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The Professor's House

Willa Cather,

A.S. Byatt (Introduction)

Start date: March 1, 2014

Finish date: March 15, 2014

Discussion: Classics Corner

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Sep 04, 2015 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read2015, around-the-usa, location-usa-new-mexico

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 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.

"'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.'"

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."

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.

"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. ...more

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Mar 22, 2014 SooYoung rated it liked it

definitely a solid book. it left many unanswered questions though, which is fine generally speaking -- let the reader fill in the gaps -- but i'm one of those people that wants to *know*. to be told what exactly happened. alas.

the back cover has a great summation of the book: "how do the people we once were persist inside the men and women we become?" the story mostly revolves around the who-am-i-now question for the character St. Peter aka the Professor. but we get a glimpse into how this them ...more

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Mar 13, 2009 Mary Crabtree rated it really liked it

You know, this is a good example of the publisher's write up being completely off about a book. If I had read the blurb before the book I probably wouldn't have read the book. So what I did find was a splendid example of fine American writing. Willa Cather is that comfortable place where one can go, when you want to be surrounded by the familiar. Of course it's never that simple with a Cather novel. Underneath the facade of everyday living her characters live with the rumblings of old pain, hurt ...more

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Nov 05, 2015 Jane rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

It took a while for me to get into the rhythm of this book...the pace seemed very slow after the books I've been reading (The Light of the World, A Little Life and The Divers Clothes Lie Empty), but I read it for book club and while the sections seem very, very different from each other, I ended up really liking the book. The second section is about one of the characters and his journey to Mesa Verde where he discovers the remains of an advanced native culture. The sense of place was palpable. I ...more

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Jul 27, 2007 peg rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

The Professor's House is an experimental piece for Willa Cather. It contains a novella within the novel. What stands out in my impressions of the novel are the beautiful descriptions of the mesa and the indiginous lives of the cliff dwellers in the southwest that are juxtaposed to the cluttered,claustrophobic house where the professor lives. ...more

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