Willa Cather Short Story Reminder for July
Our story this month is “The Namesake,” published in McClure’s Magazine in March 1907. Read “The Namesake” over on the Willa Cather Archive: https://cather.unl.edu/writings/shortfiction/ss003
“The Namesake” has been a Library of America Story of the Week, so you can read it there as well or download a PDF or Google Docs copy. There’s also an introduction that discusses the connections between this story and an earlier poem, and Cather’s own “namesake.”
I’m looking forward to reading “The Namesake.” It is a story that scholars often reference because it has biographical elements related to Cather’s own experience of playing/experimenting with how she named herself. “The Namesake” opens with seven American artists sitting around a studio in Paris. Cather travelled abroad for the first time in 1902. She visited both England and France.
What’s next?
Read “The Namesake” sometime this month. Come back to discuss it on the response post I’ll share on July 26th. 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!
[…] this month for the Willa Cather Short Story Project. It was published in 1907. As mentioned in the reminder post, scholars have made much of this story in relation to Cather’s naming and renaming of […]