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Title: The Professor's House by James Woodress, Kari A. Ronning, Frederick M. Link, Willa Silbert Cather ISBN: 0-8032-1428-6 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $75.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.69 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: How the Imagination Persists
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Melt into Gorgeous Writing
Comment: I read this book in four or so hours straight. It was thefirst book I'd read by Willa Cather, but it definitely placed hersolidly in my top five greatest authors list. She's got a beautiful way with words. She's really romantic but manages to completely avert any cheesey-ness. I remember looking up after reading the last page of the novel; I felt totally displaced from my life. For that moment I was still utterly invested in the life of the family in _The Professor's House_. Read this one if you love Willa Cather, or if you've never read her before.
Rating: 5
Summary: On aging and acceptance
Comment: Lately, I've turned away from fiction, because I haven't been able to find works that keep me turning those pages. When I stumbled across The Professor's House, I was delighted to find myself swept away and completely absorbed by Willa Cather's tender and disturbing tale of an ordinary man's confrontation with his feelings about place, family, and ageing. The professor's realization that he might have to forfeit the passion and vivacity he experienced in his youth and compromise with a "life without joy" was very poignant and provoking. Cather's prose is intelligent, but fluid and concise. I think it will go on my list of a dozen or more most memorable novels.
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Title: The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare, A. R. Braunmuller ISBN: 0140714545 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 2001 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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Title: Billy Budd and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) by Herman Melville ISBN: 0140390537 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1989 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Gilgamesh : A New Rendering in English Verse by David Ferry ISBN: 0374523835 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1993 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Great Dialogues of Plato by Plato, W. H. D. Rouse ISBN: 0451527453 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: The Inferno of Dante : Bilingual Edition by Robert Pinsky, Dante ISBN: 0374524521 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 30 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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