Third Book: My Antonia

This was my first book actually received from a stranger on book-crossing, in response to my request for it, in order to join Laura's mother's book club. (Convoluted, no?) But receiving it was a very exciting experience. I was delighted, even though the book club has long since moved on to other things.

I was also curious to see how I would like the book, and what it is about. I am always interested in Willa Cather, since she wrote one of my absolute favorite short stories, "Paul's Case," (I have such an enduring love for that tale) and also The Song of the Lark, which I read in my Performing the Female Voice CSem and quite enjoyed. However, at some point I tried to read Death Comes for the Archbishop, and got nowhere with it, for some reason. And I've never read O Pioneers. So, anyway...

I enjoyed My Antonia. The characters, both major characters like Jim and Antonia, but also minor characters like Jim's grandparents and the hired men and Peter and Antonia's father, were very interesting, and it was scenically lovely. There are many images and incidents that I think will stick in my mind for some time, like the story about the wedding party and the wolves, or Antonia's father at the Christmas tree, or the plow against the sun. I was also intrigued by some insight into this particular historical time: which groups of immigrants were esteemed, etc. I think the way the novel shows us women and men from different social brackets, and showed the options that were available to them, is interesting and strange. Strange, in that much of the book takes place during the childhood and young adulthood of Jim and Antonia, and abruptly skips twenty years before showing more concretely what happened to them. Therefore, everything in between must be intuited and understood obliquely. Actually, I think this is a very subtle and symbolic novel, and there's a lot that I'm not sure I've grasped about it. It may be that I have not experienced certain life events (or even just a longer life) which would make it possible for me to identify with the book in a more precise way.

I'm not sure what I think about Jim and Antonia. Jim is, for all that he tells the story, a presence that seems to get vaguer and vaguer. Or, I think his own sense of himself is vague, cut out of the particularities he feels so at home with. For example, as a smart young man, he studies in college and eventually becomes a lawyer, but it is never clear (to me, anyway) that he has any great interest in this--or, in fact, in his own domestic life. His wife is described only by the anonymous friend who receives Jim's story, and we are never given a glimpse of what his ordinary, non-Antonia life actually consists of, and what his feelings are about it.

Antonia, on the other hand, is full of vibrancy and particular color, but the way that Jim portrays her constantly slides away from actually engaging that vibrant person, more so as they get older. She also seems to hold Jim off, but I think I am more suspicious of his perception of what is happening between them than convinced that Antonia actually ever rejects him. But even the "love story" that may or may not be between them is very oblique... they never have anything resembling an "official" romantic relationship.

Apparently I'm left with a lot of questions about this book and what its saying. It's the kind of book I think I would get more out of if I studied it. Perhaps the book club will prove useful. Anyone else want to read it?

Except Mark, who tried to steal it from me, and definitely does not read this journal, and with whom I will have to deal in some way this week... hmmm.