Some authors take interesting stuff and keep it interesting. Some authors take interesting stuff and make it boring. Still other authors take boring stuff and make it interesting. It is the rare author who can take boring stuff and make it even more boring. And yet, that is the enigma that is Willa Cather.
As if My Antonia's meandering, pointless descriptions of Nebraska and terrible narrative point of view (I cannot stand women writing from a male perspective, especially in the first person- what incredible presumption!) weren't enough, Cather follows up with a tedious chronicle of some priest's endeavors to convert the American southwest to Catholicism.
Cather is completely obsessed with landscapes. She just rambles on and on with metaphors and personification indefatiguably. Superfluous, flowery language does not a classic piece of literature make.
And the Catholicism. Leagalism to the point of nausea. Why don't they let the poor priests marry? The illicit scandals the book describes, and the ones still going on today, do nothing for the church.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment