For some reason I don’t read short stories very often. I’m not sure why, I have nothing against them. I think of essays as the nonfiction equivalent of short stories and I love reading essays. So I am always baffled why I don’t feel the same about stories. Until I read Willa Cather’s The Troll Garden and Selected Stories, I had not read a story collection in well over a year. First published in 1905, this is Cather’s second book and her first of fiction. Her first book was poetry published in 1903.
The first story, “On the Divide” made me really worried I was going to hate the book. Sure, it had great descriptions of the landscape but the story itself is pretty caveman: the hard drinking Canute Canuteson decides he is tired of Lena Yensen’s flirtatious ways so he is going to marry her. It doesn’t matter that Lena doesn’t want him. Canute shows up at her family’s farm in the middle of a snow storm and drags her away to his house. Then he goes to the minister’s and forces him out into the blizzard to marry him and Lena. And somehow, in the end, Lena is pleased with the outcome even though she won’t admit to it.
Ugh! This made me want to barf.
But the story that followed this unfortunate beginning ended up being one of my favorites. Eric Hermannson was a free spirit, young and strong and gifted on the fiddle/violin. But his mother and others in town had been drawn in by the Free Gospellers and their leader, Asa Skinner. The preacher’s beliefs are strait-laced and buttoned up, no music, no dancing, no mirth; God was vengeful and the only way to being saved was strict obedience to His will. Skinner has his eye on Eric. Converting him would be a triumph. Somehow he manages it. But as soon as Eric gives up his violin he gives up his soul and his spirit dies. He trudges on through his now unhappy life until he is reawakened by a young woman staying with relatives on her way through to somewhere else.
Margaret Elliot is on her last fling as a free woman. When she returns to the city in the east, she will be married to a man she doesn’t exactly love and she is determined to break through the walls Eric has built around himself. There is going to be a big dance and she taunts Eric into making an appearance. And you know from the start Eric is doomed:
Something seemed struggling for freedom in them tonight, something of the joyous childhood of the nations which exile had not killed. The girls were all boisterous with delight. Pleasure came to them but rarely, and when it came, they caught at it wildly and crushed its fluttering wings in their strong brown fingers. They had a hard life enough, most of them. Torrid summers and freezing winters, labour and drudgery and ignorance, were the portion of their girlhood; a short wooing, a hasty, loveless marriage, unlimited maternity, thankless sons, premature age and ugliness, were the dower of their womanhood. But what matter? Tonight there was hot liquor in the glass and hot blood in the heart; tonight they danced.
But of course the reader does not see Eric as doomed. We see him as being saved even though the preacher is quick to promise him sulfur and brimstone.
And it turns out the first story is an anomaly, the one that is not like the others. “Eric Hermannson’s Soul” sets the stage for all that follows. Story after story of a hard life on the plains being saved by music. Some of the characters are allowed to escape to the city — Denver Chicago or New York — and one is allowed to escape to Europe and the opera. But not all the stories are about artists or musicians and while some of them are happy, a good many are tinged with sorrow and a few are downright tragic.
The stories weren’t amazing, not like reading Song of the Lark or My Antonia, but they are good, competent stories with moments of beauty in which is glimpsed the writer that Cather becomes. And since I like Cather very much, it was a pleasure to discover her young voice and the seeds of the themes and motifs that play out in her later fiction.
I like short stories but reading them in a book one after the other probably is not ideal although I do that time and again. I don’t know much about Willa Cather’s short fiction but believe she did write some classic examples – Paul’s Case is brilliant. I don’t read enough essays but may try more after reading some terrific ones by John Jeremiah Sullivan in his book Pulphead.
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Ian, I’ve not read any of Cather’s short fiction until now. I think she has one more story collection she published later. Perhaps you are right, short stories aren’t necessarily meant to be read one after the other. But sometimes they are linked and meant to be read that way, so does does one know? I suppose if I read them more often I’d start to notice clues. I’ve not read Paul Case I wonder if it is in a later collection? I will have to look for it. As for Pulphead, I’ve heard of it and remember it getting talked about a few years ago but I never went further than that. Perhaps I will investigate further.
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Well this was weird. A weird “reading experience,” to use a book blogger phrase I don’t entirely understand.
I read The Troll Garden a couple years ago. Didn’t write about it. Reading your description of the “first story,” I thought, boy I sure don’t remember this one. Second story – no, not this one either.
And then: “not all the stories are about artists or musicians” – wait, no, the one thing I am sure I remember is that every one of the stories was about artists and musicians, or at least art and music.
I am not sure what you read, but this is the Troll Garden Cather published in 1905.
Note that it included “Paul’s Case,” which I would move well beyond “good, competent,” although I would also do the same with “A Wagner Matinee” and “The Sculptor’s Funeral.”
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Tom, Oh! it turns out I read The Troll and Garden and Selected Stories and the first two were part of the selected. I did read Paul’s Case and liked it very much, a sad and tragic story. But for whatever reason it didn’t stick with me. In my defense I read the book two weeks ago on my Kindle and didn’t have any paper notes to look at, just unassociated passages I had clipped out. I did very much like A Wagner Matinee and The Sculptor’s Funeral but another of the selected, The Bohemian Girl, stuck with me more than those two did. I can’t say why. I don’t think the writing was so much better, the story just got to me in a way the others didn’t. Perhaps it is because I don’t read short stories very often that I flubbed this one so badly!
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Well, “flubbed,” I dunno. But I do wonder about the history of that and Selected Stories version.
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You are kind Tom. I got the book from Project Gutenberg and they are usually pretty good at having dates on their bib records but this one does not which caused me to mistakenly assume it was the original Troll Garden. Even the front pages of the book don’t provide a date. I did find the selected stories are ones that were published in magazines prior to Troll Garden with “On the Divide” being her first ever published story. Everyone who references it gives the collection a publication date of 1905 but I am unable to find an actual publication of the title with that date or a reliable bibliographic history so part of the mystery remains.
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Readers I respect are always going on about Willa Cather. They love her. I feel like a total dumb-dumb, but I really don’t enjoy her that much. Perhaps it’s the settings she usually uses. There were parts of My Antonia that I really loved. Parts were thrilling and impossible to forget (wolves and wedding party particularly). But on the whole, for some reason her writing does not appeal to me. I am also not much of a short story reader, except for Flannery O’Connor. Adore her (and it helps that she was raised in my hometown and is universally loved here).
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Grad, don’t feel dumb! We all have authors everyone raves about but that leave us wondering what the fuss is. I very much like Flannery O’Connor. Her stories are like a punch in the stomach, but a good punch!
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I have just finished a post for tomorrow about my own difficulties with the short story form and a possible resolution to the problem. However, I don’t think this will be one of the books that will be helping me through it, I’m afraid. 🙂
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Alex, I look forward to your post and your thoughts on the “problem” 🙂
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It sounds like this early effort is not the best place to start with her work unless you want to be turned off early on? I do like short stories, but there are certainly some that are much better than others! I think I will stick with her fiction for a while–I have lots to explore there and much of it really good I think. Maybe she was just finding her footing? Do you think this early work is considerably different than what came later?
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Danielle, some of the stories are really fantastic and others just ok. It would not be the place for someone new to Cather to start but since you like Cather very much I suspect you would want to read these sometime simply for the pleasure of seeing how she developed as a writer.
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Like you Stefanie, I don’t pick up short stories very often. I don’t know why either because I usually end up enjoying them. Anyway, I’ve only read one Willa Cather and that was long ago that I really would like to revisit her again.
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Iliana, I wonder why we don’t read stories more often? Whatever the reason I will soon be reading Mantel’s new book of stories and not long after that Atwood’s so perhaps I will manage to awaken a desire to read them more often. I read a couple of Cather’s a long time ago and then nothing for years and years. Then just two years ago or so I started reading her again and have found I really do like her.
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I do love Willa Cather. But that’s mostly because I love the satin finish of her prose, and given she’s a slow-build writer, I have tended to gravitate towards her novels (of which I have more still to read!). Do read Alex’s post on short stories. I, too, prefer the ones that are full and complete stories in themselves, and like less the ‘slice of life’ ones. Maybe that’s a division that works for you, too?
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Litlove, some of the stories are like a compressed Cather novel but you are right about her being a slow-build writer. It is one of the things I really love about her. She handles short stories well but they didn’t always click for me no matter how polished. I read Alex’s post and I am not sure if the division works for me or not. I don’t read enough stories to be able to say. But, I will have to pay attention because between this Cather, Mantel’s new book and Atwood’s I am about to get a good dose of stories!
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I can’t get into short stories either – I always feel they are like just eating appetisers in a restaurant so they leave me feeling unsatisfied.
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BookerTalk, oh if the appetizers are tasty I can totally fill up on them to the detriment of dinner! I suspect I just need more practice in reading them in order to learn to enjoy them better.
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And a poem is like an amuse-bouche!
When I eat well-made appetizers, they are deeply satisfying. They do just what an appetizer is supposed to do.
Perhaps if people ate at better restaurants, so to speak.
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Tom, you made me laugh! I can’t say I don’t like short stories because they are short since I love poetry and essays. Perhaps I should be more careful in selecting restaurants, though Cather is not a bad place for a bite.
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