Customer Reviews

The Professor's House (Vintage Classics)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

This Cather novel can best be compared to a small symphony in a minor key. It is a gentle, bittersweet portrait of a successful scholar who finds himself emotionally isolated from his family in a transitional time in the family's development. A move from their familiar, too-small home to a newer, larger home highlights tensions and jealousies between his newly married daughters and the distance between himself and his wife. The first portion of the novel focuses on the professor's disappointing relationships with his family and colleagues, relationships he observes with poignancy and sadness. A smaller but equally important portion of the novel tells the story of Tom Outland, a young man whose life and death provide a backdrop for the professor's story. Cather's prose is lean and unadorned, giving every word meaning. This lends itself particularly well to her treatment of the southwest. Her portrait of the professor as ineffectual and alienated is consistent with Cather's general treatment of males and reflects her distrust of marriage. It is nevertheless a poignant and realistic portrayal of a man confronting the disappointments of an otherwise successful life. It is a must read.

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 it is Cather at her best.

The book tells the story of Professor Godfrey St. Peter. When we meet St. Peter, 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, St. Peter 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 Outland who is, perhaps the real hero of the book. Outland 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 Outland's invention. The couple build a large home and name in "Outland".

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 technology 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 Outland 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 Outland'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.

Robin Friedman

Objectively speaking, this book as a whole is perhaps not quite as excellent as some of her other books like DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP, but this nonetheless is one of my three favorites of her novels. The book consists of three parts, not all of them of equal strength (the only real criticism of the book in the end is that the sections are not sufficiently integrated with one another and that they do not quite balance one another), but a couple of them containing some of her most powerful writing. A very, very good book. Anyone who enjoyed DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP would in particular like it.

As much as I loved reading this novel, I can't stand this edition. The publisher seems to have written the text in about three minutes flat: "your" becomes "you", "my" becomes "me" (except during Henry's dialogue - then it's supposed to happen). There are also a large amount of accented letters ( like "é") that ended up being something like "é" which makes reading words as simple as "Opéra" very difficult as it now reads "Opéra". The publisher didn't even bother to put in the standard chapters that other editions have, which leaves you reading approximately 89 pages without any place to rest the eyes. PLEASE get yourself a different edition: one preferably not from this publisher. A simple publisher's mistake should not detract from such a marvelous text.

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.

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.

When I was younger I thought "My Antonia" was Cather's best novel. But the editions you find in bookstores now have gone back to the original, more bloated, and definitely inferior introduction to that book--Cather, had she been alive, would never have stood for it--and, maybe more importantly, I've gotten older. Older, I say, but by no means old, maybe just old enough that, like the professor of Cather's novel, I spend more time looking back--at nothing, to be sure, nothing--than I do looking ahead. Maybe that's why I now think "The Professor's House" is Cather at her finest.

And since nobody else seems to have done so, I'd just like to mention that "The Professor's House" is also very witty, at times downright comic.

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.

This review is about the edition, not the book.

I made the mistake of ordering this edition for my class, thinking to save them money. Now I have no idea how I'm going to keep them on the same page (and I mean that quite literally). The Wilder edition is full of misprints and errors. An entire chapter is repeated twice! The editing is so incompetent that it makes the book painful to read.

The novel itself is wonderful, but please give your money to a more responsible publisher.