Books: The Most Calming Writer
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008Is there an author that you find yourself drawn to in times of over-angst?
Yesterday was one of those times for me when pressures and stress kept getting fed into me via a one-way valve until my psyche was bloated and taut. A minor situation involving a waylaid text message regarding a wedding shower and a problem with the voicemail on my mobile phone while sitting in calculus frustrated by a concept, realizing my midterm would require epic studying, irritated by a classmate and feeling ill…oh, in retrospect, that does seem like a bunch of petty but grating crap.
By the time I got home after class I hadn’t eaten for much of the day, the dog was sneezing on me, AT&T Mobile’s customer support had closed ten minute earlier, I had an overdue water bill I can’t pay due to an ongoing problem with 1st Tech Credit Union’s online banking site.
These things are petty and typical of our culture, yet they were etching a gully of grief into my soul.
Instead of booze, I reached for Willa Cather. There is something about her clean, scenic style that blasts the scum out of me. My Ántonia was something I picked up off a bookshelf once because I knew it was a classic–but it was such a sweet, joyous read. I read O, Pioneers! last year and it left me feeling the same soulful peace.
I have not yet read Death Comes for the Archbishop, mostly because I was holding out for a nicer edition than the one I bought at some garage sale for a quarter, but had realized that there, curiously enough, aren’t really any “nice” editions of this book–well, actually, Virago has released a tolerable one but I haven’t seen it in any local shops. The edition I have has a rendering of the bishop, effeminately, as if done in colored pencil by a twelve-year-old.
Just I had hoped, Cather’s landscapes and understanding (and love) of core of the American continent pre-settlers eased me into a calmed state that no large glass of cheap box wine can. The wonderful contrast of the Roman Catholic politic against the Mexican-and-Native-American southwest in the mid-19th century is fabulous. Just the description of a midday meal in a hidden pueblo village: frijoles with chili, goat milk, fresh cheese, fresh apples–that was enough to calm me in its immediate sensuality.
Cather’s biography has always sounded difficult to me, and I would love to travel back in time and comfort her; or perhaps I will be so fortunate as to meet her on the fields of asphodel after I too am a shade.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:42 am
not only an author, but a particular book. “Sometimes After Sunset” By Tanith Lee. i can drown myself in this text. and i’ve read it so many times i can recite the first phrase of the book by wrote:
“I was out hunting the night my Aunt Cassie died. Perhaps I even killed at the same moment she let that last breath of revitalized Arean air go. Was it some kind of omen, or did I feel her reaching out across the star black darkness?”
strange medicine it might seem, but it is balm for my most troubled spirit.