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Death Comes for the Archbishop

Willa Cather

Start date: March 1, 2023

Finish date: March 31, 2023

Discussion: New School Classics- 1915-2005

Why we're reading this: March 2023 New School Classic Group Read
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New School Classics- 1915-2005

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What Members Thought

Aug 26, 2019 Rachel rated it really liked it

A beautiful book about the West that was as delightful to read as Stegner’s Angle of Repose although it’s not as emotionally complex. (Sidebar: Just based on the number of times the word “repose” appears in this book, there’s no way Stegner wasn’t influenced by this novel.) Cather shows us purposeful lives well-lived in simple dwellings among simple, generous folk. The deaths are dignified and lessons are learned- even the tyrannical priest who’s eventually tossed over the side of a mountain by ...more

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Dec 22, 2017 Dave rated it really liked it

Shelves: classic-lit

Amazing descriptions of the New Mexico landscape. Cather weaves in the story of a life the archbishop in Santa Fe from the 1850s to 1880s. The first 50 pages and last 50 pages were gripping. The Archbishop first has to make it and then later confronts death and the loss of his closest friend.

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Jan 25, 2020 Renate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, classics, bookclub

A good book. One which speaks differently to different readers. That was the surprise discovery at our book club discussion.
For some it was all about the Catholic Church. Others were adamant that it had not so much to do with religion, but was a perfect and tender portrayal of a male friendship. A friendship in which one person is all 'heart' and the other all 'head'.
Others in the group focused on the historic events, the changes that were happening, about conquered and exploited people. Those A good book. One which speaks differently to different readers. That was the surprise discovery at our book club discussion.
For some it was all about the Catholic Church. Others were adamant that it had not so much to do with religion, but was a perfect and tender portrayal of a male friendship. A friendship in which one person is all 'heart' and the other all 'head'.
Others in the group focused on the historic events, the changes that were happening, about conquered and exploited people. Those who were mislead by the title and expected an Agatha Christie -style mystery were at first disappointed but most were eventually won over.

The writing is lyrical with beautiful descriptions of landscape:

Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky

There is not much of a plot. Each chapter could almost be read as a complete short story in its own right. Yet the thread of the long friendship of two good men binds it all together. The book hangs on the story of their lives as they grow from young men to old men until the final end. The title is that of the last chapter, the most beautiful description of the end of a life.

The old man smiled. "I shall not die of cold, my son. I shall die of having lived."

The two men are French priests who answer the call to go to America as missionaries in the mid-19th century. It is a tough life in a harsh country. But they are gradually seduced by their adopted home and become torn between belonging in the New World or the Old World. They longed for French food, in a way that was sometimes comical. Father Latour was adamant that the cathedral for Santa Fé had to be built in the style of his native land, Midi Romanesque. But when he grows old, he decides not to retire to France but to remain where the wind is healthy and blows across a landscape mostly unchanged by man.

The book is certainly a nostalgic description of a time and place that had already vanished by the time it was written. I was struck by the thriving communities of Mexicans and native Indians who were living there at the time. The scene, around the year, 1848, is described in the prologue to the novel:

Some thirty Indian nations, ..., each with its own customs and language, many of them fiercely hostile to each other. And the Mexicans, a naturally devout people. Untaught and unshepherded, they cling to the faith of their fathers.

The French priests express the opinion that "The Church can do more than the Fort to make these poor Mexicans good Americans". The Indians will require more effort because "The Spaniards had treated them very badly long ago, and they had been meditating upon their grievance for many generations."

There are also a handful of American pioneers. One such is called Kit Carson, I believe also someone based in a historic figure, about whom is said:

He could at that time barely write his own name. Yet one felt in him a quick and discriminating intelligence. That he was illiterate was an accident; he had got ahead of books, gone where the printing-press could not follow him.

Father Latour, travels a lot with a young Navajo, called Jacinto, who acts as his guide when he visits the far flung corners of his parish. The two men seem to respect and observe each other. This is what Jacinto thinks of the bishop:

In his experience, white people, when they addressed the Indians, always put on a false face. There were many kinds of false faces; ... The Bishop put on none at all. He stood straight ..., and his face underwent no change. Jacinto thought this remarkable.

The bishop about Jacinto:

When they left the rock or tree or sand dune that had sheltered them for the night, the Navajo was careful to obliterate every trace of their temporary occupation. He buried the embers of the fire and the remnants of food, unpiled any stones he had piled together, filled up the holes he had scooped in the sand. Since this was exactly Jacinto's procedure, Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like a fish through the water, or birds through the air. ... It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it.

This was such a many faceted book that I've found it difficult to write this review. At the end the old bishop looks back on his life. By then the railways have arrived and he thinks:

"Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things."

Yes, it is nostalgic book and I am a sucker for nostalgia. ...more

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Sep 25, 2014 Teri-K rated it really liked it

Shelves: classic, sense-of-place, z-permanent-bookshelf, historical-fiction, zz-2023-bought

Willa Cather is an author who deserves to be read much more than she is, and many consider this to be her best novel. I'm not sure I agree, but I think it's fair to call it her most beautifully written one. Just consider the opening scenes - one taking place on a lush green hillside outside of Rome, where several church men are discussing the future amongst lovely scenery, good food and wine. Then the reader is dropped in the Southwestern US, where one man is struggling forward - "He must have t Willa Cather is an author who deserves to be read much more than she is, and many consider this to be her best novel. I'm not sure I agree, but I think it's fair to call it her most beautifully written one. Just consider the opening scenes - one taking place on a lush green hillside outside of Rome, where several church men are discussing the future amongst lovely scenery, good food and wine. Then the reader is dropped in the Southwestern US, where one man is struggling forward - "He must have travelled through thirty miles of these conical red hills, winding his way in the narrow cracks between them, and he had begun to think he would never see anything else. They were so exactly like one another that he seemed to be wondering in some geometrical nightmare..."

If those of us who aren't Catholic, or even church people of any kind, find the topic of this book less than compelling, I don't think anyone can argue against the power of the writing. If you're new to Cather I suggest trying My Antonia or O Pioneers! first. (They don't have to be read in order.) But this is a wonderful book for those who love strong writing that evokes a sense of time and place, whether you care about the Archbishop's aims or not.

NB - I found myself wondering why she chose this subject for her book, and in looking around I found this quote "I had all my life wanted to do something in the style of legend, which is absolutely the reverse of dramatic treatment. Since I first saw the Puvis de Chavannes frescoes of the life of Saint Genevieve in my student days [1902], I have wished that I could try something a little like that in prose; something without accent, with none of the artificial elements of composition. In the Golden Legend the martyrdoms of the saints are no more dwelt upon than are the trivial incidents of their lives; it is as though all human experiences, measured against one supreme spiritual experience, were of about the same importance. The essence of such writing is not to hold to note, not to use an incident for all there is in it — but to touch and pass on." I found that very illuminating.
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