Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1827). New York: Vintage, 1971.

Though this book gets the award for Cather’s best title ever, I think it’s my least favorite of hers, of those I’ve read of course. I’m not quite sure what my thoughts are on the book, so I’ve waited until after class to write this annotation. I noticed this was a big departure for Willa, being not at all about the Plains (not at all, in no way do they enter into this novel), and also not featuring a central character who is observed through another. This novel is set up with a single situation—the U.S. has annexed New Mexico, and the Americans, Mexicans, and Indians who are there need to be assimilated as both Americans and American Catholics, and so Father Latour is sent by the Vatican to be bishop to this land and unite its peoples—and then the action is all episodic. A chapter starts, we meet some people and know their situation, the whole thing is resolved with ease, and the chapter wraps up and those people/situations never come back in the novel.

I thought it was the book’s main flaw. Not only is causality removed from the book, but obstacles and any form of suspense are as well. There are really no complications whatever in the book. But then, after class, I see this as a design of Cather’s, and it’s actually quite brilliant. Well.... Okay so you have a book called what this is called and so you know before turning past the cover what’s happening at the end. The bishop will die. Considering that most narratives end before their protagonist’s death (how early before that death, of course, is what makes ending a novel so tricky), the novel can’t be driven by the reader’s interest in how it will end. Even if we’re curious how he’ll die, we know it will end with his death. And so what your narrative frame becomes, then, is the life of the character. The whole life. This book follows Father Latour until his death, which makes his general life drive the plot, and if we look realistically at our own lives, we’ll see that life is episodic, not incremental. We have a span of years. Key people enter into our lives during this time. We live through this situation until it ends. We persevere until the next big thing comes along. We die, eventually. We try our best to read cause-effect relationships, but they usually aren’t there. This book, I think, says such a thing is okay.

So it’s a good book for putting your own life into perspective. I can think of my life right now as The Chapter in Which I Go to Graduate School. And while it will affect what is to come afterward, I don’t have to worry so much about causality. This chapter will end one day, and I’ll turn the page and simply start the next one.