The world needs more books about sexy civil engineers
that are world famous bridge designers.
Bartley Alexander is working on several important projects, including a
bridge in Canada which will be the largest cantilever bridge in the world. He loves his supportive, beautiful, and well
connected wife, Winifred, but a chance meeting with a long ago love, actress
Hilda Burgoyne, in London puts Alexander on a path to disaster. Torn between two women he loves, Alexander
must make a decision about his future.
Alexander’s Bridge was Willa Cather’s first novel
published in 1912. In an interesting
preface that was added for the 1922 reprint, Cather states that the novel was a
practice novel that “does not deal with the kind of subject-matter in which I
now find myself most at home.” She
stated that she picked the subject as she found it interesting and that “the
writer, at the beginning of his career, is often more interested in his
discoveries about his art than the homely truths that have been with him from
his cradle.” This novel was good, but
definitely not as polished as other Cather works. It’s amazing to me that O, Pioneers, one of
my favorite novels, was published only a year later. I thought in this novel, Cather was trying to
mimic Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence at certain moments, but without the
experience in Wharton’s world, it falls short.
Part of the problem is just the brevity of this novel, it doesn’t have
much room to expand on the characters.
One item I found interesting was that the back
description on this book stated that Alexander’s wife Winifred was “cold” and
that is what drove him to Hilda. I didn’t
find that at all. Alexander seemed to
really love Winifred and had in fact left Hilda for Winifred in the first
place. With Hilda, Alexander seems to
want to recapture his lost youth, but his deep regard seems to be for
Winifred. This is what causes his
extreme angst. I’ll put a spoiler alert
now as I want to talk about the ending.
SPOILER ALERT
The disaster at the end of the novel seemed familiar
to me so I looked it up. Willa Cather based it on the Quebec Bridge Disaster in
Canada where 88 people were killed in not one, but two bridge failures. The first failure was caused when famous
bridge engineer, Theodore Cooper, decided to lengthen the bridge span without
revising his calculations. He also did
not inspect the construction personally, but had a young engineer without
experience do this. The young engineer
sent to Cooper telling him that things were not looking right, and Cooper wrote
back to stop work. Unfortunately they
did not and it had tragic consequences.
In Alexander’s Bridge, Cather mimicked real world
events with Alexander in New York with Hilda during this critical time. The on-site inspector cannot find Alexander
and gets a hold of him a day later to tell of the problems. The inspector couldn’t get a hold of him as
he was with Hilda illicitly. This one
day delay makes it so that when Alexander arrives on site, he is too late and
while inspecting the bridge, the tragedy occurs. Alexander’s love for both women, his
indecision, made it so that he was crushed both literally and figuratively, but
luckily for him, his letter to Winifred telling her of the affair has the ink
washed off so she never knows.
I wear a stainless steel ring on my right pinky as
part of the Order of the Engineer. It is
on my working hand to remind me to always be ethical in my work as an engineer
and to put mankind before profit. I
always heard the legend that this came from Canada and that the original rings
were made from a bridge that collapsed there.
Reading this novel and finding out about the Quebec Bridge Disaster, I
put two and two together. Canadians go
through the Ritual of the Calling of the Engineer which was originally written
by Rudyard Kipling (who knew!) and was eventually brought to the United States
as the Order of the Engineer. The Ritual
of the Calling of the Engineer was develop in the 1920’s in direct response to
the Quebec Bridge Disaster.
SPOILER END
My favorite quote from the book from Alexander, “After
all, life doesn’t offer a man much. You
work like the devil and think you’re getting on, and suddenly discover that you’ve
only been getting yourself tied up. A
million details drink you dry.” Spoken
like an overworked engineer.
Alexander’s Bridge was not Cather’s best work, but it
was an interesting look into her development as an author and also fascinating
to me as an engineer. If you are a fan
of either Cather or civil engineering, I highly recommend this book. If you are just starting to read Cather, I
recommend My Antonia or Death Comes for the Archbishop which are her best
works.
Book Source:
Christmas gift from my best friend Jenn.
