Somehow I missed The Professor's House when I was reading my way through Willa Cather as a teenager. What can I say after reading it this summer?
I don't think I've ever not been able to put down a book that I liked less.
Page after page I turned, not being able to stop. The words were beautiful, the characters interesting. I even got through the flashbacks into youthful days of exploring the west.
I loved the Professor! But...but...
Oh, well. Here's one paragraph that made me love the Professor:
The Professor happened to come home earlier than usual one bright October afternoon. He left the walk and cut across the turf, intending to enter by the open French window, but he paused a moment outside to admire the scene within. The drawing-room was full of autumn flowers, dahlias and wild asters and goldenrod. The red-gold sunlight lay in bright puddles on the thick blue carpet, made hazy aureoles about the stuffed blue chairs. There was, in the room, as he looked through the window, a rich, intense effect of autumn, something that presented October much more sharply and sweetly to him than the coloured maples and the aster-bordered paths by which he had come home. It struck him that the seasons sometimes gain by being brought into painting and into poetry.
from The Professor's House
by Willa Cather
That one paragraph kind of makes the time spent reading this book worth it.
