Willa Cather

I remember the first time I was exposed to Willa Cather: it was 2005. But here I am now, making good on a promise to myself - and to a friend - to read Death Comes for the Archbishop. 

The only other novel of Cather's I've read, I should note, is The Professor's House. I remember enjoying that book (in 2008), but finding myself, ultimately, unmoved. 

...Which is largely how I felt last night after finishing Archbishop. For me, Cather's prose are simply too precious, too gentle. In fact, having now read Marilynne Robinson, I can identify something of Cather in her novels and their deliberate, earthly rhythms. (Gilead: not for me.)

It's not that there's anything wrong particularly with Archbishop; it's more that the novel hinges on Cather's sense of quiet, of balance. And those aren't themes which, for me, resonate much. I prefer instead - and I think Frank knows this - something noisier, something which reaches for more. Archbishop is not that. 

But the book does, I think, capture the spirit of an age, even if some of the passages are stilted in their didactic qualities. Cather's treatment of Kit Carson, especially, reads more like a history text than literature. That said, Cather does generate a few lasting meditations, many of them having to do with mortality: "I shall not die of a cold," she writes. "I shall die of having lived."

Ultimately, Archbishop is a book that sits there, pretty, ready to be observed. But it's not a book that shakes or evolves or struggles. It's rather like the beautiful Arizona skies Cather describes: crystalline and blue, but rarely rainy.