Alexander's Bridge

A man is caught between the marriage of his adulthood and the love affair from his youth, loving both and realizing having both is not possible. The bridge can be an obvious metaphor but instead of the usual symbol overshadowed by the divisions it joins or the obstacles it crosses, there was some actual engineering speak. I approve.

I haven't read much of Willa Cather's works so I'm not sure how it compares to her other writings, or to that of other authors. I guess I could say she does paint her scenery well. There is that tasteful, older style of fading to black for delicacy.

Her characterizations are crafted, as in made with skill. But it's the kind of skill that is a little off, that finely carved sculpture of something that doesn't quite work. All that's coming to mind is crass stuff but this wasn't crass. More like...incomplete. A Venus de Milo. The two female vertices of the love triangle were flat. They had no flaws, at least this book wasn't long enough to describe them, except that they lived for this man. Maybe I'm viewing this through a modern lens, but they don't read like actual, feeling, thinking women to me. It's likely that the characters are just fine, and just happen to grate on my shoulder chips of the moment.

Reading about this bridge engineer, reflecting on my own career, my "it's not fair!" nerve got tripped. Reading about this disaster of relationships, reflecting on my own, my "glad that's not me!" smugness was slightly inflated. Normally this would lead to a dear-diary splaying of my reflections. However, I find I no longer enjoy sharing the minutia of my despair. You're welcome. ( )

Brilliant examination of illicit love between Bartley Alexander, a civil engineer and builder of bridges, and Hilda Burgoyne, a London actress and his former lover, now renewed. Alexander is building the first suspension bridge in Canada, aware that price constraints are forcing him to flirt dangerously with inadequate construction materials and techniques. His work carries him from his home in Boston where he lives happily with his devoted and talented pianist wife, Winifred, whom he loves deeply. A visit from his favorite former teacher, Professor Wilson, hints at what is to come. He says about his one-time student: "'Yet I always used to feel that there was a weak spot where some day strain would tell. Even after you began to climb, I stood down in the crowd and watched you with — well, not with confidence. The more dazzling the front you presented, the higher your facade rose, the more I expected to see a big crack zigzagging from top to bottom,' — he indicated its course in the air with his forefinger, — 'then a crash and clouds of dust."

This is exactly what happens, as by nature, Barley is unable to live a double life and unable to quit either woman he loves. His bridge “into the future” that he traverses between his wife in America and his lover in England snaps and his suspension bridge in Canada collapses while he’s standing on it, sending him to his death.

Very tightly written novella in which every word counts. The sketching of character is sharp and deft and true and the descriptions of scene - especially weather and cities – are vivid and metaphoric. It’s nice to be reminded how a writer one last read in high school still commands such power over the imagination 50 years later. Cather is as good as Edith Wharton or Henry James. ( )

I read this book years ago and did not recognize that fact until I was 20 or so pages in. Unlike the first time, I savored every single word. Cather's writing is akin to experiencing ascending diamond tipped ocean waves as they glide to the shore on a warm and restful day; mesmerizing. The story was more interesting to me at 57 than it was many years ago, in it's humanness and her main character, Bartley Alexander. I was surprised at the compassion that her story evoked toward Bartley and in treading into a world and time that I've been charmed by only in old films. I have read reviews on this book, her first published novel, and I am relieved to not be tethered by narrow viewpoints that put every book through a series of tests and report on where it did and didn't meet the collective ideal. My review is simply experiential and based on the sheer delight in revisiting and being touched by a story well told. ( )

I enjoyed this book. It is simple and honest and beautifully written. A dynamic, greatly admired, famous bridge builder becomes miserable because he loves his wife and his mistress, and is torn between them. ( )

Everyone has to start somewhere. I think the most well written feature of the copy I have is the preface written by Cather in which she basically distances herself from the book. She states, "Alexander's Bridge was my fist novel, and does not deal with the kind of subject-matter in which I now find myself most at home." That feels obvious as one reads the story - characters that appear to be caricatures, characters without depth, stilted and unconvincing dialogue...the list goes on. The book is mercifully short. It is hard to imagine that the writer represented with this story eventually wrote Death Comes for the Archbishop and My Antonia. The beauty and grace of those books seems so distant from Alexander's Bridge. It is an interesting contrast to her other works - and a reasonable read for a completist, but it is a far cry from the great writing one expects when the name Willa Cather is mentioned. ( )