One of Ours (Willa Cather, 1922)

I like Willa Cather's writing a ton. Especially "Death Comes to the Archbishop;" "Song of the Lark;" and "My Antonia." Plus a bunch of her short stories.

I didn't enjoy this book very much while reading it. The book won a Pulitzer Prize, but I wasn't even aware of it; saw references in some of the other WWI stuff I read recently (here and here and here). The references were not flattering; Kennedy felt Cather didn't know much about the war, and that her writing glorified and romanticized the war in an outdated fashion.

So I was looking for faults and found them. Cather clearly hadn't the knowledge level of Shaara or Remarque regarding WWI. And I thought she was too hard on the small town Nebraska, and way too romantic about France.

Then the last five pages of the book wrapped up the entire thing beautifully and the entire thing made sense. She wasn't writing so much about the War as a type of individual and the way in which this type of individual responded to the War. It wasn't intended to be an "objective" or "comprehensive" look at the war, which functioned as a setting. One neat (and short) passage involves the protagonist visiting one of the local girls, Gladys Farmer, before heading off to France; marvelously poignant (she was one of a handful in the town that understood him, and vice versa); you can read it here.

And in that way the book works extremely well. And makes you kind of sad in the end.

Two ASU events

On Thursday I went to a "symposium" at ASU where three visiting professors presented short papers about aspects of the concert that we're performing on April 26. First speaker, a rabbi, went through the union prayer book and its history, Bloch's approach in condensing elements of the prayer book into the choral work, etc. And he said Bloch at that stage was not particularly religious, calling him a "seventh day absentist." (Everybody laughed.) Speaker number two was from Claremont College; he focused on Bernstein's Jeremiah Lamentations. Speaker number three was the most interesting; he was a music professor from University of Georgia and discussed sources of the music, played clips, etc. He described a theory - not proven but much work went into trying to prove it - that Gregorian Chant was based on sources from Jewish worship. Some of the figures were very similar. And he played the orchestral lead-in to Bloch's Sacred Service, which sounded extra nice given the buildup. It's going to be good.

On Friday, Patrick was in town for an interview; he, Patricia and I went to ASU to see a concert put on by a group in which Meghan Jones performs (the "Pitch Forks", some dated info about the group is here). Paul Jr. and Nedda also attended. A fine time was had by all, including a late dinner at Z/Tempe.

Moby Dick (Herman Melville, 1851)

I had never gotten around to reading this novel, but keep seeing it referred to as America's greatest novel. The story is well known, though I actually had no idea how the book ended. In fact, I never seemed to get much past the part where Queequeg is sharing an iffy inn room with Ishmael near the very beginning of the story.

Ahab is a scary character though Melville humanized him a bit via sympathy for Starbuck and Pip. The long passages about whaling detail are as tiresome as advertised (sorry).

So this was good and well worth working through, but I'm not sure how it gets on "greatest" lists.

I posted a couple of the illustrations, by some guy named Rockwell Kent. Those were very entertaining, and there were lots of them scattered throughout the book. Helped break up the "Modern Library" edition, which ran just over 800 pages (read at gym).

Info about Melville, who is a pretty interesting guy, can be found here. The article says "Moby Dick" wasn't that popular when it first appeared. Interesting.

Silas Marner (George Eliot, 1861)

This is a lovely story by George Eliot (she was a Victorian author).

Wronged man moves to new town (Raveloe) and continues his profession (weaver); becomes a miser; his gold is stolen; gradually reenters society after taking on a foundling daughter (she of golden hair). Dunstan Cass is the bad guy. Everyone gets what they deserve.

George Eliot is interesting, I picked this up because I had enjoyed her Middlemarch. Good reads.

ASU Concert (Sing Joyfully! Music of the Jewish Tradition)

Patricia and I attended a concert at Katzen Hall at ASU on March 31, 2007. I picked her up after work at Mayo Hospital, then we threaded our way through some surface streets due to a road closure on the 101. Ended up missing the first half hour of the concert.

But we really liked the portion that we heard. This concert is part of a series culminating in the performance of Bloch's "Sacred Service" that our ASU Choral Union will be performing on April 26. So the program was themed to music with Jewish connections (broadly defined).

Big crowd, primarily Jewish. Very involved in the music. Two works were by contemporary composers who were in attendance, so that was neat. I liked that the program had lots of variety - solo mezzosoprano, piano-with-cello, chorus-accompanied-by-violinist, etc.

They performed some Jewish folk music at the end, and the crowd clearly enjoyed those songs a bunch. A lady sitting near us was explaining things, she was from Rogers Park (Chicago) and had grown up with this music.