Up this month for the Willa Cather Short Story Project is “Consequences.” It was published in McClure’s magazine in November 1915.

For those of you who do not like to read digitally, the last six stories of the WCSSP are available in a print edition: Uncle Valentine and Other Stories: Willa Cather’s Uncollected Short Fiction, 1915-1929, edited by Bernice Slote.

Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

The seven stories in this volume were written during the ascending and perhaps most triumphant years of Willa Cather’s career, the period during which she published nine books, including My Ántonia, A Lost Lady, and Death Comes for the Archbishop. For the most part ironic in tone, these stories are, as Bernice Slote observes, bound by the geometrics of urban life—streets and offices, workers and firms, the business world of New York and Pittsburgh, the cities which by 1929 Willa Cather had known well for over thirty years.” In her introduction, Slote discusses their biographical elements, connections with earlier and later work, and the intricate patterns that lie below the lucid, shimmering surface of Willa Cather’s prose.

University of Nebraska Press

Our final six stories:

• March “Consequences” 1915
• April “The Bookkeeper’s Wife” 1916
• May “Ardessa” 1918
• June “Her Boss” 1919
• July “Uncle Valentine” 1925
• August “Double Birthday” 1929

The first four stories are set in New York, and the last two, which were late additions to our reading list, are set in Pittsburgh. Fan favorite “Coming, Eden Bower!” aka “Coming, Aphrodite,” is also included in this collection. We read it for this reading project back in 2019 as it was included in the Vintage Classics edition of Cather’s Collected Short Stories that we started with.

About “Consequences”

This is one I have not read before. In her introduction to the above collection, Bernice Slote writes about “Consequences” that “There is nothing quite like it anywhere in Cather’s work, though it has elements of writers she admired–Poe, Hawthorne, and James” (x). A lawyer accepts a ride home from a city playboy. They live in the same building but are more acquaintances than friends. One New Year’s Eve, they fall into a conversation….

You can read “Consequences” over on the Willa Cather Archive: https://cather.unl.edu/writings/shortfiction/ss009

What’s next?

Read “Consequences” sometime this month, then come back to discuss it in the response post I’ll share on March 27th. Or, feel free to read it now and comment here if you can’t wait until then!

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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 what story we’re reading on the second Wednesday of the month and then share a response on the fourth Wednesday. Jump in anytime!