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Overview
The influence of the railroad on the lives of Americans was at its height roughly between 1900 and 1950. Americans not only rode the rails in unparalleled numbers, they also wrote and read about this mode of transportation. The railroad story was a distinct popular genre during those years, crowding the pages of such magazines as McClure's, Scribner's, and The Saturday Evening Post. The stories in this collection date from 1897 through 1941. Presented here is some of the best work of the best railroad writers, as well as classic stories by their better-known contemporaries, such as Frank Norris, Owen Wister, Jack London, O. Henry, Christopher Morley, and Thomas Wolfe. Although the early golden age of the iron horse that inspired the railroad genre has faded away, these stories - many long out of print until now - remain finely crafted, untarnished masterpieces. Something about the discipline and precision of machinery found its way into these writers' prose. Railroad stories help to define America: the driving wanderlust, modernity slicing through the heartland - this brave newfoundland continually being found. With their stories of our nation's thundering industrial past lit with humor, these writers captured America's most enduring characteristics. Railroad stories are an example of all things old becoming new again.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Before the personal computer downloaded into the American lexicon the verb "network" and the ubiquitous adjective "virtual," an older technology captured the American imagination. Many of the railroad stories in this theme anthology were tailored for popular magazines of the era by authors who used stock adventure plots and added significant doses of railroad lore, but the better stories in the collection strive for a more universal appeal. Thomas Wolfe's "The Near and the Far" is perhaps the best entry, a brief but poignant ode to the influence of perspective on the memories of a retired conductor who visits a tiny homestead that was once part of his daily route. A more pedestrian affair, O. Henry's "Holding Up a Train" is a straightforward primer on how pull off a train robbery. "Hoboes that Pass in the Night," by Jack London, reflects the writer's days of riding the rails. There is a brief chapter from The Octopus, Frank Norris's well-known railroad novel. Most of the remaining tales fall into the category of light comedy or adventure by such specialists as Harry Bedwell, Frank Hamilton Spearman and Cy Warman, among others. Written between 1897 and 1941, these tales collectively elicit nostalgia for a time when, helped by the railroads, America was just beginning to introduce itself to itself. (Mar.)Gilbert Taylor
All aboard for a magazine story form popular from the 1890s to the 1930s. It attracted big names like O. Henry and Jack London, but the less-renowned writers of the stories here were no slouches in creating entertaining yarns set on a moving train. Despite their common frame, their themes vary widely. A Thomas Wolfe story captures aging in a just-retired engineer's dismay at visiting a house he had often passed on his runs. Octavus Cohen constructs a clever tale of honesty lost and found in the perils of a Pullman porter; elsewhere in the collection, a comparable fixture on the railroads, the newsboy, cast in the Horatio Algertype mold, averts a terrible crash through his knowledge of telegraphy. Collisions between trains and encounters on them mark this compilation's motif, and whether applied seriously or to humorous effect, as in "Mrs. Union Station," concerning one man's fanatical interest in model trains, both students of short-story technique and nontechnocratic fans of tall tales of the rails will find enjoyable variety.Book Details
Published
March 1, 1996
Publisher
New York : St. Martin's Press, 1996.
Pages
256
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780312140465