The paths of righteousness

Current book: Death Comes for the Archbishop
Pages read: 103-199

Now that the atmosphere's been properly established, Cather is focusing a little more on the daily events of the New Mexican priests' lives. In addition to Latour, there's also Father Vaillant, his immediate subordinate and good friend. At one point, Latour has to go rescue Vaillant from a measles-ridden village, but in general the two work together and travel together as a team. We've also become acquainted with Martinez, another local priest who is nowhere near as noble as our two gentlemen, but instead is a glutton and sexual predator who eventually kills a local servant and is executed by his parishioners as a result.

Cather is clearly focusing on character and plot a little more here, but to recount all of the vignettes that she discusses would be both difficult and uninteresting. Suffice it to say that the book continues to be beautiful and realistic. She's walking a fine line with the idea of racism against the Native Americans in the area, and seems to be depicting her priests as various points along that continuum. I'll be interested to see how the novel ends and what conclusions she seems to draw with that ending, if any, about the role of the church in America, or in any place in which its largely concerned with converting a native population.

Land of enchantment

Current book: Death Comes for the Archbishop
Pages read: 3-103

Look, I actually read! I'm a good girl! And I was right to look forward to this book; it's quite compelling, though oddly so.

Father Jean Marie Latour is the newly appointed Apostolic Bishop to New Mexico, shortly after it has become a United States territory, in 1851. DCftA so far consists of his experiences in his new bishopric as he struggles with the terrain and the resistance of some its inhabitants to his authority. That said, most of the New Mexicans we've met so far, including Kit Carson, have been both welcoming to and grateful for a Catholic priest in their midst. Mostly Bishop Latour has been making trips throughout the area to complete the weddings and christenings that have gone long unperformed, assuring that his flock is in line with the requirements of the faith for entry into heaven. (Because God doesn't let people into heaven if they haven't been sprinkled with water. Everybody knows that. Also if they've had sex. Like ever.)

I'd say that the real draw of this book is in its slow and careful crafting of both atmosphere and character, rather than the events it describes. The plot is important, in its own way, but more because it tells us who Latour is and helps us to understand how his character presents itself than because Cather is trying to tell the story of early New Mexico. It is as though there is no real story; there is simply what is happening. It's not that Cather has picked out the important events and shown them to us, but rather that she began telling the story in one place, and will end it in another. Some readers might be bothered by this because it necessarily makes the book measured and deliberate instead of fast-paced and plot-driven, but I find it compelling in that it imparts an incredible degree of realism to the prose. There is no part of me that does not accept what Cather writes as truth. Look at that again. That means that, while I see her artistry in presenting characters and situations because I'm reading critically and I've been trained to do so, I still think of this book as a collection of things that are happening, not a story. That's an impressive feat.

How, you might be wondering, is she accomplishing all this? It's very difficult to say. Her prose is shockingly modern for 1927, moving almost into post-modern starkness, but with a large amount of lush description that aligns her more clearly with her period. That said, her beautiful use of descriptive verbs coupled with her precision of language in her depictions of the landscapes and architecture of the area show her masterful hand at an almost poetic level of composition. A couple of examples follow, because I simply can't help myself:

"The sandy soil of the plain had a light sprinkling of junipers, and was splotched with masses of blooming rabbit brush, - that olive-coloured plant that grows in high waves like a tossing sea, at this season covered with a thatch of bloom, yellow as gorse, or orange like marigolds," (94).

"These cloud formations seemed to be always there, however hot and blue the sky. Sometimes they were flat terraces, ledges of vapour; sometimes they were dome-shaped, or fantastic, like the tops of silvery pagodas, rising one above another, as if an oriental city lay directly behind the rock. The great tables of granite set down in an empty plain were inconceivable without their attendant clouds, which were a part of them, as the smoke is part of the censer, or the foam of the wave," (95).

Those are close together because they're where I opened the book; I could find dozens. I can't count, already, the number of times I've read something she's described and had that internal moment of absolute accord, when you think to yourself, "Yes. Yes, that's exactly how it is." (Perhaps she has more of a pull on me because I've lived in the desert Southwest, but I'm dying to go there now, and see the reds and golds and smoke-blues that she so excellently recalls to the forefront of my memory.)

Combine all of that with her ability to show the very nature of the characters with their words and actions, rather than ever, ever telling the reader who they are and why, and it's hard not to love her writing, even if the plot is slow and measured. Life, after all, is slow and measured, and life is what Cather is showing us.

He knew no haste.

Current book: Death Comes for the Archbishop
Pages read: None

I'm such a slacker on the weekends. Maybe I ought to start calling the weekends automatic hiatuses. (Hiati? Anyone?)

The funny thing is that I'm actually quite looking forward to reading this book. It just keeps not happening. I did read two other books in their entireties this weekend, so that might have something to do with it. They weren't even that good. I can't really explain it.

Misdirection

Current book: Death Comes for the Archbishop
Pages read: None

Shit, it's almost midnight! I didn't read. ::insert jazz hands::

It's not looking good for the Archbishop.

Current book: Death Comes for the Archbishop
Pages read: Soon! (Another post later today, I hope.)

Willa Cather is finally here, so I just have to go and pick her up.

Heh.

Glom of nit

Current book: Somewhere between libraries

I'm still waiting for Death Comes for the Archbishop, so I can't post, quite obviously, until I get it. I hope it'll be tomorrow, because, really, how long can it take to get a book from one part of Saint Paul to another? I mean, sheesh, Library. It'd be faster to mail them.

Another for a needle

Current book: The Wind in the Willows
Pages read: 99-205 (end)

I was right about finishing the book today. It did get a bit more plotty, though not by a whole lot, and it also got significantly more preachy, which was unfortunate. There were still cute illustrations, though, and I found the whole thing fairly pleasant.

Mole and Rat save the lost child of their friend Otter one day by tracking him down in the woods at dawn after having searched for him all night. When they find him, they have a bizarre religious experience where they both see the figure of Pan and acknowledge him as God/Nature. (It's weirdly Judeo-Christian, somehow, even though it's clearly Pan that they find in the woods, complete with pipes and horns and everything. I can't really explain it. I wanted Grahame to be awesome by making a bid for modern paganism, but I'd be lying if I said he was.)

Other than finding the baby otter, and a brief episode in which Rat is struck with wanderlust as a result of the visit of a seafaring rat (And is also subsequently "cured" of his impulse to explore by Mole's reminders of the comforts of home...I'm beginning to feel like Grahame had unfortunate travel experiences early in life or something. I mean, Christ, Ken, people can go on trips now and again; the world won't end.), the rest of the book consists mainly of resolving Toad's personal and legal problems. Toad gets sprung from jail by the kindly jailer's daughter, and after sprinting across the countryside in fugitive recklessness wearing a washerwoman's clothes as a disguise, finally finds Rat, Mole, and Badger again. They admonish him for his idiotic behavior and ungrateful reactions to everyone who's tried to help him (And those are certainly fair assessments, for he is ludicrously foolish, and so stubborn about his own stupidity that it undermines the story by making him into a caricature rather than a character.), but in the end formulate a plan to aid him in regaining his ancestral Toad Hall, currently occupied by a raucous band of stoats and weasels (which seems classist, somehow, since they're described as layabouts who don't wash or work for a living, but maybe I should lighten up on the Marxist analysis, since it's a children's book). They sneak in through a secret passage that leads to the butler's pantry and lay about them with cudgels and sticks, scattering the cowardly Mustelidae with a minimum of effort. Afterward, Toad seems to have learned his lessons of humility and restraint, and throws a large and successful banquet for all the creatures of the wood and river.

My impressions remain much the same as yesterday: it's a bit too moral for my taste, encourages a maintenance of routine, and tends to exaggerate the ridiculous for comical effect, but is still mostly charming and entertaining. It is not one of the 1oo greatest novels of all time. But I enjoyed it, which is a nice change.

In theory, Willa Cather tomorrow, but she's got to make it over to my library first.