Tag Archives: willa cather

THE TROLL GARDEN

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Willa Cather

They advise that a writer should write what she knows. Willa Cather followed that advice. She began her career of words in journalism. Part of her assignments was reviewing art, music and literature. In her first published work (of short stories), The Troll Garden presents Cather’s relaying performances, artists, fans and art to the reader. She write each story with a proper amount of skepticism toward characters (artists and fans) and what they are doing. Troll has pejorative inference, and thereby, Cather has described the process and results of art. It is a trolly world of being.

For example,
FEMALE FANS: “What he had was that, in his mere personality, he quickened and in a measure gratified that something without which – to women – life is no better than sawdust, and to the desire for which most of their mistakes and tragedies and the astonishingly poor bargains are due.” The Garden Lodge.

MALE FANS: Man re-meets singer after singer is retired and dying.
“It was the silence of admiration,” protested Everett, “very crude and boyish, but very sincere and not a little painful. Perhaps you suspected something of the sort? I remember you saw fit to be very grown-up and worldly.”
“I believe I suspected a pose; then that college boys usually affect with singers – ‘an earthen vessel in love with a star,’ you know. But it rather surprised me in you, for you must have seen a good deal of your brother’s pupils. Or had you an omnivorous capacity, and elasticity that always met the occasion.” A Death in the Desert.

TRAGEDY: “He used to write only the tragedies of passion; but this is tragedy of the soul, the shadow coexistent with the soul. This is the tragedy of effort and failure, the thing Keats calls hell. This is my tragedy; as I lie here spent by the racehorse…”

“I wanted to be with you….I have never cared about other women since I met you in New York when I was a lad. You are part of my destiny, and I could not leave you if I would.

She put her hands on his shoulders and shook her head. “No, no; don’t tell me that. I have seen enough of tragedy, God knows. Don’t show me any more just as the curtain is going down. No, no, it was only a boy’s fancy, and your divine pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment. One does not love the dying, dear friend. If some fancy of that sort had been left over from boyhood, this would rid you of it, and that were well. Now go, and you will come again tomorrow….” A Death In The Desert.

MARRYING AN ARTIST
“…She has remained in much the same condition she sank to before his death. He trampled over pretty much whatever there was in her, I fancy. Women don’t recover from wounds of that sort – at least not women of Ellen’s grain. They go on bleeding inwardly.”…

“The marriage,” Lady Mary continued with a shrug, “was made on the basis of a mutual understanding. Ellen, in the nature of the case, believed that she was doing something quite out of the ordinary in accepting him, and expected concessions which, apparently, it never occurred to him to make. After his marriage he relapsed into his old habits of incessant work, broken by violent and often brutal relaxations. He insulted her friends and foisted his own upon her – a homeless vagrant, whose conversation was impossible. I don’t say, mind you, that he had not grievances on his side. He had probably overrated the girl’s possibilities, and he let her see he was disappointed in her. Only a large and generous nature could have borne that, and Ellen’s not that. She could not at all understand that odious strain of plebeian pride which plumes itself upon having not risen above its sources.” The Marriage of Phaedra.

{Observe a similar sentiment at the end of the movie, My Brilliant Career where Sybilla declines to marry Harry. She wants to become a writer, an artist, and she tells him, I will destroy you. He does not understand.]

WANT-TO-BE PERSON CRAVING ARTIST’S LIFESTYLE

“Several of Paul’s teachers had a theory that his imagination had been perverted by garish fiction, but the truth was that he scarcely read at all. The books at home were not such as would either tempt or corrupt a youthful mind, and as for reading the novels that some of his friends urged upon him, — well, he got what he wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music from an orchestra to a barrel organ. He needed only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own. It was equally true that he was not stage struck – not, at any rate, in the usual acceptation of that expression. He had no desire to become an actor, any more than he had to become a musician. He felt no necessity to do any of those things; what he wanted was to see, to be in the atmosphere, float on the wave of it, to be carried out, blue league after blue league, away from everything.” Paul’s Case.

Undoubtedly, Willa Cather had witnessed and cringed about much she saw in the artistic world. She is plain, honest and open, letting the world witness what is frequently worshiped – not only the art, but also the artist. She is not judgmental except in Paul’s Case, the boy who seeks to attach himself to the material benefits of art. Obviously, what applied to women also was true for men. Have there not been a long trail of “poor bargains” arising from love, worship or fantasy?The Garden Lodge. Does any artist want to be revered, adorned and fawned over at death, or does the artist, using human common sense, understand for any person to cling to a drying artist is tragedy. A Death In The Desert.

[That point in A Death is reminiscent of William Shatner’s advice supposedly given during a Star Trek convention: “Get a life.”]

Willa Cather does not disapprove of artistic behaviors. Some artists act well, and others poorly. She cannot reform human behaviors, but she can bring light to common behaviors to give a perspective and to make situations common and understandable.

Observe in The Marriage of Phaedra Willa Cather describes where the painting has gone (Australia) as “entombed in a vague continent in the Pacific, somewhere on the other side of the world.”

13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE NOVEL

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JANE SMILEY

I read this book because the title suggests the text tells about writing novels. I read the introduction and learned that the author was writing a novel, Good Faith. About 270 pages were finished; another 125 needed writing. The print size in that novel is small. The author was going to put down loads of words. From what I gather Good Faith is a novel describing business transactions.

I go to many library book sales, and on the last day, the sellers offer books for a dollar a bag: 3 or 4 cents a piece. Many of those books were best sellers two (2) years ago. Some of this author’s books were on the tables. I asked a seller at one of the sales and she said, “We sell what remains to a recycler who pulps them. We get four cents a pound.”

I question the author’s assertion on page 22 of 13 Ways:

“Don’t like the author? Throw the book away. Think this obscure book is better
than that famous one? State you opinion. Disagree with the very respected
author? You may, because the book is in your hands, in your power, which
make you the author’s equal. But the book itself you cannot destroy.”

I believe that authors who are novelists want to write and publish, because they want the text and the product (the book) to survive longer than a few years. Admittedly, there are authors who generate piles of pages of no distinction, destined for a library book sale table. But those authors have a paycheck. Pay no more than five cents for their books.

It should also be noted that non-fiction authors, writing on the same subjects as novelists, write in clearer language about complicated situations. With efficient writing they are understandable. Those books (e.g. Michael Lewis) are rarely found at library sales, and never do they lie around for the bag sale.

Books by those authors are the competition novelists must fact today. The only reasons to avoid non-fiction and entertain fiction are (1) to avoid a libel suit; and (2) if the author knows the setting and events but needs characters to bring the story alive, make up the characters and it’s a novel.

Smiley of 13 Ways asks whether the novel is art. Supposedly, it was once considered not art, but the medium makes it art: Communication by one person of people, events and dialogue. The finished product is a representation of its contents and the relationships made therein. It is the like representations found in paintings, sculpture and music.

No particular use of language is required. A major point of Huckleberry Finn was Mark Twain purportedly write the dialogue in dialect. The grammar is of the frontier. The words are simple as Twain said himself: “At a dime a word I never use metropolis when I can use city.” Obscenities come from anywhere: Royal Nonesuch.

The author of 13 Ways prefers other writers who sanitize their stories and settings: Edith Wharton, Henry James. Certainly there are dilemmas and crises in those works, but no one can classify any of those situations existential. Certainly, Virginia Woolf, a favorite of the author of 13 Ways. is out there. Her brain activity was an active mix of motion and communication, the wandering around in a common demented state after she writes a topic sentence. In the end that unsteady, unstable mood became the goal of her life.

The Novels and History chapter glides over obvious, salient and important points and books. Novels represent their times: Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But Melville was writing about the United States of America in Moby Dick, the consummate power of hate. He was writing about the American Civil War, coming a decade later. There are a few clues. At the end the ship is broken up, the “wood was American.” Hemingway is not mentioned in 13 Ways, but I’ve never heard anyone say x, y or z in For Whom the Bells Toll is phony. Willa Cather also is not mentioned in 13 Ways, but when the local boy dies in the World War, Cather grabs the reader’s emotion for all eternity. The author of 13 Ways includes F.Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby in her list of 100 novels. She says it is not a masterpiece; she generously notes only a few flaws. She should tell the truth. The Great Gatsby was submitted as a draft and never finished (including many sentences) by a drunk. It is not worth reading.

Also not discussed in the History chapter is Sir Walter Scott, an author referred to in the text and the 100 novels. Mark Twain said that Sir Walter was the cause of the American Civil War. Twain was referring to the feudal society Southerners had constructed which included jousts, armor and sword competitions. American historians (Clement Eaton) have looked at Twain’s observations. They understand the influence of Sir Walter on the South, but they are not willing to put all the blame on the English author.

Finally, I infer that 13 Ways raises a point but the author does not want to discuss it. Compare and contrast Virginia Woolf to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Did Virginia do drugs? Illness and disability beset both writers. But today we celebrate neither writer as disabled or handicapped.

Oversights in 13 Ways include a passage beginning on page 235. Contrary advice is better: A writer who has completed a first draft should go through the manuscript and correct spelling, run-on sentences, grammar and everything else that distracts the eye or interferes with ingesting the content. Once those corrections are made, it may be easier to determine how to fix or fill the text for an improved second draft.

Also, Mark Twain had a story about marriage (contra, 164), The Diary of Adam, The Diary of Eve. Adam notices the creature with the long hair; she names everything; contrary to his advice she talks to the snake. Also, it is a grave oversight to overlook Josef Conrad.

Any writer, new or young, who believes he must develop a style is writing wrong. The job of the young or new writer is to communicate clearly and completely. Style is variable. Set a story in Los Angeles today. Set a story in New York City. If the words in both stories are the same, the writer has failed. Style will also change with time: Tell events in three days; tell events in a week. Style differs when actions occur over a year. AND SOMETIMES, a writer cannot make determinations amounting to style until the second or third drafts.

Reviews, page 264. Authors like reviews to rely on adjectives which are malleable and meaningless. Reviews which trash the book are filled with nouns and verbs.

The author of 13 Ways should change her opinion of Huckleberry Finn. She has read the novel before, but she should obtain the 2001 Critical Edition from the University of California for the most complete text. She twice mentions Mark Twain’s novel, Huckleberry; she claims the book is boring. She relies on her 1996 piece in Harper’s magazine.

When Jane Smiley becomes more broadly read and her reading comprehension improves, she will believe Huckleberry Finn is the best novel she has ever read.

HINT: Begin with the most widely read book in the English language.
HINT, HINT: Determine what “These spiritual gifts” from chapter Three of Finn refer to.