Literary O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

[jj2me]

I liked it, though wasn't blown over.

Probably the only thing that will stick with me long term is the sidelight about "there are only two or three human stories ..."

"It's queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

I was struck by the lack of fear of anyone in the story from outside sources. The women could walk anywhere with no safety concerns. How civilized, peaceful, and stable that (fictional) place was. What about criminals, deadbeats, passers-through? No human threats of any kind in a pioneer area?

Differences in culture seem to mirror current-day differences between various cultures, like the passage contrasting the Swedes and Norwegians with the French boys, who "liked a bit of swagger."

I feel the same as several others about the character Alexandra. It's like Cather imagined how an even-tempered, logical person would act, but it was over-the-top for me. We all get annoyed to varying degrees, and we all have desires for ourselves. I don't believe such a person as Alexandra can exist. A businesswoman and family leader/matriarch, with all the obstacles and human deception and incompetence that a person performing those roles would encounter, always just pleasantly and effectively plodding along--it just didn't resonate as real human behavior. Her temperament was like that of no person I've met in my life.

I'm pretty sure I missed what her dream meant, the one she said she would tell Carl.

"... she had again, ... the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted and carried lightly by some one very stong... His shoulders seemed as strong as the foundations of the world ..." She knew at last for whom it was she had waited, and where he would carry her."

Maybe I'm too literal, but I recall Carl as being described as having narrow shoulders or something to that effect, like a professor's, but not foundations-of-the-world shoulders. Besides, if it was of Carl, all during her girlhood she never actively dreamed of him? It took 40+ years for her subconscious mind to finally point to the only non-family member male that she liked?

[issybird]

My favorite part of the book was the imagery and that carried me through the rest. I agree with everyone about finding Alexandra incredible, and I'll extend that to Marie, too. I think I read somewhere that Cather couldn't write men, but I found them more sympathetic in their flaws than the perfect women. I had a sneaking sympathy for the brothers; fancy ideas are all well and good, but theirs was the unremitting and back-breaking labor that brought them to fruition. Carl's saying that he was neither a big enough nore a small enough man to be kept by Alexandra was wonderful.

My biggest issue with the book was the structure. In the end, I felt that the story happened in those 15 years that Cather skipped over, that transformed the bleak and barren prairie dotted with soddies into the fecund landscape all around, with the concomittant triumphs and disasters that caused the characters to turn out as they did. Instead, Alexandra wonderful and never put a foot wrong, apparently (I'll get back to that), brothers horrible and avaricious, hey, presto prosperity! And lacking the plot she didn't pursue, Cather cobbled on the melodramatic story of Emil and Marie because she needed a device to wrap it up, including bringing Carl back, he who also experienced offscreen prosperity, by prospecting in his case.

I'll say that I didn't find Alexandra's vow to help Frank unrealistic. I think she rightfully felt some responsibility for the tragedy and could even believe that neither Emil nor Marie would care to see Frank destroyed as well. Unfortunately, it didn't have the impact it ought to have, since when did Alexandra ever do anything that wasn't noble?

I can't resist commenting on the huge irony in this tale of pioneers. I meant to cite a passage about the plow cleaving the land as a metaphor for transforming the prairie, and also reference some of the imagery about the cultivated fields that surrounded them, but I neglected to highlight them. As it turned out, those tough, ancient prairie grasses that caused such difficulties to the earliest settlers were vital, and those straight, straight furrows were a disaster in the offing. Without the grass to hold it down and curved lines to surve as a brake, all that fertile topsoil would blow away in another thirty years. The dust bowl, which has been called the worst man-made disaster in American history, was caused by such agronomic geniuses as Alexandra.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by issybird

I can't resist commenting on the huge irony in this tale of pioneers. I meant to cite a passage about the plow cleaving the land as a metaphor for transforming the prairie, and also reference some of the imagery about the cultivated fields that surrounded them, but I neglected to highlight them. As it turned out, those tough, ancient prairie grasses that caused such difficulties to the earliest settlers were vital, and those straight, straight furrows were a disaster in the offing. Without the grass to hold it down and curved lines to surve as a brake, all that fertile topsoil would blow away in another thirty years. The dust bowl, which has been called the worst man-made disaster in American history, was caused by such agronomic geniuses as Alexandra.

This irony was very much in my thoughts too and may have influenced the way I read the book. Last month I read The Grapes of Wrath for the other book club, which is about a family that chose to leave the land behind and head to greener pastures in California. However, I also read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan which wove together the real stories of different towns and families who refused to leave their land and stayed behind during the Dust Bowl years. This book was very impactful on me. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2006. As a result, the land as an evolving entity, the knowledge of the future to come, and the relationship of each character to the land (both what they did to the land and the force that the land had on them) was very much at the forefront of my mind.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks for making that link for me issybird. I should have realised this was part of the area that became the dust bowl, but my sense of geography is a bit shaky.

The Worst Hard Time sounds very interesting, Bookworm_Girl. I saw an excellent three part (I think it was three) programme on TV a while ago about the dust bowl. It must have been horrific. We have done our fair share of destruction of our environment here in Australia too of course.

[Bookworm_Girl]

It was a fascinating book. Truly hard times indeed. I'm used to dust storms, but it's hard to imagine black clouds that turned night to day and heartbreaking to read of little babies dying of dust pneumonia. All that food and milk that was destroyed while many people were starving. A testament to how the human spirit endures.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by issybird

My biggest issue with the book was the structure. In the end, I felt that the story happened in those 15 years that Cather skipped over, that transformed the bleak and barren prairie dotted with soddies into the fecund landscape all around, with the concomittant triumphs and disasters that caused the characters to turn out as they did. Instead, Alexandra wonderful and never put a foot wrong, apparently (I'll get back to that), brothers horrible and avaricious, hey, presto prosperity! And lacking the plot she didn't pursue, Cather cobbled on the melodramatic story of Emil and Marie because she needed a device to wrap it up, including bringing Carl back, he who also experienced offscreen prosperity, by prospecting in his case

The lack of structure is a primary criticism of this book. I also wished we knew more about what happened in those missing years. I was surprised when the story skipped so much time. I really liked this review by A.S. Byatt.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/200...iction.asbyatt

Her own statements about her work are both terse and illuminating. Her first novel, Alexander's Bridge (1912), is a good novel about an engineer who builds a bridge which collapses. Her second, O Pioneers! (1913) was, she claimed, the one where she had found her own way of telling - with "no arranging or inventing; everything was spontaneous and took its own place right or wrong ... Since I wrote this book for myself I ignored all the situations and accents that were then generally thought to be necessary." What she means by "situations and accents" is both dramatic tension and the scenes of confrontation or discovery towards which most novels move. O Pioneers! is a long, slow-paced series of visions or tableaux of the lives of the Swedish farmers on the Great Plains. It tells of planting and harvest, passionate love and murder, in the same inevitable, calm tone. Cather's friend ES Sergeant records that she complained to Cather that the only flaw in the book was that it had no sharp skeleton, and elicited the reply:

"... true enough, I had named a weakness. But the land has no sculptured lines or features. The soil is soft, light, fluent, black, for the grass of the plains creates this type of soil as it decays. This influences the mind and memory of the author and so the composition of the story."

I think part of the problem is also that the book was conceived as two different short stories, one about Alexandra and another about Emil & Marie that she then combined into a novel.

[Bookworm_Girl]

By the way, issybird, this statement about the grass of the plains and the soil decay being light also made me think of foreshadowing to the future dust bowl.

[paola]

I finally also got to O Pioneers!

Originally Posted by fantasyfan

Try as I might I just could engage neither with the characters in the book nor with the novel as a whole. The writing itself was certainly quite skilful and cery well crafted but that was the only thing I really appreciated. The story itself just didn't resonate for me.

Perhaps Willa Cather requires more than one reading before the depth of the novel will become apparent.

Originally Posted by bfisher

I'm ambivalent about this book. There were things that I really liked ; there were things that I didn't. It was the best of novels; it was the worst of novels.

I have to agree with this. Indeed,

Originally Posted by desertblues

Alexandra has to be the responsable one, or feels she has to be. She has a free spirit, unlike the society she is in and unlike two of her brothers. She must feel like an outcast, but still she follows her own path. The way she pursues her dream is rather modern for those days. She is the one who reflects on the inner life of men.

this is the part I really could not buy, so it did spoil it for me - I am not saying Alexandra would not perceive this, but the way she resoned about it was what I could not relate to.

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

My point is I encourage you to try another book, maybe outside of the trilogy, to get a better impression of her legacy and why she is considered such an important author in the canon of American literature.

Like Bookpossum, I will definitely do that!

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I did forewarn you all that I have a lot of random thoughts running around in my head about this book!

Keep them coming :-)

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

I agree - I didn't find Alexandra a believable fully-rounded human being. She was just too good to be true. I'm happy to look on the book as an early work and see how Willa Cather developed by trying some of her later ones.

but weren't all the characters like that? It seems to me they were all cloyingly good - even small minded Lou deep down is really a good man. That did irk me at various places.

Originally Posted by issybird

My biggest issue with the book was the structure. In the end, I felt that the story happened in those 15 years that Cather skipped over, that transformed the bleak and barren prairie dotted with soddies into the fecund landscape all around, with the concomittant triumphs and disasters that caused the characters to turn out as they did. Instead, Alexandra wonderful and never put a foot wrong, apparently (I'll get back to that), brothers horrible and avaricious, hey, presto prosperity! And lacking the plot she didn't pursue, Cather cobbled on the melodramatic story of Emil and Marie because she needed a device to wrap it up, including bringing Carl back, he who also experienced offscreen prosperity, by prospecting in his case.

yep, indeed - these gaps were annoying to me too.

I did enjoy the writing style and the descriptions, but what really got on my nerve was the constant over-reasoning on how other people feel - even Lou tells Oscar

"Talk of that kind might come too high, you know; but she's apt to be sen*si*ble. You hadn't ought to said that about her age, though, Oscar. I'm afraid that hurt her feelings.

And if you just search for "hurt" in the book, you will find Marie encouraging Emil to dance with other girls not to hurt their feelings, Carl fearing of being "hurt", Alexandra telling Carl that he's afraid of hurting her feeling, and so on - it seems everybody is at it, and it did make me wonder whether Cather was aware of psychoanalyisis and maybe sprinkled too much of it in her novel.