The Troll Garden

by Willa Cather

Paperback, 1961

Status

Available

Call number

813.52

Collection

Publication

Signet/New American Library (1961), Edition: 1ST, Paperback, 152 pages

Description

Classic Literature. Fiction. Short Stories. HTML: Virginia-born writer Willa Cather burst onto the American literary scene with this riveting collection of short stories, all loosely yoked together via the theme of the arts, artists, and creativity. Fans of Cather's later work will be surprised at the sophistication of these assured, mannered early pieces, which hint strongly of her admiration for the fiction of Henry James..

User reviews

LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
Willa Cather’s first collection of short stories (originally published in 1905) remains a vital introduction to her style, interests, cultural milieu, and emotional commitments. Katherine Anne Porter’s afterword to this edition is itself distinctively mannered, forthright, and clear-eyed.
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Cather’s protagonists are often artists, either musicians or painters. They are either cut off from their art through impoverished distance (“A Wagner Matinee”) or through illness (“A Death in the Desert”) or death itself (“The Sculptor’s Funeral” and “The Marriage of Phaedra”). Sometimes wealth is a bar to one’s artistic resonances (“The Garden Lodge”). At other times it is clear that wealth proffers no route to artistic sensibility (“Flavia and Her Artists”).

However, the story for which the collection remains known (“Paul’s Case”) is only tangentially connected to the arts. Unless how one lives one’s life could be considered an artistic creation. If so, then Paul has a singular vision of how he wishes to perceive himself and his world, and how he wants to be seen or, perhaps, unseen. His mechanism of achieving this vision (grand theft) ensures its demise. But for that brief period, isn’t he truly alive? Until, that is, he is truly dead. No doubt many young “cases” have been compared to Paul’s case. No doubt many more will. It’s an unsettling and still unsettled debate.

There is a great deal to think about in these stories, some of which have dated. One thing that struck me on this reading was Cather’s assumption, or insistence, that even those living in poverty or near poverty on the American frontier would be longing for, had a right to, the cultural and artistic richness of the whole world. And nothing save distance and means cuts them off from what is after all part of their human condition. I fear that is a viewpoint now vanished.

Still worth reading.
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1905
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