Short Lines: A Collection of Classic American Railroad Stories - Hardcover

Johnson, Rob; Hazlitt, Don

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312140460 ISBN 13: 9780312140465

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1996

Synopsis

A collection of classic railroad stories includes works that date from 1897 through 1941 and highlights the writings of such authors as Frank Norris, Owen Wister, and Jack London

About this title

From 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.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

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 Alger^-type 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. Gilbert Taylor

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0312140460
• ISBN 13: 9780312140465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 244