TryDisciples.org - Twelve Ordinary Men Stories

this book sux   February 3, 2004

Y


Death comes for the archbishop   November 10, 2003
  10 out of 10 found this review helpful

As close to history as Cather can make this story
Written as a novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop is historical fiction based on the lives of Bishop Jean Baptiste L'Amy and his associates within the church. As such, it is representative of Cather's strong spiritual side. Set mostly in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico, it chronicles the bishop's efforts to organize the Catholic diocese of NM. A character study in the old sense of the word, this book explores the paths and pitfalls of men determined to build a mission, a cathedral in the wilderness.
After you've read this book, should you travel to New Mexico, be sure to visit the chapel of the archbishop on the grounds of Bishop Ranch, just outside Santa Fe.


Vivid, Surprising, Beautiful   September 24, 2003
  19 out of 19 found this review helpful

In the early 21st century, Willa Cather is perhaps best remembered for her chronicles of prairie lives, but one of her best works is DEATH COMES TO THE ARCHBISHOP, which depicts the southwest some 300 years after the Spaniards arrived, but barely into its American infancy. In the 1850s, there are no maps yet, and to the European eye, the landscape is a vast, primitive "geometric nightmare." It is peopled by Mexicans and Native American Indians, and by a few rogue priests who so far from Rome and civilization have built fiefdoms and empires in the desert wilderness. It has been left so long untouched that Christian legends have grown up and become ancient alongside the lore of the Indians. By turns, the land and its people are hospitable and inspiring, misguided and harsh.

In 1848, the church of Rome believes it is time to find a leader who will bring order to this region. Going against conventional wisdom, the leaders decide on a younger priest, Jean Marie Latour, a Frenchman currently stationed in Michigan, for the task. The first question that persists through this episodic story is, is he the right person? The book becomes a portrait of his steady cerebral yet compassionate leadership through the chaos he finds and the upheavals of an extraordinary period in history.

The movement of the book zigzags among the people, both imagined and real (Kit Carson shows up), and the land. Especially, it looks at the land as it is shaped by belief-Christian, Indian and political. Cather does an extraordinary job of creating very vivid, complex characters. She also describes the land in a way that needs no photographs or maps to build it in our minds. Her prose is elegiac and yet nearly as clean as Hemingway's. There is power in it, and just when you think deep into the book that it is a series of sketches, it moves forward in the last part to the later 19th century and reveals how some characters' lives have taken some unexpected yet comprehensible curves and others were able to hold a course-the suspense was building all the time. In Latour there is the story of the human vs. the self, nature, other humans, and God. His personal story reflects the broader array of church and national history.


A beautifully written book   September 1, 2003
  7 out of 7 found this review helpful

A new Bishop, Father Jean Marie Latour, is sent by Rome to spread Chrisitanity through new territory purchased in the Americas as part of the Gadsden Purchase. Father Latour takes with him his close friend, Father Jospeh Vaillant, to help with this cause. Latour is handsome, non-judgemental, amiable, keeps himself in check; Vaillant is his opposite, being not so pleasant of face but very very sociable and incredibly strong in faith.

There isn't much of a plot for this novel. It's more of a photo album or a series of episodes about the unexplored Western United States. The reader sees what the territory of New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico were like before trains, when the desert was both a beautiful and a harsh place. And, the reader learns about the people living there, from the French Fahters sent to Chrisitanize the Indians to the Mexican and Spanish settlers to the native Indians who are untrusting of white men and still hold to their gods. And the reader sees it all through the eyes of Father Latour so we get his wonder and awe at this strange, new world into which he's been sent to spread the word of God.


Don't worry. It gets better.   August 22, 2003
  5 out of 10 found this review helpful

After reading this book, I would not name my Great Dane Willa Cather, but I did very much enjoy her portrait of the Bishop Lamy of Santa Fe. I am sympathetic with those who say that the Bishop is a harbinger of capitalism and out-of-touch with the Indians and Mexicans, and at first I was bothered by Cather's acceptance and relative lack of bias towards all groups. Although she seemed to occasionally stereotype, for the most part she didn't seem to take sides at all. I wanted her to be more critical and judgmental!

It is a rather slowly told tale, but not difficult for any level of reader. And finally near the end she begins to achieve beauty. My favorite landscape line: "Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky". My favorite explanation of alone time: "It was not a solitude of atrophy, of negation, but of perpetual flowering." And finally she hints at environmental destruction and the difference in how different people treat the planet, discusses the plight of the Navajo, and calls Kit Carson, who until nearly the last page has been a gentleman and a scholar, "misguided". I was relieved. Go get 'em Willa.

It may be slow going at first, but it's rewards are many especially if you are interested in history. In Stuart Udall's The Founding Fathers, you will also find some discussion of Bishop Lamy.