O Pioneers!

Posted: November 10, 2016 | Author: helytimes | Filed under: America, history, nature, the American West, writing |Leave a comment

Just finished reading:

A strange thing to read, maybe.  Here is the story of how I came to read it.

Some years ago, filming the finale of The Office on Dwight Schrute’s farm:

I looked around at the inland Malibu landscape and got to wondering if there could be a show about the pioneers: people who arrived on empty* land and built their lives there.

So as research I picked up the first book I thought of:

Didn’t finish it.  Got distracted before I got off the third page, probably at first by my phone and then by my life.

A true Save The Cat

On the first page of O Pioneers!, there is a true Save The Cat situation.

We’re in the middle of a blizzard, and Little Emil’s cat has gone up a telegraph pole, and he’s afraid it’ll freeze:

Reunited

Down in Australia in August, I saw the cool Penguin Classics edition:

and picked it up thinking, eh what the hell I should find out what happened to that cat.  

Well, I found out, and I found out what happened to Emil and his sister Alexandra for the next forty years.

I believe an error was made in choosing this quote for the front page:

It isn’t the most interesting one from the book.  I might’ve chosen this:

Or this:

 

Or even, if we’re going re: ducks, this:

Or this:

This quote made me think of the news:

Also can’t say that the epigraph is especially sexy:

Perhaps it’s better in the original Polish.

But still I pressed on, and in the end, I gotta give it up to O Pioneers! 

The life of Willa Cather

Willa Cather must’ve been quite something.  She was born in Gore, Virginia, but as a girl she was brought to Red Cloud, Nebraska:

where she made a real impression:

Was Willa Cather a lesbian?

Willa Cather shot out of Nebraska like a rocket.

The closest relationships in her life were with women, and she lived with one Edith Lewis:

for close to thirty years.  Some biographers hesitate to call her a lesbian, though, saying she never identified herself that way.

Willa Cather Memorial Prairie

Willa died in 1947.  She has a memorial prairie named after her, it’s the number 2 thing to do in Red Cloud, NE after her house:

Willa on writing

O Pioneers! still holds up.  I found myself moved by it, and it’s short.  Cather has a way of summing up loneliness, heartache, longing, compassion, in a few short lines.

I went ahead and got Willa’s collected essays on writing.

Here she tells how she came to write O Pioneers!, her second book:

She wrote in some opposition to the detail-filled writing of Balzac:

Interesting point here:

Red Cloud, Nebraska

Here’s a picture of downtown Red Cloud from Google Maps:

About as solid a Trump country as you will find:

As of 2000 the median income for a household in the city was $26,389, and the median income for a family was $34,038. Males had a median income of $26,364 versus $17,232 for females. The per capita income for the city was $14,772. About 8.4% of families and 13.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 20.9% of those under age 18 and 10.1% of those age 65 or over.

Brave Companions

David McCullough has something moving to say about Red Cloud and Willa and her other famous book:

from:

I found O Pioneers! very moving and powerful, let me share with you why:

Warning: O Pioneers! spoiler

Skip this if you intend to read the book with suspense in mind.

But I doubt you will.  I found this the most moving passage, and worth all the reading.  Let me set it up for you:

Emil, he of the lost cat on page 2, grows up under the guidance of his older sister, Alexandra.  She’s really the focus of our story.  Carl, the local boy who saves the cat, is in love with her, but he can’t really take it out on the plains, so he goes off, and leaves her behind.  She’s left to care for her brothers.

Emil, youngest brother, does great.  He goes on to college at the University of Nebraska, while Alexandra stays to watch over the farm.  All the while Emil’s been in love with a neighbor girl, Marie.  She marries another man, though.

Still, Emil and Marie are in love.  Eventually Marie’s husband, Frank Shabata, finds his wife and Emil together. In a crazed rage he murders Marie and Emil both.

Alexandra, alone at age forty, is heartbroken, left adrift at the death of her brother.  But still, she feels sympathy for Frank Shabata, who’s been sent to prison in Lincoln for his crime.

Alexandra, lost and in pain, decides to go visit Frank in prison.  In afternoon/dusk, after arriving in Lincoln, she wanders the campus of the university, thinking of her murdered brother.  Desperate for any kind of connection, she runs into a student:

Walt Whitman Reads: America

or

The Whitman Recording

The title of O Pioneers! comes from a poem by Walt Whitman.

Some years ago, a recording of Walt Whitman’s voice, said to have been recorded onto an Edison wax cylinder around 1889 or 1890, was rediscovered.

In these times when it seems maybe we lost our way, nationally, it made me feel good to hear this.  Forty-six seconds long:

 

 

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