Monthly Archives: July 2025

The Professor’s House by Willa Cather (1925)

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I keep returning to inter-war Britain. One novel just leads to another. Time, I thought, to drag myself away, so I accepted a recommendation of Willa Cather. Inter-war America instead.

The professor actually has two houses – the old one is ugly, inconvenient, cramped, the home of his work and family; the new one he has had built with a literary prize for his histories should be a great improvement. But he cannot bear to move completely into the new house; he returns to the old house, with its dangerous stove, to continue his work. In the same way the whole narrative shuttles between the surface story and something else beneath. The novel’s structure is as higgledy-piggledy as the house: for example, the narrative dwells on domestic interiors and almost phenomenological detail of the professor’s head (he’s called St Peter BTW) or his wife’s long upper lip, but skims lightly over their mutual regrets about what their marriage has become. And yet . . . stair carpets and beards are more visible than occasional mild sadness.

Quite what is beneath the surface sets my mind buzzing. His explanation of metonymy to Augusta can’t be accidental. There are opposites: Rosamond’s two suitors: Tom Outland (oh, the names) – poor, brilliant, sensitive, attached to the American landscape and its pre-European history – and Louie Marsellus – thrusting, loud, generous, well-meaning and quite definitely a city man. Honest piety and worldly delight. Scholarship vs getting students through exams. The professor’s French-style walled garden and the New Mexico mesa. The clear air under the sun that Tom Outland exults in and the smoking stove in the professor’s attic; both are places of retreat and study for the men.

The novel grew on me as I read further. So much is left hanging (as in real life), corresponding perhaps to the way that St Peter remembers and dwells on events. How much has St Peter idealised Outland? Had Outland courted Kitty unbeknownst to St Peter? (Names again! I noted the worldly “Rosamond”, but I’ve just realised that her sister’s pet name suggests a fireside creature.) Roddy has vanished, Crane is bringing a lawsuit.

The novel is in three parts: the professor’s life in the university town, expansively if obliquely told; a first-person account by Outland as he explores a long-abandoned native American village in New Mexico; and then back to the professor as, in the space of a few pages, he has what would now be called a mid-life crisis, is convinced (despite good health) that he is near death, cannot bear the thought of living again with his family, almost dies, and then has a quick change of heart after a few words with a religious, stoical seamstress. Just like that.

And yet, writing the above and re-reading some passages, my irritation with the ending begins to fade. The sudden shift in the narrative reflects the professor’s breakdown. He is put back together again but is no longer whole. He has lived for intellectual pursuits, love, delight, interest, and has avoided “the taste of bitter herbs . . . the bloomless side of life”. Henceforth that may be how he has to live. The Book of Ecclesiastes comes to mind: vanity, toil, “under the sun”.

Barry Lyndon (1975)

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Director Stanley Kubrick with Ryan O’Neal

I remember when this came out; the media were full of it – as they had been with The Great Gatsby the previous year. There was little chance of my seeing either film at the time; I wasn’t fussed about Gatsby, but Barry Lyndon sounded fascinating. So long in the making (and so long in the watching!), the technical difficulty of shooting “by candlelight”, so many extravagant scenes and so many extras, and so many publicity stills that made it look unlike any other film. (Some stills came back to me as I watched the film.) Given that my experience of films then was basically what was shown on television, that was hardly surprising. (Although it did give me a good grounding in westerns, the Hollywood classics and war films.)

So, finally, after 50 years I got to see it on a big screen. It is slow, detached, painterly, amoral, brutal, farcical and tragic all at once. Full of familiar faces on screen for short cameos. I shall not forget in a hurry Leonard Rossiter dancing a jig in thigh-high black boots. The scene where Lady Lyndon encounters Barry for the first time is just wonderful: the lighting, the colour, and such restrained expression in the faces of Murray Melvin and Marisa Berenson. Norma Desmond would have given top marks for their eye work. Acting is done by looks and action/stillness as much as words; Ryan O’Neal is a constant presence, but more often seen than heard. It’s as if figures in half-remembered paintings by Hogarth or Rembrandt come to life to hold the stage for a while and then step back into their frames to the accompaniment of Handel or Mozart.

Had I seen it 50 years ago I think I would have found it overlong and its tone incomprehensible. It was definitely worth waiting for.

As an aside: I have been pondering on male dominance in the external world until very recently, and here is yet another example after Key Largo and The Return. (Gross generalisation alert, obvs.) So much fighting (both in the Seven Years War and informally) and yet more shoot-outs – here the duels that bookend Barry’s career from farce to tragedy. So many images and actions that were once the norm – here the bare-knuckle fight with the regimental heavy. All these might now come under the heading of “toxic masculinity”, but perhaps another way of looking at them is as a signifier of underlying violence in the world.

I see why I so often read female novelists.

Key Largo (1948)

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Director John Huston with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G Robinson

Not wise-cracking characters along the lines of “The Big Sleep” as I was expecting: Bogart was polite and self-effacing, and Bacall was a domesticated widow with a bit of a temper. Only Robinson played true to form: the embodiment of every unhinged bad guy from Nero onwards. The film was adapted from a play – which was obvious from its uneasy juxtaposition of a hostage-scenario-in-a-hurricane with wordy disillusionment at the way the post-war world had turned out. Despite all the death and destruction, pre-war gangsters like Rocco were still around, still thriving, and looking to pull the strings of politicians. Just like Odysseus though, the hero rediscovered his sense of honour and wiped out the baddies single-handedly in yet another shoot-out.

And it worked, despite the well-worn path to the final credits. I was intrigued enough by the characters and the action to be hooked; the pace was tense, and the sense of disenchantment gave it a greater depth than a standard film noir.

Following (1999)

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Director Christopher Nolan with Jeremy Theobald

Short, shoe-string, B&W and twisty. Typical Nolan non-linear narrative (you had to check the haircut) and very well-crafted. A young man spirals into gangland nastiness while looking for material for his book. I could be sniffy about plot holes, but while I was watching I was gripped and didn’t care. It unlocked a sense of nostalgia too: remembering when CDs were the norm – never mind worth stealing – and credit cards had to be ironed under carbon paper slips and signed.

The Return

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Director Uberto Pasolini with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche

Odysseus’s return to Ithaca after 20 years away, a broken man washed up on a mismanaged island. Fiennes and Binoche were brilliant, making scenes their own. Other parts though were underwritten and would have been more at home in a film with special effects by Ray Harryhausen. It was strong on the long-lasting horrors of war – for Odysseus, who lost all the men under his command, and for Penelope, abandoned and fearful of the atrocities that her husband might have been involved in. Of course, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do and so there was a shoot-out – just like any western or gangster film. Except that Homer got there first, and we’ve been reading and watching that story ever since.

Postscript: I suddenly remembered life after the warrior’s return in One Fine Day. I can’t imagine Odysseus pitching into the washing-up, and he certainly wouldn’t have had a “servant problem”!

Worth Valley

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Each time the train stops at Keighley and I notice the platform for the Worth Valley Railway I think that one day I will travel on it. Today was that day.

I set off disproportionally early to be on time for the 11 a.m. steam train from Keighley to Oxenhope – but it meant I could have a second (and totally unnecessary) breakfast in Leeds. At first I thought the steam locomotive at Keighley rather puny – until I realised that I am used to the big engines that occasionally still go up the main line to Carlisle. This one was pulling a few carriages up a short valley: it really didn’t need to be the Flying Scotsman. The average age of the passengers was rather lower than I am used to, and excitement levels were high amongst the under-7s and over-70s. The well-stuffed seats combined a fusty smell with discomfort, which, together with door handles only on the outside, took me back a few decades.

I hadn’t done much planning – a mixture of carelessness and a wish to give serendipity a chance – so it occurred to me too late that I could have had a good walk from Oxenhope to Oakworth if only I had worn my boots. Instead, I simply returned to Haworth from Oxenhope (locomotive going backwards) and went up the hill for a coffee. I then followed part of The Railway Children Walk to Oakworth, which was the station for the film – passing over the tunnel where the schoolboy broke his leg. Lots of memories of Bernard Cribbens at the level crossing and “Daddy, my Daddy” on the platform. The advertisements on the platform amused me enormously and set me thinking of “Murder Must Advertise” and the slogans that the copywriters came up with. Melox is definitely my favourite. I also realised how industrial the valley had been (wool, textiles, coal): stations had their goods platforms, and Oakthorpe had a crane for unloading stone.

I then caught the train as far as Ingrow to look at the locomotive and carriage museums -unexpectedly interesting, comparing the varieties of third-class and first-class comfort over the years, looking wistfully at maps of old cross-Pennine railway lines. Then back to Keighley, which left me time for a very late (and by now totally necessary) lunch in Leeds.

Slagheaps

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Who would have thought slagheaps could be so interesting? From the train I’ve often noticed what I thought of (but without really thinking) as a broken wall – but it’s actually a line of slag heaps.

There was once an ironworks nearby, using limestone from local quarries to smelt iron ore from Furness, and the red-hot waste was taken along a single-track railway line and dumped in a long line beside the estuary. The works have been closed for a century and the slagheaps have become part of the landscape, protecting the low-lying land and providing a home to limestone-loving plants. I knew nothing about this, so it was all fascinating. I added even more to my mental maps by seeing the stock car track that I’d sometimes hear as I cycled that way. From the noise I’d imagined it was something on the lines of a speedway – but, no, it’s just an oversized Scalextric track.