Obscure Destinies.
Cather To Horgan: A Southwest Legacy
Cather, Willa. Obscure Destinies. New York: Knopf, 1932.
8vo.; green cloth, printed spine label; spine lightly cocked and faded; dust-jacket, spine slightly darkened and worn, else fine; a very fresh copy overall.
First edition. Paul Horgan’s copy, with his bookplate affixed to the front pastedown and embellished with his elaborate, hand-drawn ownership device containing his initials drawn boldly in black ink and the date, 1932. A decorative flourish to the top and bottom appears to be a growing vine with acanthus-like tendrils. Horgan left pencil ticking throughout, as well as some page numbers and catch-phrases in the rear. A page of notes referring to Cather’s description of a snowfall on page 18-19 is loosely inserted. Paul Horgan (1903-1995) was a versatile regionalist heavily influenced by his southwest roots and Catholic upbringing. A writer of children’s books, fiction, biography, plays, essays, and poetry, Horgan won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for Great River, a “history of the cultures that grew up along the Rio Grande” (Benet). Other novels include The Saintmaker’s Christmas Eve (1955), Give Me Possession (1957), and the “Richard” novels—Things As They Are (1964), Everything to Live For (1968), and The Thin Mountain Air (1977); among his non-fiction works are Rome Eternal (1959), a biography, Lamy of Santa Fe (1975), Encounters with Stravinsky (1989), Tracings: A Book of Partial Portraits (1993), and The Centuries of Santa Fe (1994).
In Obscure Destinies, Cather returns to the western environment that she handled so adeptly in Death Comes for the Archbishop. Of the three nouvelles collected in this volume, “Old Mr. Harris” is considered by many to be her finest achievement in the short narrative. Her rich descriptions of place and poignant portraits are suggested with the character of the southwest. As a result, Cather’s prose works on two levels, the real and the ideal. Critics have been quick to point out that Cather’s achievement lies in this fact: she is at the forefront of authors who can successfully combine a critical realism of place and character with an aesthetic idealism. The result is that her characters are both real and yet capable of standing for universal aspects of our passionate being. The achievement is rare: characters who are precisely drawn and true to life, yet you evoke more fundamental themes of love, hatred, and suffering.
This copy of Obscure Destinies is substantive evidence of the careful consideration critics have long sensed Horgan, over twenty-five years younger than Cather, gave her work. A penchant for depicting the detail of regional character while simultaneously probing the depths of our transcendent human predicament marked Cather’s work; a similar capability has been often praised in Horgan’s writing.
(#3705)
Print Inquire
