All aboard! Welcome to your September reminder for The Willa Cather Short Story Project. Our story this month is “The West Bound Train.”
Read it on the Willa Cather Archive: https://cather.unl.edu/writings/shortfiction/ss037
I was surprised to learn that this month’s selection isn’t a short story, it’s a play. “A Thirty Minute’s Sketch for Two People,” as the subtitle informs. I dipped into James Woodress’s bio of Cather to see what he had to say about it. It’s a one act farce and perhaps not a very good one. Woodress writes that after “The West Bound Train,” Cather “never tried writing a play again” (144).
“The West Bound Train” was published in The Courier, a Lincoln, NE newspaper, on September 30, 1899. Check out the four columns of small type.
What’s next?
Read “The West Bound Train” and come back to discuss it on the response post I’ll share on September 28th, the fourth Wednesday of the month. Or, feel free to read it now and comment here if you can’t wait until then!
New to this blog? Learn more about the Willa Cather Short Story Project here. In a nutshell, we read one Cather short story a month. I remind everyone of what story we’re reading on the second Wednesday of the month and then share a response on the fourth Wednesday of the month. Jump in anytime!