Rating: 
Summary: Cather at her best
Review: Professor Godfrey St. Peter is a success in his academic field and doesn't want to move out of the house he lives in to a bigger, more upscale one his wife wants to live in. Eventually, she moves, he stays put. He is a very depressed man, partly because of the untimely death of Tom Overland, his favorite student. He even contemplates suicide, but is saved by his daughter. This is a sad, pessimistic book, but compelling and very well written--one of Cather's best.
Rating:
Summary: Slips by as a dream...
Review: Somewhere I read that Cather will eventually top Hemingway as America's finest and most esteemed writer. This book floated Cather above Hemingway in my estimation and this was only the fourth book of hers that I have read. A wonderful, timeless story set in the early twenties (could very well be today!). A remarkable tale of how the appearance of a young man in the lives of one family can have such impact. Cather develops each character around their reaction to the man, Outland. Outland, a perfect name for a character that sweeps in, lives intensely, whose intellectual capabilities create wonder and who gives it all away.The main character, the Professor, begins by tutoring Outland, even as Outland tutors the Professor's own daughters. Outland betrothes the eldest who benefits from Outland's creations with enormous riches. The youngest daughter languishes in the shadow of her older daughter's consumerism, which the mother encourages, much to the disinterest and dissatisfaction of the Professor. The middle and last sections of this three-part book are wondrous and provide the ultimate redemption and "tutoring" for the Professor who is "saved" by the life which Outland has lived. The setting for this book moves from the attic-office of the Professor in a small college town set on Lake Michigan to the mesas of the southwest. Each setting is beautifully described, in economical and lovely language. This novel is a wonder! Perfect, and the best that I have read in a very, very long time.
Rating: 
Summary: A journey into one man's lonely heart
Review: The Professor's House is a novel that I read and re-read, in the same way that one turns again and again to a good friend, for solace. Middle age is a time of change and this novel's main character is going through the Change of Life (as surely as if he were a woman...) After reading this novel about 4 years ago, I went on to devour almost every other published work by this author. If you are Canadian, like me, I urge you to read Shadows on the Rock. This is a Cather novel set in 18th century Quebec City. A real gem. But back to The Professor's House: Cather draws us in with the singularity of her main character. The professor is set apart from his wife and one of his daughters, disconnected from them by a lifetime of having to listen to and observe their pettiness. Connected to Tom Outland and to his youngest daughter, the professor flourishes. Aren't we all like this? There are kindred spirits and there are those who are not kindred spirits. Because I love the landscape of New Mexico, I was thrilled with the descriptions of the ruins. Cather's love of this part of the world is reflected in much of her work. She is able to capture the emptiness and beauty of this stark landscape in her writing. I have found some of Cather's work to be a bit ponderous. The Professor's House is one of her best novels. It has stood the test of time, which is what makes it literature. I'm also thrilled that a woman writer can be so successful at creating male characters. This is an art that many writers do not have.
Rating:
Summary: Bittersweet novel of uncommon insight
Review: This Cather novel can best be compared to a small symphony in a minor key. It is a gentle, bittersweet portrait of a successful scholar who finds himself emotionally isolated from his family in a transitional time in the family's development. A move from their familiar, too-small home to a newer, larger home highlights tensions and jealousies between his newly married daughters and the distance between himself and his wife. The first portion of the novel focuses on the professor's disappointing relationships with his family and colleagues, relationships he observes with poignancy and sadness. A smaller but equally important portion of the novel tells the story of Tom Outland, a young man whose life and death provide a backdrop for the professor's story. Cather's prose is lean and unadorned, giving every word meaning. This lends itself particularly well to her treatment of the southwest. Her portrait of the professor as ineffectual and alienated is consistent with Cather's general treatment of males and reflects her distrust of marriage. It is nevertheless a poignant and realistic portrayal of a man confronting the disappointments of an otherwise successful life. It is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: All hail Willa Cather!
Review: This is one of the most extraordinary novels I have ever read. The story contains such breathtaking beauty and sheer elegance that I am unable to put into words just what an eloquent work of art that Cather has written. If you enjoy books that are truly sensual and wonderfully lucid, by all means read this exquisite marvel.
Rating:
Summary: Great read.
Review: This was a wonderful book. Her writing and insight are intoxicating. She touched on many points pertinent to middle age and she had a good story in there.
Rating:
Summary: In the yellow quarter
Review: When I was younger I thought "My Antonia" was Cather's best novel. But the editions you find in bookstores now have gone back to the original, more bloated, and definitely inferior introduction to that book--Cather, had she been alive, would never have stood for it--and, maybe more importantly, I've gotten older. Older, I say, but by no means old, maybe just old enough that, like the professor of Cather's novel, I spend more time looking back--at nothing, to be sure, nothing--than I do looking ahead. Maybe that's why I now think "The Professor's House" is Cather at her finest.
And since nobody else seems to have done so, I'd just like to mention that "The Professor's House" is also very witty, at times downright comic.
Rating:
Summary: How the Imagination Persists
Review: Willa Cather's early novels of life on the American prairie, such as My Antonia and O Pioneers are well known. Her novel "The Professor's House" is much less familiar but is Cather at her best. The book tells the story of Professor Godfrey St. Peter. When we meet him, he is a respected academic and scholar, age 52, who has written an eight volume history called "Spanish Explorers" dealing with the Spanish in Mexico and the American Southwest. He has persevered in his writing and received awards. As a result, he and his family are able to build a new house and move away from the ramshakle rented quarters in which the Professor and his wife have lived and raised their family. The family consists of two daughters who, when we meet them, have married and gone their own ways. The younger daughter is married to a struggling news reporter who has impressed his bosses by his ability to turn out hack prose-poems for the paper on a daily basis. The older daughter was at one time engaged to a man named Tom Outlaw who is, perhaps the real hero of the book. Outlaw invented an important scientific device and willed it to her upon his death in WW I. She then marries an engineer and entrepreneur who develops and markets Outlaw's invention. The couple build a large home and name in "Outlaw". The book tells a story of change, frustration and acceptance. The Professor is unhappy with the new home and refuses to leave his old study. His relationship with his wife and daughters has cooled. He is unhappy with the modernization of the university and of academic learning with its emphasis on technowlogy and business rather than study and reflection. Most importantly, he is dissatisfied with his honors, his leisure, and his comforts. He thinks of his youth of promise and study, of his life of solitude, and yearns for adventure and meaning. The first part of the book tells the story of the Professor and his family. The second, shorter, part is a flash-back and tells the story of Tom Outlaw who Professor St. Peter befriended many years before and who grew up in mysterious circumstances in New Mexico. We learn in the second part of the book of Outlaw's life on the railroad and on the range. We see his somewhat ambiguous friendship with an older man and their discovery of an ancient Indian village on the mesas. There is a wonderfully drawn picture of Washington D.C. as Tom tries, without success, to interest officials in his discovery. In the third part of the book, the Professor reflects on Tom and on his own life. It seems to me that Tom's life mirrors the theme of the Professor's lenghty studies in "Spanish Explorers" It is the kind of life in its rawness, closeness to nature, and independence that the Professor thinks he would have liked to lead rather than settling for a middle-class life of conformity, comfort, and boredom. We see how the Professor tries to struggle on. There is a frustration built into life when we learn we are not the persons we dreamed of becoming. This is a poignant, beautifully-written story of American life and of how and why people fall short of themselves.
Rating:
Summary: How the Imagination Persists
Review: Willa Cather's early novels of life on the American prairie, such as My Antonia and O Pioneers are well known. Her novel "The Professor's House" is much less familiar but is Cather at her best. The book tells the story of Professor Godfrey St. Peter. When we meet him, he is a respected academic and scholar, age 52, who has written an eight volume history called "Spanish Explorers" dealing with the Spanish in Mexico and the American Southwest. He has persevered in his writing and received awards. As a result, he and his family are able to build a new house and move away from the ramshakle rented quarters in which the Professor and his wife have lived and raised their family. The family consists of two daughters who, when we meet them, have married and gone their own ways. The younger daughter is married to a struggling news reporter who has impressed his bosses by his ability to turn out hack prose-poems for the paper on a daily basis. The older daughter was at one time engaged to a man named Tom Outlaw who is, perhaps the real hero of the book. Outlaw invented an important scientific device and willed it to her upon his death in WW I. She then marries an engineer and entrepreneur who develops and markets Outlaw's invention. The couple build a large home and name in "Outlaw". The book tells a story of change, frustration and acceptance. The Professor is unhappy with the new home and refuses to leave his old study. His relationship with his wife and daughters has cooled. He is unhappy with the modernization of the university and of academic learning with its emphasis on technowlogy and business rather than study and reflection. Most importantly, he is dissatisfied with his honors, his leisure, and his comforts. He thinks of his youth of promise and study, of his life of solitude, and yearns for adventure and meaning. The first part of the book tells the story of the Professor and his family. The second, shorter, part is a flash-back and tells the story of Tom Outlaw who Professor St. Peter befriended many years before and who grew up in mysterious circumstances in New Mexico. We learn in the second part of the book of Outlaw's life on the railroad and on the range. We see his somewhat ambiguous friendship with an older man and their discovery of an ancient Indian village on the mesas. There is a wonderfully drawn picture of Washington D.C. as Tom tries, without success, to interest officials in his discovery. In the third part of the book, the Professor reflects on Tom and on his own life. It seems to me that Tom's life mirrors the theme of the Professor's lenghty studies in "Spanish Explorers" It is the kind of life in its rawness, closeness to nature, and independence that the Professor thinks he would have liked to lead rather than settling for a middle-class life of conformity, comfort, and boredom. We see how the Professor tries to struggle on. There is a frustration built into life when we learn we are not the persons we dreamed of becoming. This is a poignant, beautifully-written story of American life and of how and why people fall short of themselves.
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