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Cargando... Obscure Destinies (1932)por Willa Cather
Best Books of 1926-1935 (131) Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Like everything Willa Cather wrote, this book is awesome. Well, I don't know awesomeness is true of all her books. I've only read all of her novels and several collections of her short stories. This particular volume contains one novelette, one short novella and a short story. They all involve interactions between ordinary people in the face of a crisis of some kind and how those interactions change people's perceptions and destinies. 1. Neighbour Rosicky (1928) — novelette Story about an old Bohemian farmer. He's having some shortness of breath. The doctor says it's his heart and that Rosicky shouldn't do anymore heavy work. Rosicky started life in Bohemia (Czech). He spent two years in London in abject poverty learning to be a tailor. Then he worked in New York as a tailor and did well enough. But he missed the land and wanted to get away from the city. So, he moved to the mid West, took up farming, and formed a family in middle years. He did well enough. Five strong sons and a loving wife. A lot of this comes by way or reminiscing or telling stories around the table. Rosicky worries about his oldest son, Rudolph, who has married an American girl, Polly. But he has a heart attack at Polly's house and she immediately tends to him. He learns that Polly has a good heart and all will be well. Something like that. A lovely, if somewhat sentimental story. 2. Old Mrs. Harris (1931) — short novella Old Mrs. Harris was a Southern lady, transported to the west by her daughter and son-in-law. The way she was brought up, the young people were to enjoy their youth and the old folks would run the household in the background. That's what she did. Her daughter, Victoria, was rather proud and tried to keep up appearances despite her husband's sketchy financial situation. That was fine by Old Mr. Harris, but the neighbors felt that Victoria was taking unfair advantage of her mother. Then, granddaughter, Vicki needed a bit of extra cash so she could go to college. Old Mrs. Harris had to come up with a solution that would also save Victoria's pride. 3. Two Friends (1931) — short story Essentially, the two rich guys in a small western town—one ran a store and bank, the other had various cattle holdings—used to sit amicably together in the evenings and chat about this and that. The writer, a young boy observing them, used to love to sit off a ways and listen. Then one day, the two good friends had a falling out over the William Jennings Bryan/William McKinley match up and never talked again. I actually quite liked these three long vignettes. No plot to speak of, more like character studies. I esp. liked getting to know Grandma Harris, who is the same age as the young twin boys, because the years between them were... full of trouble and unimportant;" these three people "have in common all the realest and truest things." I also like her insight that the twins' older sister has "'got her head full of things lately; that makes people kind of heartless, "'and twins, who "resolved they would never put anything into their heads, then!"" sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Contenido enContiene
The jacket of the first edition of Obscure Destinies announced "Three New Stories of the West," heralding Willa Cather's return to what many thought of as "her" territory--the Great Plains. These three stories, "Neighbour Rosicky," "Old Mrs. Harris," and "Two Friends," reflected her return to the well of memory that had inspired the books that made her reputation. The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition presents for the first time the three stories in their historical and biographical context, with an interpretive historical essay and detailed explanatory notes. The textual essay and apparatus establish the definitive text and trace Cather's changes through newly discovered prepublication versions. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.52Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1900-1944Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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All three stories were good.
Neighbour Rosicky
Old Mrs. Harris
Two Friends ( )