Alexander's Bridge
Finishing Willa Cather's Alexander's Bridge brings a sense of tragic trajectory. This first novel of Cather's written when she was almost forty years old has evidence of the deft storytelling Cather is noted for, but also a type of over-writing given to subjects too big for the author.
In this short novel, Barkley Alexander is a designer of bridges - in fact, the first expansion bridges in North America. His popularity gives him lifestyle security which feeds his sense of professional purpose, and a wife who feeds his personal idea of who he should be. However, something is missing in him. The protagonist's trajectory is forshadowed by the early introduction of his mentor, Wilson, who sees through Alexander's outer presentation and predicts the eventual literal and figurative crash which ultimately becomes Alexander's fate. The Epilogue ties up the package neatly vis a vis the mentor.
Cather's handling of Alexander's early life, the flashbacks and tension-building between characters and within Alexander himself, is superbly executed. It contains early signs of the brilliance we later see in novels like Song of the Lark and One of Ours, Cather's Pulitzer-winning novel of 1923. However, Alexander's Bridge, published in 1913, is sometimes overly verbose, lacking restraint by injecting the author's voice too loudly.
Having read a few of Cather's later novels, her ability to transport the reader into active observer within the story leaves one saturated as if the reader is essential to the storyline itself. This early novel of Cather's lacks that robustness. To be fair, it is her first novel and a short one.
Despite the lackluster comparison to Cather's later work, Alexander's Bridge is a novel I would recommend to those who want a piece of the Cather pie, but not two or three.
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