I am glad that I have been able to find her again, and like old friends continuing an interrupted conversation, I have enjoyed her poignant words over morning cups of coffee and felt a homesickness for the smell of cut hay and overturned earth.
While many books on this literary journey have impacted me, this one has touched me like no other. Winner of the Pulitzer in 1923, One of Ours was Willa Cather's fifth and lesser-known novel about a young man, Claude Wheeler, trying to find meaning in his life.
The son of a wealthy Nebraskan farmer, Claude dreams of life outside of the fenced-in fields he so diligently plows. He catches a small glimpse of other worlds at the community college he attends in the fall and spring. His brief visits with the cultured Erlich family only increases his desire to know there is more to life than cows and wheat.
His chance to live his life came due to the fact that others were losing theirs. World War I raging overseas, and though America wasn't in the battle yet, young men were enlisting; there's a limit to the dirt that can get under a farm boy's skin. Claude enlists in the army and travels to France, finding his purpose in life through fighting and dying. Perhaps I have said to much. But I do not feel that I have cheapened the experience for you, dear reader. For meaning is in the story, not in the ultimate destination.
Cather writes:
"As the troop ship glided down the sea lane, the old man still watched it from the turtle-back. That howling swarm of brown arms and hats and faces looked like nothing by t a crowd of American boys going to a football game somewhere. But the scene was ageless; youths were sailing away to die for an idea, a sentiment, for the mere sound of a phrase... and on their departure they were making vows to a bronze image in the sea."
In a way, it seems foolish. Picking a fight, a war, over ideals, over the mere sound of a phrase. But people have been doing it for centuries, and it will continue long after I am gone. But in a way, if you are not willing to fight for an idea, a belief, then what are you willing to fight for?
"Life was too short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together."
Thank you, my friend, for this brief but comforting reunion, for taking me "home" to hay, earth, and hard farming people, and for finding meaning in life in the midst of the meaningless. May it not be too long before we meet again.
Next in the queue is The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928 winner). I am excited about this one as my father, a man whom I dearly love and respect, loves and respects this book.
Until then.. Happy Reading.
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