In the past I have read My Antonia by Willa Cather. I enjoy some of these books, like Independent People, Hunter's notebook sketches, Jean Giono's books, The Tree of Man, Far from the Madding Crowd. Some of these books where the world is at the cusp before the modern consumeriasation and capitalism. When man was still struggling to eke out a living from land, and life's standards and meanings were quite simple and not as cluttered with things and short-term consumption patterns as they are now in this modern age. There is a serenity in these books.
This one is a short book, and shifts forward episodically once early in the book. So even before you get to know and warm up to the different characters, they have moved forward in time and sensibility. (midway in the book atm). Still the core characters are the same, and the book slowly warms you up to them amidst a shifting background cast of people.
Later - loving the book very much. Given its shortness, its compactness, it is not like long novels, and yet the sharply described characters. Glad to be reading it. A recommend.
Also, Marie is one of a memorable characters in the book. So full of life, so whole-hearted, she inspires you.
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There's this underlying discussion in the book - as modern time approaches, and the element of optionality creeps in (work the land or be free of it, and work an occupation?), a similar debate as following reigns in many minds, an excerpt:
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Carl paused. Alexandra pushed her hair back from her brow with a puzzled, thoughtful gesture. “You see,” he went on calmly, “measured by your standards here, I’m a failure. I couldn’t buy even one of your cornfields. I’ve enjoyed a great many things, but I’ve got nothing to show for it all.”
“But you show for it yourself, Carl. I’d rather have had your freedom than my land.”
Carl shook his head mournfully. “Freedom so often means that one isn’t needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.”
Alexandra was silent. She sat looking at the silver spot the moon made on the surface of the pond down in the pasture. He knew that she understood what he meant. At last she said slowly, “And yet I would rather have Emil grow up like that than like his two brothers. We pay a high rent, too, though we pay differently. We grow hard and heavy here. We don’t move lightly and easily as you do, and our minds get stiff. If the world were no wider than my cornfields, if there were not something beside this, I wouldn’t feel that it was much worthwhile to work. No, I would rather have Emil like you than like them. I felt that as soon as you came.”
“I wonder why you feel like that?” Carl mused.
“I don’t know. Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of one of my hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields, and a few years ago she got despondent and said life was just the same thing over and over, and she didn’t see the use of it. After she had tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got worried and sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she’s come back she’s been perfectly cheerful, and she says she’s contented to live and work in a world that’s so big and interesting. She said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. And it’s what goes on in the world that reconciles me.”
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Perhaps this debate can be stretched to modern times too. And to a deeper level of being too,. But more one thinks, more one realises that contentment and tranquility is within. It is the management of internal expectations with world and reality that one finds serenity in. Every way of being has an alternate, and every point of view too. Eventually the negotiation is with the self, and the expectations one carries from life.
But without sounding sermon-like, a note to self about being free wherever one is. To be free from own past and the past ways of being. Just freshly assessing wherever one is, and taking the best step/action forward. To keep beginning again and again, wherever one is.
Here's to fresh beginnings, often. And here's to 2026. Happy New Year!
