One of Ours

Note: Duke Classics edition
I was once asked why I join different reading challenges, and it is to have opportunities like reading this book. Male protagonist. Coming of age story. Wartime (WWI). The combo of all of these put together would normally put me off, but it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 (thereby checking off two different challenges I've signed on for), and this was my first Willa Cather (and probably won't be my last). When Cather was writing in 1922, it was a mere four years after World War I ended, so for her time it was contemporary fiction (for mine, historical). Claude Wheeler, a young Nebraskan farmer, searches for his identity as a student, as a farmer's son, as a friend, as a husband, as a soldier, and not least as show more an American. Cather has a gift for making you care about sunsets and wheat fields in the same measure as young men marching off to war because she weaves these things together with intentionality, always teetering on the brink of idealism to remind you it is there, but also with a certain pragmatism to keep us with one foot in reality. The book is harshly beautiful, if I can describe it thus. Cather allegedly ascribed to Claude some aspects of her own personality, along with that of her cousin G.P., who was killed in action during WWI. The result is a protagonist with whom we can sympathize, even when he makes poor decisions (or maybe ESPECIALLY when he does), and for whom we cheer in his idealism and sense of resolve.

The book is not a "war novel" -- the war only makes a real entrance with descriptions of trench warfare and the like toward the end of the book. There are moments where Cather's critique shines through, like when Ernest tells Claude: "You Americans are always looking for something outside yourselves to warm you up, and it is no way to do. In old countries, where not very much can happen to us, we know that, --and we learn to make the most of little things." (88). And other times she zooms out from the story to remind us of the entire Zeitgeist. As news of the war becomes more noted by members of the Wheeler family, Claude's mother goes up to the attic to find a map of Europe -- "a thing for which Nebraska farmers had never had much need."(246). Cather follows this with: "But that night, on many prairie homesteads, the women, American and foreign-born, were hunting for a map." (246). There are so many moments like this.

Cather received criticism (from the likes of Sinclair Lewis and H.L. Mencken) for romanticizing war, and that's perhaps a valid critique. However, with almost a century of hindsight, I read it differently. The romanticization is really about Claude and his idealism (and that of his soldier companions). The emotional distance Cather employs in her descriptions of some of the brutalities of war creates an almost journalistic narrative, and she reserves her emotional energy for moments of human interaction. I don't think Cather is suggesting/advocating war as a solution for youthful searching for purpose, but I think she is suggesting that World War I offered something particular for certain young American men who became disillusioned with what was available on their home turf. show less

One of Ours, winner of the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, is my third Willa Cather read, the first two being her more well-known stories Death Comes for the Archbishop and My Antonia. Cather’s prose is fabulous, as is her ability to bring to life her portrayal of Midwest Plains life. Her character development is exceptional, as is her vivid descriptions. Reading this one, it was like being exposed to a series of Impressionist agrarian paintings, where time (and technological advancements) move (are accepted) at a slower pace. I feel as though I intimately know both the land and the characters. The story focus is on Claude, an intelligent young man from a Nebraska farming family, who finds that his life does not have any purpose until he decides show more to enlist in the army to go and fight in the Great War. For Claude, this decision provides him with a way to fight for a higher purpose and contribute to the common good. Cather approach to war fiction (the second half of the story) is the same contemplative, introspective approach she takes when writing about hardscrabble Plains living. She does not sugar coat or exclude anything but she also does not dwell on graphic war details or focus on military strategy. Cather’s writing takes on a more holistic approach to the war, although the parts of the story set in France do not come across with the same graceful flow of the earlier sections of the story. Cather captures all of this through a slightly dreamy lens that may frustrate fans of war fiction like Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (apparently, Hemingway was a vocal critic of One of Ours when it was published).

Overall, another wonderful story communicated through Cather’s simple, straightforward, descriptive prose. show less

This is a splendid novel, well deserving of the Pulitzer Prize it received in 1923.

Claude Wheeler is a, idealistic, restless young farmer, pulled from a small religious college to be put in charge of his father's Nebraska farmlands. He feels he has no purpose in life, hemmed in by a narrow education and an American materialism that he finds meaningless.

It is only when he enlists in the Army as the US is pulled into WWI that he feels he find a purpose and sense of the wider world. He is sent to France and as a lieutenant leads his men into the horrors of trench warfare.

The novel has been criticized, most notably by Hemingway, as idealizing war, but I didn't see it that way at all. Certainly Cather is sympathetic to a young man's show more idealism that leads him to enlist to fight such a war, but her descriptions of the trenches and war-ravaged France leave no such impression.

The prose is gorgeous, and her characterizations are subtle and multi-faceted, even of minor characters. At times I was reminded of DH Lawrence's layers in a novel such as [Women in Love].

One of Ours, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia are certainly Cather's best novels.

When Ernest left, Claude walked as far as the Yoeder's place with him, and came back across the snow-drifted field, under the frosty brilliance of the winter stars. As he looked up at them, he felt more than ever that they must have something to do with the fate of nations, and with the incomprehensible things that were happening in the world. In the ordered universe there must be some mind that read the riddle of this one unhappy planet, that knew what was forming in the dark eclipse of this hour. A question hung in the air; over all this quiet land about him, over him, over his mother, even. He was afraid for his country, as he had been that night on the State House steps in Denver, when this war was undreamed of, hidden in the womb of time. show less

this read much faster than i expected for its length and topic, and the writing is often really nice. not my antoniabeautiful, in my recollection anyway, but still. i felt easily taken with the story and found that far more pages would go by before i realized it. but at the same time, i'm not really sure i like that she's given such a view of war - one that seems to really solidify many men's purpose - and how she depicts being over in france - almost as a series of small trips or vacations punctuated with spots of battle. i know that war can actually be a highlight for people, but showing it this way didn't feel right to me. she also didn't tie up the loose ends between claude and enid, or with any of the rest of his family. i don't show more know, i think i liked this well enough when reading it because her language and descriptions carried me along, but the more i think about it, the less i think i did actually like it.

"'You Americans are always looking for something outside yourselves to warm you up, and it is no way to do. In old countries, where not very much can happen to us, we know that,--and we learn to make the most of little things.'" show less

1923 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

I’ve lived in Nebraska and know well the rolling landscape, the hard-working but easy-going people who farm and ranch the land there. Willa Cather’s prose, as far as I’m concerned, reflects perfectly their characters. That is the first impression that a reader takes away from One of Ours. And its protagonist, Claude Wheeler, reminds me of young people I’ve met there, who love their state and their families, but somehow don’t quite fit in. While Cather was writing about the turn of the 20th century, the story could indeed have taken place over 50 years later.

Claude’s pragmatic father doesn’t see the necessity, for a farmer, of too much education. Thus, Claude has to forego show more completing his college degree, and forsaking he friends, much different from those at home, he’s made in Lincoln. His mother, a more or less fundamentalist Christian (although the movement itself within Christianity hadn’t yet begun), is quite sensitive to Claude’s moods and aspirations; her emotional pain on behalf of her son is almost physical. Claude, as would be expected of a young man his age, marries—only to have his wife go to China to help her sister. His emotional desolation is nearly complete; he wonders if that’s all there is to life—getting up in the morning, working, going to bed at night. It may satisfy friends his age who ask nothing better than to farm their own land, but Claude longs for something more—what, he’s not sure but something.

Then World War I erupts in Europe. Claude and his mother follow the war through the newspapers and maps they pore over together. When the United States enters the war, Claude enlists—and finds his place in the world.

Cather describes the effect of the war on France and its people. She also writes about little-known facts, such as the toll sickness took of the soldiers on the way over, many dying from pneumonia. She has interesting details about what it was like for the soldiers to live under wartime conditions—bathing in polluted water in shell holes was a nice touch. There is some description—not much—of the fighting but it fits in with her story. Clearly she was more interested in what happened to the people, both French and the Allied soldiers, than she was in the details of the fighting itself.

The last pages are heart-rendering; the impact is enormous. I think you have to be a stone to be unmoved.
For a relatively short book—371 pages in my edition, One of Ours is beautifully evocative of a time, a place, and a young man’s successful search for himself. One of the best of the early Pulitzer winners. show less

Lots that I liked about this book. The first half would have rated 4 stars. Interestingly, I felt like it lost some narrative tension when the main character begins serving in WWI. That said, there were briliant moments throughout. I've heard it received a lot of criticism (from Mencken, Hemingway, etc.) for being naively pro-war. I didn't feel that. Certainly, the main character romanticized war, but I didn't feel like that was Cather. Some of her feelings about it may be displayed through the mother's thoughts near the end of the book. And, yes, this was on my pandemic reading list, as it does touch on the 1918 flu pandemic...

A surprise-- really liked this justly deserved Pulitzer winner. I thought it was a fascinating look at war that is far away, and how it affects individuals and families.