an admirer of, and perhaps infatuated by Marian Forrester, the heroine and the wife of a former railroad magnate now settled on a large farm in South Dakota. Neil matures and leaves to go to school in the East. We see his idea of Ms. Forrester change as he learns that there is both more and less to her than the glittering self-assured woman that meets his young eyes.

The book is also the story of Marian herself, of her marriage, her self-assuredness, and her vulnerabilty. She is independent and a survivor and carries on within herself through harsh times and difficult circumstances, including the change in character of her adopted home in the midwest.

This is a tightly written, thoughtful American novel.

A novel of retrospection, A Lost Lady (1923) tells of events several decades earlier, when the rapid growth of the railroads was both expanding - and ending - the western frontier. But that is the larger, the national, backdrop against which more intimate dramas are played out, dramas that have to do with youth and age and beauty, and with adultry, sadism, and the growth of a young man, Niel Herbert. Niel idolizes Captain Forrester's young wife, Marion, and in this he is not alone. All who visit the Forrester's home find Marion's warmth and vitality captivating. In Cather's imagination, Mrs Forrester embodies the natural energy of the west itself: ageless and utterly unselfconscious of its own vibrant beauty. So, too, the Captain stands for all that once was the best in America but is now being lost in a greedy bid for money and land; the Captain is a man of conscience - strong, honorable, solid as a mountain. Their home, Sweet Water, is a kind of Eden on the prairie, and even the willow stakes he planted to mark his property lines come to bloom.

Over time, as Niel matures, his "lady" too ages. And when the Captain dies, she falls on bad times, hurt rather than aided by advice from her lawyer. Her fall however is as much moral as it is financial - or at least it is in Niel's eyes. He notes that she has begun to use cosmetics and sherry. He finds her voice too loud, her laughter too forced. Niel loses his lady- or perhaps he gives her up.

There is a kind of poignancy to this brief novel, and a unity that is as pleasing as the story itself. It is, on the one hand, the story of the West's golden youth and fading future. On the other hand, it is the story of a young man's growth and an aging woman's refusal to live as others would prefer.

Ms. Willa Cather has a way of deceiving her readers. Her novels are small simple looking stories when you begin and then you realize you are reading much more. Things are not always as they seem. I loved A Lost Lady-if only I could hear her laughter once more....

This beautiful and tragic book ranks as one of my favorite Willa Cather novels. Nowhere else is a pervading sense of tragedy so well contrasted with the all-present beauty of nature. All of Cather's novels are pastoral, but none are quite as tragic as this one.
The story--similar to "The Song of the Lark"--follows an artistically gifted women out of her small town, and into a large city (Chicago) full of promise and angst. The adultry of the young artist falling in love with an older, married, successful artist has an Anna Karanina tinge (a book much admired by Cather): of subdued moral complexity. There are never blanket moral diatribes, but one gets the feeling that not all is well, especially near the end of the book.
Ultimately, this book is about the immortality of youth, and especially art. Cather admired art, in all its forms, which is profoundly reflected in this book.

(If you have read Alexander's Bridge, note also the similar metaphor of drowning: the weak bringing down the strong.)

From the beginning Lucy Gayheart held my attention. It had so many ups, and downs, twists and turns that it was captivating. The book was very descriptive and wordy, but instead of taking away from the book it added depth and clarity. It's detail allowed me to become part of the book. I felt as if I knew Lucy forever, sharing in her emotions and fears, hopes and dreams. Willa Cather was definitely a very skillful author. I was given inspiration by her stirring quotes and even had a change of heart. Despite it's sadness, the book, in it's own way, lifted itself up to it's own happy ending, making it worthwhile to read. I'm a sophomore in high school and I highly reccomend this book to anyone who loves a beautiful, fulfilling love story filled with suspense, hapiness and sadness.

Lucy Gayheart is one of the greatest books in my memory, certainly the best among the five Willa Cather books I have read. Though difficult to describe to one who is unfamiliar with the style, the story is lovely, wistfully romantic... and Cather's sparkling prose is simply unequaled. I especially loved the novel's reflection of the creative spirit - Lucy is a young artist full of ardent longing, passion, and ultimately pain.