| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9780679731801 | | Publisher: Vintage Books | | Publish Date: 11/1/1990 | | Buy.com Sku: 30118104 | | Item#: RTCD6X | | Dimensions (in Inches) 8.25H x 5.5L x 0.75T |
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| | | "The moving was over and done. Professor St. Peter was alone in the dismantled house where he had lived ever since his marriage, where he had worked out his career and brought up his two daughters. It was almost as ugly as it is possible for a
house to be; square, three stories in height, painted the colour of ashes--the front porch just too narrow for comfort, with a slanting floor and sagging steps..." (from the first line)A study in emotional dislocation and renewal--Professor Godfrey St. Peter, a man in his 50's, has achieved what would seem to be remarkable success. When called on to move to a more comfortable home, something in him rebels.
Annotation:
When he and his wife move to a new house, Professor Godfrey St. Peter is uncomfortable with the materialistic turn his life is taking. Stubbornly, he clings to his dusty study in the old house in an attempt to hang on to his old life and values. In addition, he is finding difficulties coping with the marriages of his two daughters which have not only taken them away from him but forced him to give a dubious welcome two new sons-in-law. The novel is divided into three sections, the middle one dealing with the exploration of an ancient cliff city in New Mexico by a former student who died in World War I--and whose life and death are also crucial to the plot. In the final section, the professor, left alone while his family takes an expensive European tour, comes close to death from the malfunctioning gas stove in his study--and finds himself strangely willing to die. He is rescued, however, by the old family seamstress, Augusta, who has been his staunch friend throughout his trials. He resolves to go on with his life and make the best of things. Cather's exploration of loneliness, idealism vs. materialism, and the sadness and resiliency of old age is widely considered to be one of her best novels.
| Praiseintroduction
"She was wiser than she was clever, which is admirable; but by the time of writing THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE she was an unobtrusively economical artist, too." - A. S. ByattWILLA CATHER & THE POLITICS OF CRIT
"[T]errifying....[H]er most profound book." - Joan Acocella 2000 |
| Author Bio| Willa Cather | | Willa Cather was born in Virginia, but her family journeyed west to acquire land, and she was raised in Nebraska from the age of 9. She graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1895, and moved from the rural west to the urban east after college, becoming a journalist and editor and settling, finally, in New York City. Her first published book was a volume of poetry, and she continued to work as a journalist, until the publication of her first novel, ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE in 1912, enabled her to write fiction full time. She traveled to Europe in 1902, and to the Southwest in 1912; both visits enabled her to put her Nebraska childhood in a larger context. She returned to all these places in her fiction--famously, the prairie towns she knew so well, in O PIONEERS. Cather, who often dressed as a boy in her youth, was a lifelong lesbian, though perhaps this was expressed only in ardent friendships with her many women friends. She often used male narrators in her works, and favored strong, independent women--often artists. Her perennial theme was the artist's need for freedom, expressed vividly and convincingly in such works as THE SONG OF THE LARK and LUCY GAYHEART. |
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