I am currently walking 162 miles of the Camino de Santiago with my family. While on this pilgrimage, I am republishing some of my favorites from the archives. Willa Cather’s “Double Birthday” was the very first reading I published on Substack.
If you missed these stories the first time around, now is a great time to listen or explore the archives on your own (searchable by date recorded, by author, and by theme).
By the time the short story “Double Birthday” appeared in the pages of The Forum in February of 1929, Willa Cather was already well-known and widely published. One of Ours had earned the author a Pulitzer in 1923, and her novel Death Comes for the Archbishop was released in serial form in The Forum in 1927.
In many respects, Cather was approaching the zenith of her career that year, having been awarded an honorary degree from Yale University and elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1931, she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.
Accomplishment can give one a certain level of freedom to move about. It was at this time that Cather departed from the prairie themes found in earlier works (My Ántonia and O Pioneer), preferring to explore the complications of more cosmopolitan settings. She began using her writing to examine culture, nostalgia, memory, and spirituality.
It is no wonder, then, that “Double Birthday” found its way to the public via The Forum. For this story, Cather chose not a literary magazine per se, but rather one that was a hub for cultural and political debate.
Willa Cather here writes of the years after World War I; a time of necessary transitions as the formalities of life before the war became off-putting, excessive, and flat after so much destruction. Previously cherished traditions (“full of chests of linen like this”) teetered in purgatory, awaiting a new place to land. In this vein, the thrust of Cather’s narrative leans towards an acceptance of time’s arrow. Known as a pragmatist in her personal life, Cather’s tone is congruent with her likely approach to this phase of her life and to society at large.
Dour though the topic may be, Cather executes her tableau with terrific pace and scintillating wit. Please enjoy…
Headline Image: Luncheon at Antino by Peder Severin Kroyer, c. 1890
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