I love Willa Cather's work. Who ever would have thought my adult self would say that since when I was a teenager in high school she was so 'talked up' by the nun's that I did everything I could to avoid her work. She wasn't just talked up but more thrust upon us, and being just the tiniest bit rebellious and thinking that anyone else must be better than a Nebraska author (I was dreaming of traveling and of Europe so nothing so close to home could possibly tempt me), but I have changed my tune. She's marvelous.
She tends to be lumped into a class of authors known as regionalists, but she is really so much more than that. Why does that make it sound like her fiction is something less than other classic writers? (Or is my perception off?). Actually as I was reading "The Sentimentality of William Tavener" in Infinite Riches I was thinking how versatile she is. How does someone who was never married write so elegantly and so perceptively about a marriage? I've never thought an author could or should only write about those things they have experienced or that were closest to their lives, but maybe it makes it easier? It certainly doesn't matter in the case of this story--yes, another cracker of a story in a collection filled with them.
The Taveners are a married couple with several children all boys. They are a farm family and so are used to hard work and a certain hardness of character and restrained emotion.
"It takes a strong woman to make any sort of success of living in the West, and Hester undoubtedly was that. When people spoke of William Tavener as the most prosperous farmer in McPherson County, they usually added that his wide was a 'good manager'. She was an executive woman, quick of tongue and something of an imperatrix. The only reason her husband did not consult her about his business was that she did not wait to be consulted."
She's a strong woman and determined, well-spoken and practical. But underneath it all, too, there is a soft spot. For farm boys in a rural area with strict parents and in the early part of the twentieth century proper off the farm entertainments are surely few and far between so when the circus comes to town, it is going to be celebrated and anticipated . . . if you are lucky enough to be able to go. Which the Tavener boys are not allowed.
It's Hester's careful maneuvering and insistence that nothing ever bad came of a group of well-brought up boys like their own going to a circus that will throw new light on her own marriage and subtly change the relationships and dynamics for all of them. As a matter of fact her own story of a youthful outing to a circus brings to light a shared memory they didn't realize they had. Both were at that circus so many years ago not knowing the other at the time. At that moment their marriage takes on a different hue.
"Their relationship had become purely a business one, like that between landlord and tenant. In her desire to indulge her boys she had unconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitude towards her husband. No debtor ever haggled with his usurer more doggedly than did Hester with her husband on behalf of her sons."
That shared moment of this forgotten incident in their youth begins a reminiscence between the two and they begin to really talk again for hours and hours. And it sets a different tone between the two, a remembered history and what initially brought them together. And William pulls from his wallet the money for the boys to go to the circus. An astonishing moment for them when they wake up with the news that they can go and a moment, too, of a tinge of melancholy knowing that in their mother they have perhaps lost a powerful ally. So beautifully told this story of lost or maybe forgotten love remembered and renewed. Such a perfect story for any weekend but especially on Valentine's Day!
Next weekend a story by (an author I keep meaning to get back to) -- Rosamond Lehmann.
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This week's (February 16 issue) New Yorker story is a curious one, but I liked it very much. To be honest I wasn't sure what I thought when I read it, but now that I have sat down and must think about it to write something, it's hit me how much I do like it. I've had an interest in mazes and labyrinths for a while now, just one of those things that hovers in the back of my mind and every once in a while I will come across something about them that will make me think. Amelia Gray's (another new-to-me writer) "Labyrinth" is part of a story collection due out in April called Gutshot: Stories. If you click through on the link and take a peek at the cover illustration you can get an idea of what this story is like--yes, a eerie sort of story indeed.
"Dale had been doing a lot of reading on Hellenic myth, so when he said he had a surprise for us at his Pumpkin Jamboree we knew he wasn't screwing around."
And he wasn't though whether the labyrinth took on a life of its own or if Dale had something to do with it does make me wonder . . . Oops getting ahead of myself here. The jamboree is a fall festival that you would find in a small town or in the countryside and this one includes a labyrinth. Not to be confused with a maze as the two are not alike. " . . . the path is unicursal, not multicursal. There's only one road, and it leads to only one place." You can't get lost, but that doesn't mean there is no point to getting to the middle. And what is in the center is the point and what the reader discovers in the very last line of the story. And I'm not telling, because this is a story you can read for yourself since it is online! So, go on, nudge, nudge. This is a very short story and you can easily read it in a short sitting (and get in a short story this week). Then go and read the author's Q&A here. I'm quite intrigued by her and what she had to say. I like the idea of a retelling of the Theseus myth. And I like what she has to say about short fiction:
"What’s the most a writer can say in the fewest lines? There’s a breathtaking quality to brevity. W. S. Merwin’s 'Elegy' is the poetic equivalent of a leg-sweep takedown. Even when I’m writing longer pieces, I look for small moments, turns of phrase, which allow each scene to stand alone."
I'm definitely going to check out her new collection of stories, and maybe while I'm waiting I'll look for her Museum of the Weird because something 'beguiling' and 'bewitching' sounds like great fun indeed.