The Good Word

It’s been a long week. Not so much because I’ve had a lot on my plate, but because it’s the first five-day work week I’ve had since January.

It’s also been a good week. A nice dinner on Monday, happy hour on Fat Tuesday, Joshua Radin on Wednesday, Carraba’s Night (school fundraiser) last night, and who knows what lies ahead of me yet this evening.

I’ve been re-reading O, Pioneers! by Willa Cather this past week. I never finished it the first time around because I so tragically left it on the plane when I flew here last spring to interview. So it’s fitting that I’ve returned to it in preparation for my trip to Hillsdale next week (I’ll be in Michigan next Friday to interview potential teachers for next year).

It’s also fitting that I read it now because Cather spends so much time in her novels (especially My Antonia and O Pioneers!) discussing “home.”

So, today I’d just like to share a short passage and see what you all think of it, if anything.

It’s a dialogue from O Pioneers! between Alexandra, a farmer on the plains of Nebraska and the heroine of the novel, and her childhood friend Carl, a Chicagoan passing through his old homeland on his way to Seattle.

Carl paused. Alexandra pushed her hair back from her brow with a puzzled, thoughtful gesture. “You see,” he went on calmly, “measured by your standards here, I’m a failure. I couldn’t buy even one of your cornfields. I’ve enjoyed a great many things, but I’ve got nothing to show for it all.”

“But you show for it yourself, Carl. I’d rather have had your freedom than my land.”

Carl shook his head mournfully. “Freedom so often means that one isn’t needed anywhere.” Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, we leave nothing behind us but frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at hundred of our own kind and shudder.”

Alexandra was silent. She sat looking at the silver spot the moon made on the surface of the pond down in the pasture. He know that she understood what he meant. At last she said slowly, “And yet I would rather have Emil grow up like that than like his two brothers. We pay a high rent, too, though we pay differently. We grow hard and heavy here. We don’t move lightly and easily as you do, and our minds get stiff. If the world were no wider than my cornfields, if there were not something beside this, I wouldn’t feel that it was much worth while to work…

…Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of one of my hired men……her folks sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she’s come back she’s been perfectly cheerful…

…She said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. And it’s what goes on in the world that reconciles me.”

It’s been a long week. Not so much because I’ve had a lot on my plate, but because it’s the first five-day work week I’ve had since January.

It’s also been a good week. A nice dinner on Monday, happy hour on Fat Tuesday, Joshua Radin on Wednesday, Carraba’s Night (school fundraiser) last night, and who knows what lies ahead of me yet this evening.

I’ve been re-reading O, Pioneers! by Willa Cather this past week. I never finished it the first time around because I so tragically left it on the plane when I flew here last spring to interview. So it’s fitting that I’ve returned to it in preparation for my trip to Hillsdale next week (I’ll be in Michigan next Friday to interview potential teachers for next year).

It’s also fitting that I read it now because Cather spends so much time in her novels (especially My Antonia and O Pioneers!) discussing “home.”

So, today I’d just like to share a short passage and see what you all think of it, if anything.

It’s a dialogue from O Pioneers! between Alexandra, a farmer on the plains of Nebraska and the heroine of the novel, and her childhood friend Carl, a Chicagoan passing through his old homeland on his way to Seattle.

Carl paused. Alexandra pushed her hair back from her brow with a puzzled, thoughtful gesture. “You see,” he went on calmly, “measured by your standards here, I’m a failure. I couldn’t buy even one of your cornfields. I’ve enjoyed a great many things, but I’ve got nothing to show for it all.”

“But you show for it yourself, Carl. I’d rather have had your freedom than my land.”

Carl shook his head mournfully. “Freedom so often means that one isn’t needed anywhere.” Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, we leave nothing behind us but frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at hundred of our own kind and shudder.”

Alexandra was silent. She sat looking at the silver spot the moon made on the surface of the pond down in the pasture. He know that she understood what he meant. At last she said slowly, “And yet I would rather have Emil grow up like that than like his two brothers. We pay a high rent, too, though we pay differently. We grow hard and heavy here. We don’t move lightly and easily as you do, and our minds get stiff. If the world were no wider than my cornfields, if there were not something beside this, I wouldn’t feel that it was much worth while to work…

…Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of one of my hired men……her folks sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she’s come back she’s been perfectly cheerful…

…She said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. And it’s what goes on in the world that reconciles me.”