A Lost Lady by Willa Cather – author of The Professor’s House http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-professors-house-by-willa-cather.html and other acclaimed novels - 9 out of 10

 

A Lost Lady by Willa Cather – author of The Professor’s House http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-professors-house-by-willa-cather.html and other acclaimed novels

9 out of 10

 

 

A Lost Lady is included on the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, and the superb author has a few other works that have been successful, such as One Of Ours http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/08/one-of-ours-by-willa-cather.html that has won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature

 

Niel Herbert is the narrator and he seems to be infatuated with The Lost Lady - love is too grand a word for yours truly, ever since reading as an adolescent in a short story by glorious Thomas Mann that we can find real love and friends only in art, fiction, in spite of the boasting many trumpet ‘he loves her so much, there are no words to express it’, nay there are, and that feeling is sexual, not real adoration

The character is young to begin with, but we will hear him after many years – by the way, let us get the spoiler alert, warning, disclaimer out of the way now, for I have had a note wiped out (for all its glorious impact) because of a complaint, which is strange, not that these lines are flawless, they are, and hence the warning, but when I told Goodreads repeatedly that the guy who is at Number One for my country, no less, has Only crap posted as reviews, copy and paste, with No personal contribution, they just let that go, and you find Socrate still dominating our local charts, with a few thousand bogus ‘reviews’

 

In the beginning of the novel, The Lost Lady is in fact a respected, imposing figure in the small town of Sweet Water, her name is Marian Forrester, married to Captain Forrester, they have a good house, that maybe we could call a mansion, servants, prestige…the captain has built his fortune by putting tracks for the railway, but he will reach a stage when he has to part with his wealth, and protect his honor

He has capital with this bank and some partners, and when he gets bad news, he has to travel to see what can be salvaged, and he is ready to take the loss upon himself, for as much as he can, something the partners would not do, the latter prefer to share the loss with the depositors, which is what happens in business, although in this situation, ordinary folks placed their money with this institution because they respected the name of the captain, and believed he will vouchsafe their earnings

 

Which he does, but covering the loss means that his wife will only have a much smaller income, and the decline towards the Lost Lady from the title has begun, there is a phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation, psychologists have discovered that we adapt to almost everything, but it will be hard for the protagonist

 

She has an affair with a man called Frank Ellinger, and when he marries, she walks late in the night to see Niel – who is a friend, stable, unwavering support though all the hardship – and make a phone call, against the advice of the young narrator, who can smell alcohol – The Lost Lady takes to drinking, once the decline has started, albeit she would not fall down on the street, or expose the outrage we associate with drunkards – and is very worried about what the conversation may turn out, in public

Back in those days (the book was written exactly one hundred years ago) it was hard to place a call and one had to go through an operator – mind you, in communist Romania, I did not have a telephone, and thus it was most often Impossible, not difficult, to call someone, given that even the public phones were rare, and mostly dysfunctional, but as I triumph ally write at the end of this note (and all those I put here, for that matter) I helped put an end to Ceausescu the Benefactor, in 1989, with the Revolution

 

The operator would hear what Mrs. Forrester would have to say, and ‘it was worse than putting things in the newspaper, when she knew something, for everyone will know’ and hence Neil was in a panic, especially after the woman starts losing it – she starts with the news of the wedding, but then progressively, she starts accusing her former lover of cowardice, telling him to avoid seeing her, ever again…

Inspired, the young man has cut off the wire that kept the telephone connected with the outside world, and therefore the shame of having the married woman talked about in town was avoided, at the last moment, but only temporarily, since the terrible spiral continues its effect and the once imposing family is gradually decaying, and the once lower ranks push forward – the obnoxious Ivy Peters pushes ahead

 

The latter is a ghastly individual, we meet him in the first chapters, when he catches a poor woodpecker and takes out her eyes, leaving the bird to fly and knock herself against various trees, one of the most disgusting acts I know, in fiction…well, we have massacres, Anna Karenina http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/03/anna-karenina-by-leo-tolstoy-one-of.html dies, but the fate of that poor creature has moved me more, perhaps

Alas, this Peters becomes a lawyer, and the Lost Lady, now a widow, does proof she ‘lost it’, by choosing this ruffian to represent her in legal matters, offending her long time protector, who had taken nothing for his troubles, and even worse, a calamity really, she takes this torturer as her…lover and male companion

Niel is there to watch this, after all, we find it through him, he is selected by the author to present the ‘facts’ to the public, and he is heartbroken, comparing the resplendent woman of yesteryear to the fallen one…

 

Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world   – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

Some favorite quotes from To The Heritage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

‚parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”