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Paul's Case
"Paul's Case" was first published in 1905 in Willa Cather's first story collection, The Troll Garden, which began her literary career. When the story was printed in McClure's magazine in May of the same year, it brought Cather to national attention. In 1920 the story was reprinted by Alfred Knopf in Youth and the Bright Medusa. "Paul's Case" examines the dangers of art and the struggles of youthful artists in a commercial world.
48 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 1905
31 people are currently reading
1,208 people want to read
About the author
Willa Cather
784books2,580followersWilella Sibert Cather was born in Back Creek Valley (Gore), Virginia, in December 7, 1873.
She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.
After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.
Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, 'One of Ours' (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments.
She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 in New York City.
She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.
After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.
Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, 'One of Ours' (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments.
She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 in New York City.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 187 reviews
September 12, 2022
Paul is in his mid to late teens, bored by school, and seemingly friendless. He’s a snappy dresser with a �hysterically defiant manner� that, understandably, infuriates his teachers and father. He hates the oppressive uniformity of his �highly respectable street�. He lies and smiles with ease, for social ease. How much can be explained and excused by the fact his mother died soon after his birth?
He lives for music and theatre - as an usher, unpaid dresser, and observer-cum-stalker:
�His chief greediness lay in his ears and eyes.�
He loses himself in fantasies of drama, glamour, and the exotic, often conjured by music.
�The first sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious spirit within him� He felt a sudden zest of life; the lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendor.�
Should he be left to grow out of it (or for his father to come to terms with his son's interests), be forced to devote his attention to his studies and more conventional and masculine hobbies and ambitions, or encouraged to perform (even though he’s not shown signs of wanting to)? Three very different outcomes. This story has just one. It’s beautifully told, with a touch of foreshadowing, and no judgement.
Image: “Here and there on the corners whole flower gardens blooming behind glass windows, against which the snow flakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley-somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow.� ()
Follow the flowers, as you follow Paul’s dreams, and ponder the importance of money for attaining happiness.
It's set around the time of writing, 1905. Paul's path might be different now.
Thoughts and themes
If you haven’t read the story, avoid spoilers.
Image: Paul enjoys getting lost in one of Raffaëlli’s Parisian street scenes. This is Raffaëlli’s "The boulevard of Saint Michel". ()
Quotes
There are other quotes in the spoilered section.
� “He began excitedly to tumble into his [usher’s] uniform.�
� “It was at the theatre and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love.�
� “Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty.�
� “When the roseate tinge of his champagne was added - that cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed and foamed in his glass - Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at all.�
“He knew now, more than ever, that money was everything.�
Short story club
I read this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.
You can read this story .
You can join the group here.
He lives for music and theatre - as an usher, unpaid dresser, and observer-cum-stalker:
�His chief greediness lay in his ears and eyes.�
He loses himself in fantasies of drama, glamour, and the exotic, often conjured by music.
�The first sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious spirit within him� He felt a sudden zest of life; the lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendor.�
Should he be left to grow out of it (or for his father to come to terms with his son's interests), be forced to devote his attention to his studies and more conventional and masculine hobbies and ambitions, or encouraged to perform (even though he’s not shown signs of wanting to)? Three very different outcomes. This story has just one. It’s beautifully told, with a touch of foreshadowing, and no judgement.
Image: “Here and there on the corners whole flower gardens blooming behind glass windows, against which the snow flakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley-somehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow.� ()
Follow the flowers, as you follow Paul’s dreams, and ponder the importance of money for attaining happiness.
It's set around the time of writing, 1905. Paul's path might be different now.
Thoughts and themes
If you haven’t read the story, avoid spoilers.
Image: Paul enjoys getting lost in one of Raffaëlli’s Parisian street scenes. This is Raffaëlli’s "The boulevard of Saint Michel". ()
Quotes
There are other quotes in the spoilered section.
� “He began excitedly to tumble into his [usher’s] uniform.�
� “It was at the theatre and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love.�
� “Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty.�
� “When the roseate tinge of his champagne was added - that cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed and foamed in his glass - Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at all.�
“He knew now, more than ever, that money was everything.�
Short story club
I read this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.
You can read this story .
You can join the group here.
October 3, 2022
Paul's Case is a sad short story about an adolescent who is different from the rest of his high school colleagues which bring him to a disciplinary meeting with his father and teachers. His life and character comes under scrutiny both by the people present there and by the readers. We learn about the boy's desire to lead a different life and the dissatisfaction with the banality of his existence. The ending is tragic but predictable.
Read with The Short Story Club
Read with The Short Story Club
June 15, 2024
The Short Story Club
What happened to the main character of the story, Paul, a troubled, neurotic teenager who lives in his own dreams and refuses to face the reality is an illustration of the worst case. Paul might have had psychological problems (depression, etc.) but, apparently, there are other circumstances that contributed to the fatal outcome. Paul was a motherless child and his father probaly lost or never had a connection with his son until the latter alienated himself from his family, school and his surroundings altogether.
Paul never got the help he needed, nobody tried to teach him to appreciate simple things or explain to him that in the long run the best things in life are free. Nobody tried to talk to him or just understand him. He was desperately lonely and the only emotions his attitude and behaviour triggered were indignation and irritation.
'Paul entered the faculty room suave and smiling. His clothes were a trifle out-grown, and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn; but for all that there was something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and
a red carnation in his button-hole. This latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension. Paul was tall for his age and very thin, with high, cramped shoulders and a narrow chest. His eyes were remarkable for a certain hysterical brilliancy, and he continually used them in a conscious, theatrical sort of way, peculiarly offensive in a boy.
The pupils were abnormally large, as though he were addicted to belladonna, but there was a glassy glitter about them which that drug does not produce.'
What happened to the main character of the story, Paul, a troubled, neurotic teenager who lives in his own dreams and refuses to face the reality is an illustration of the worst case. Paul might have had psychological problems (depression, etc.) but, apparently, there are other circumstances that contributed to the fatal outcome. Paul was a motherless child and his father probaly lost or never had a connection with his son until the latter alienated himself from his family, school and his surroundings altogether.
Paul never got the help he needed, nobody tried to teach him to appreciate simple things or explain to him that in the long run the best things in life are free. Nobody tried to talk to him or just understand him. He was desperately lonely and the only emotions his attitude and behaviour triggered were indignation and irritation.
'Paul entered the faculty room suave and smiling. His clothes were a trifle out-grown, and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn; but for all that there was something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and
a red carnation in his button-hole. This latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension. Paul was tall for his age and very thin, with high, cramped shoulders and a narrow chest. His eyes were remarkable for a certain hysterical brilliancy, and he continually used them in a conscious, theatrical sort of way, peculiarly offensive in a boy.
The pupils were abnormally large, as though he were addicted to belladonna, but there was a glassy glitter about them which that drug does not produce.'
September 3, 2022
“It was Paul’s afternoon to appear before the faculty of the Pittsburgh High School to account for his various misdemeanors. He had been suspended a week ago, and his father had called at the Principal’s office and confessed his perplexity about his son�.
“There was something dandy about Paul�.
“His teachers were asked to state their respective charges against him, which they did with such a rancor and aggrieved-ness as evinced that this was not a usual case , Disorder and impertinence were among the offenses named, yet each of his instructors felt that it was scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of the trouble, which lay in a sort of hysterically defiant manner of the boy’s; in the contempt which they all knew he felt for them, and which he seemingly made not the least effort to conceal�.
Paul’s only sign of discomfort was the nervous trembling of the fingers that toyed with the buttons of his overcoat, and an occasional jerking of the other hand that held his hat.
Paul was always smiling, always glancing about him, seeming to feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect some thing�.
Paul didn’t get on well with school� but he when he was at the theater� he came alive. When he was at Carnegie Hall he forgot about everything else.
“This was Paul’s fairytale, and it had for him all the allerment of a secret love�
Paul knew a few things about himself that nobody else knew like he knew. All his life he had been tormented by fear. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had not been dreading some thing� even when he was a little boy.
“There had always been the shadowed corner, the dark place to which he dared not look, but from which something seemed always to be watching him�.
I can’t say more �
but it’s exceptionally powerful, poignant, very well written, and wrapped in deeply sorrowful melancholic thoughts.
I felt deeply sad.
This is excellent book choice for parents and educators.
The epidemic of injustice and pressure on our kids today is heartbreaking.
I don’t read Willa Cather enough - yet I not only love what I have read by her, but O’Pioneers -especially- will always be deeply emmashed in my heart > in connection to our first born daughter.
[I explain why in my review of O’Pioneers]
Willa Cather was one of the great American literary authors—known for her novels of life on the Great Plains.
This was my first ‘short� story I’ve read by her�..
Only $1.99 as a kindle download.
Thank you *Connie*. Your wonderful review was my inspiration to read it.
“There was something dandy about Paul�.
“His teachers were asked to state their respective charges against him, which they did with such a rancor and aggrieved-ness as evinced that this was not a usual case , Disorder and impertinence were among the offenses named, yet each of his instructors felt that it was scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of the trouble, which lay in a sort of hysterically defiant manner of the boy’s; in the contempt which they all knew he felt for them, and which he seemingly made not the least effort to conceal�.
Paul’s only sign of discomfort was the nervous trembling of the fingers that toyed with the buttons of his overcoat, and an occasional jerking of the other hand that held his hat.
Paul was always smiling, always glancing about him, seeming to feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect some thing�.
Paul didn’t get on well with school� but he when he was at the theater� he came alive. When he was at Carnegie Hall he forgot about everything else.
“This was Paul’s fairytale, and it had for him all the allerment of a secret love�
Paul knew a few things about himself that nobody else knew like he knew. All his life he had been tormented by fear. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had not been dreading some thing� even when he was a little boy.
“There had always been the shadowed corner, the dark place to which he dared not look, but from which something seemed always to be watching him�.
I can’t say more �
but it’s exceptionally powerful, poignant, very well written, and wrapped in deeply sorrowful melancholic thoughts.
I felt deeply sad.
This is excellent book choice for parents and educators.
The epidemic of injustice and pressure on our kids today is heartbreaking.
I don’t read Willa Cather enough - yet I not only love what I have read by her, but O’Pioneers -especially- will always be deeply emmashed in my heart > in connection to our first born daughter.
[I explain why in my review of O’Pioneers]
Willa Cather was one of the great American literary authors—known for her novels of life on the Great Plains.
This was my first ‘short� story I’ve read by her�..
Only $1.99 as a kindle download.
Thank you *Connie*. Your wonderful review was my inspiration to read it.
September 6, 2022
This is such an emotional story � it truly resonated with me. Paul is a young man at the end of his high school years in Pittsburgh in the early part of 1900. Paul was a misfit � he had the uncanny knack of offending all he encountered, he also was offended (or disgusted) by all of those around him. Paul despised his working-class home, school, and town. He did not like his family � right down to the hairs on his father’s legs, he could see under his night gown, when Dad was scolding Paul from the top of the stairs.
His teachers said �There is something wrong about the fellow�.
He caused trouble at school, trouble at home, trouble everywhere. However, the exception was the local theatre where he was an usher. Here he spent time backstage, and this was the only time, the only real time he was happy, at home.
Paul had his secret temple, his wishing-carpet, his bit of blue-and-white Mediterranean shore bathed in perpetual sunshine.
Anyway, things start to take a dramatic turn, he takes his destiny and happiness into his own hands. I will leave it at that � except to say, I found the closing part of this story dramatic and profound. I will not say if it was happy or sad � but boy.
Another remarkable story from The Short Story Club.
Magic - 4.5 Stars (rounded down)
His teachers said �There is something wrong about the fellow�.
He caused trouble at school, trouble at home, trouble everywhere. However, the exception was the local theatre where he was an usher. Here he spent time backstage, and this was the only time, the only real time he was happy, at home.
Paul had his secret temple, his wishing-carpet, his bit of blue-and-white Mediterranean shore bathed in perpetual sunshine.
Anyway, things start to take a dramatic turn, he takes his destiny and happiness into his own hands. I will leave it at that � except to say, I found the closing part of this story dramatic and profound. I will not say if it was happy or sad � but boy.
Another remarkable story from The Short Story Club.
Magic - 4.5 Stars (rounded down)
December 31, 2022
5�
“So, in the midst of that smoke-palled city, enamored of figures and grimy toil, Paul had his secret temple, his wishing carpet, his bit of blue-and-white Mediterranean shore bathed in perpetual sunshine.�
Paul is the poor youth whose irrepressible, showy enthusiasm his teachers and the school system seem unable to dampen, ‘seem� being the operative word.
This was written in 1905. Today, we might call him a dreamer who yearns for the finer things in life. Then, he was a troublesome nuisance who owed the school apologies.
“His clothes were a trifle outgrown, and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn; but, for all that, there was something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and a red carnation in his buttonhole. This latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension.�
He is not contrite. Far from it. His teachers think he reads too many novels and gets crazy ideas from them, but they’re wrong. He reads nothing. He works as an usher and craves the excitement and bright lights of the theatre, especially the music. There is where he experiences the virtual sunshine and Mediterranean shore.
�. . . he got what he wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel-organ. He needed only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own.�
He has no desire to perform himself. He just needs the music like others need air. How can he be contrite for aspiring to a brighter existence? But coming down from the highs is hard.
“He had the feeling of not being able to let down, of its being impossible to give up this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could be called living at all.�
After all, what did he have to look forward to on Cordelia Street? Cather shows what he sees, fathers sitting on stoops outdoors.
“The men on the steps—all in their shirt sleeves, their vests unbuttoned—sat with their legs well apart, their stomachs comfortably protruding, and talked of the prices of things, or told anecdotes of the sagacity of their various chiefs and overlords. They occasionally looked over the multitude of squabbling children, listened affectionately to their high-pitched, nasal voices, smiling to see their own proclivities reproduced in their offspring, and interspersed their legends of the iron kings with remarks about their sons' progress at school, their grades in arithmetic, and the amounts they had saved in their toy banks.�
How he takes matters into his own hands is the main story. It is still hard for the Pauls of today who try to escape their backgrounds, and I think Cather has painted a poignant picture of a solitary youth, going to extremes to find his place.
There is a discussion about this story at the Short Story Book Club Group, where many other stories are also featured. Beware, the discussions are full of spoilers, so read the story first!
Discussion of Paul's Case
It is available to read online at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln archive.
“So, in the midst of that smoke-palled city, enamored of figures and grimy toil, Paul had his secret temple, his wishing carpet, his bit of blue-and-white Mediterranean shore bathed in perpetual sunshine.�
Paul is the poor youth whose irrepressible, showy enthusiasm his teachers and the school system seem unable to dampen, ‘seem� being the operative word.
This was written in 1905. Today, we might call him a dreamer who yearns for the finer things in life. Then, he was a troublesome nuisance who owed the school apologies.
“His clothes were a trifle outgrown, and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn; but, for all that, there was something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and a red carnation in his buttonhole. This latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension.�
He is not contrite. Far from it. His teachers think he reads too many novels and gets crazy ideas from them, but they’re wrong. He reads nothing. He works as an usher and craves the excitement and bright lights of the theatre, especially the music. There is where he experiences the virtual sunshine and Mediterranean shore.
�. . . he got what he wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel-organ. He needed only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own.�
He has no desire to perform himself. He just needs the music like others need air. How can he be contrite for aspiring to a brighter existence? But coming down from the highs is hard.
“He had the feeling of not being able to let down, of its being impossible to give up this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could be called living at all.�
After all, what did he have to look forward to on Cordelia Street? Cather shows what he sees, fathers sitting on stoops outdoors.
“The men on the steps—all in their shirt sleeves, their vests unbuttoned—sat with their legs well apart, their stomachs comfortably protruding, and talked of the prices of things, or told anecdotes of the sagacity of their various chiefs and overlords. They occasionally looked over the multitude of squabbling children, listened affectionately to their high-pitched, nasal voices, smiling to see their own proclivities reproduced in their offspring, and interspersed their legends of the iron kings with remarks about their sons' progress at school, their grades in arithmetic, and the amounts they had saved in their toy banks.�
How he takes matters into his own hands is the main story. It is still hard for the Pauls of today who try to escape their backgrounds, and I think Cather has painted a poignant picture of a solitary youth, going to extremes to find his place.
There is a discussion about this story at the Short Story Book Club Group, where many other stories are also featured. Beware, the discussions are full of spoilers, so read the story first!
Discussion of Paul's Case
It is available to read online at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln archive.
September 6, 2022
"His teachers were in despair, and his drawing master voiced the feeling of them all when he declared there was something about the boy which none of them understood."
Paul, a sensitive high school student in Pittsburgh, loves the excitement and beauty of the theater, art, and music. He's not a practicing artist, but feels happy when he's working a job as a theater usher or listens to the symphony. He mentally enters a world of fantasy and imagination, far away from the high school or his family home on Cordelia Street. Paul's father expects him to enter the world of business, but he has no interest.
"The moment he turned into Cordelia Street he felt the waters close above his head. After each of these orgies of living he experienced all the physical depression which follows a debauch; the loathing of respectable beds, of common food, of a house penetrated by kitchen odors; a shuddering repulsion for the flavorless, colorless mass of everyday existence; a morbid desire for cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers."
Paul loves beautiful things and wants to travel so much that he embezzles money, and takes the train to New York City. He stays at the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria, and feels like he belongs among the wealthy on Fifth Avenue - but the money runs out after a week. While Paul has an artistic temperament, actual artists work very hard for their money. Paul has been in a dreamy fantasy world instead of developing a realistic plan to change his life. However, the adolescent mind can be impulsive and impatient. He may be depressed and having sexual identity issues. Paul wanted color in a gray world. "He knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed and all he wanted." What choices will Paul make next?
"Paul's Case" was first published in 1905. Like Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," both which came later, this is a coming-of-age story of an adolescent who does not fit the mold of who people want him to be. Willa Cather knew there were no easy solutions to Paul's needs, and she captivated me with this portrayal.
Paul, a sensitive high school student in Pittsburgh, loves the excitement and beauty of the theater, art, and music. He's not a practicing artist, but feels happy when he's working a job as a theater usher or listens to the symphony. He mentally enters a world of fantasy and imagination, far away from the high school or his family home on Cordelia Street. Paul's father expects him to enter the world of business, but he has no interest.
"The moment he turned into Cordelia Street he felt the waters close above his head. After each of these orgies of living he experienced all the physical depression which follows a debauch; the loathing of respectable beds, of common food, of a house penetrated by kitchen odors; a shuddering repulsion for the flavorless, colorless mass of everyday existence; a morbid desire for cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers."
Paul loves beautiful things and wants to travel so much that he embezzles money, and takes the train to New York City. He stays at the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria, and feels like he belongs among the wealthy on Fifth Avenue - but the money runs out after a week. While Paul has an artistic temperament, actual artists work very hard for their money. Paul has been in a dreamy fantasy world instead of developing a realistic plan to change his life. However, the adolescent mind can be impulsive and impatient. He may be depressed and having sexual identity issues. Paul wanted color in a gray world. "He knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed and all he wanted." What choices will Paul make next?
"Paul's Case" was first published in 1905. Like Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," both which came later, this is a coming-of-age story of an adolescent who does not fit the mold of who people want him to be. Willa Cather knew there were no easy solutions to Paul's needs, and she captivated me with this portrayal.
September 5, 2022
“The mere release from the necessity of petty lying, lying every day and every day, restored his self-respect.�
An achingly beautiful story. Paul, like so many young people, is a “case.� He doesn’t fit the expectations, so the world batters him up and down and sideways. This is the story of how he tries to survive it, to find a way through it, to cope.
How hard our society works to take square pegs and fit them into round holes. Think of all we have lost because of this. Will we ever learn to celebrate diversity?
An achingly beautiful story. Paul, like so many young people, is a “case.� He doesn’t fit the expectations, so the world batters him up and down and sideways. This is the story of how he tries to survive it, to find a way through it, to cope.
How hard our society works to take square pegs and fit them into round holes. Think of all we have lost because of this. Will we ever learn to celebrate diversity?
December 11, 2024
Rich in symbolism and subtext, this short story tells of Paul, a high school student, and his misconceptions about his life. He feels other in his hometown, though he doesn't acknowledge the source until the end of this story. Paul loves art and the aesthetic world and is not grounded in reality; he doesn't equate money with work and he frames his life as theater.
Cather shows his escape from his "real life" and how that ends for him.
Publication 1905
Cather shows his escape from his "real life" and how that ends for him.
Publication 1905
April 25, 2024
It was at the theatre and at Carnagie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurements of a secret love.
Facades, surfaces, and judgment: these are concerns of this devastating short story. Judgment here flows both way, because while Paul is judged he also judges and scornfully dismisses the tawdriness of the details of mundane life. He yearns for the thrill of theatricality � he wants to live in the land of glorious and elevated make-believe.
Rereading this story, I find it almost unbearably powerful, and astoundingly insightful as a character study � not just of Paul, but also of those around him.
2017 review:
This is a short story, apparently one quite well known, and I must confess that it is the only work by Willa Cather I have read.
Cather's work has been re-examined under the microscope of queer theory and it is quite fruitful to examine this text with that lens. There is even this sentence: "He burnt like a faggot in a tempest" which must only be read in the language of 1905.
It is very easy to read Paul as a gay teenager, unable to fit in, who dreams of escape. Sadly, there is only one sure means of escape to be imagined, by Paul, and by this author � at that time.
Facades, surfaces, and judgment: these are concerns of this devastating short story. Judgment here flows both way, because while Paul is judged he also judges and scornfully dismisses the tawdriness of the details of mundane life. He yearns for the thrill of theatricality � he wants to live in the land of glorious and elevated make-believe.
Rereading this story, I find it almost unbearably powerful, and astoundingly insightful as a character study � not just of Paul, but also of those around him.
2017 review:
This is a short story, apparently one quite well known, and I must confess that it is the only work by Willa Cather I have read.
Cather's work has been re-examined under the microscope of queer theory and it is quite fruitful to examine this text with that lens. There is even this sentence: "He burnt like a faggot in a tempest" which must only be read in the language of 1905.
It is very easy to read Paul as a gay teenager, unable to fit in, who dreams of escape. Sadly, there is only one sure means of escape to be imagined, by Paul, and by this author � at that time.
October 29, 2022
Disappointed is the only word I can think of. Certainly not on par with her Prairie Trilogy. Figured out the ending before I got there.
October 18, 2022
This story can be found at Librivox free of cost. Search for the Librivox Short Story Collection Vol 058. It is the thirteenth story and is reasonably well read by Martin Reyto. It lasts one hour.
I cannot relate to the central protagonist of the story. I don’t have enough to grab on to. I observe from a distance. Had Willa Cather developed the story further, into a full novel, maybe I would have empathized more. Too much is missing.
The story is about a boy attracted to the theater and music and the glamor of a large city. Dissatisfied, he seeks to change his life. When this proves impossible, another alterative must be found.
****
* 5 stars
* 4 stars
* 4 stars
* 4 stars
*4 stars
* 3 stars
* 3 stars
* 3 stars
* 2 stars
* 2 stars
* 2 stars
* 2 stars
* 2 stars
* 1 star
I cannot relate to the central protagonist of the story. I don’t have enough to grab on to. I observe from a distance. Had Willa Cather developed the story further, into a full novel, maybe I would have empathized more. Too much is missing.
The story is about a boy attracted to the theater and music and the glamor of a large city. Dissatisfied, he seeks to change his life. When this proves impossible, another alterative must be found.
****
* 5 stars
* 4 stars
* 4 stars
* 4 stars
*4 stars
* 3 stars
* 3 stars
* 3 stars
* 2 stars
* 2 stars
* 2 stars
* 2 stars
* 2 stars
* 1 star
September 6, 2022
A very moving (and modern) story about a teenage boy who doesn’t fit in. I found the ending shocking yet not unexpected at the same time.
November 24, 2013
Paul's Case is a short story and probably not as famous as some of Willa Cather's other writings, but it stuck out to me because I could understand the character and his rebellious nature against the society that was trying to force him do things that would make him become something that he despised. His teachers, as well as his father, wanted him to act “normal� and their versions of normal would have turned him into a man that grew up, married, had kids, and worked for the rest of his life, never seeing the world outside of his town. His rebelliousness was to the point of forcing hatred from his teachers, who then felt horribly for hating a pupil. They just didn't understand that he didn't want be like them and nothing they did was going to change that. He wanted to be his own person, not someone that was molded by his teachers and his father.
Paul's Case is the tragic story of a young boy who was just a little different than the other boys his age. He loved colorful, beautiful things, he enjoyed the theater as well as music, and he also wanted to travel. While the other kids were rather tame and “dull� by Paul's standards, he wanted to be something more. He wished to live the actors and singers that he saw at the theater. He wanted to see new places and people. He wanted to go to parties and socialize with who he viewed as important people. That is why he was always dropping the names of the actors he knew from working at the theater. I feel that this is a story of a boy who wants to be different than those around him in any way that he can. He disapproves of the way that they live and wants something different for himself even if that means that he will have to kill himself in order to not be like them. This is why he does everything that he can think of in order to distance himself from the lifestyle of the town. Including stealing money and physically running away from the town. He just wants to be somewhere else where he can become who he wants to be.
I find it interesting that Paul's father wants him to be like the young man whom I see as a man who “settled� and never really went for anything or took any risks in his life. A guy who married an older woman who was the first woman who came along, he got an all right job, and had four kids. Yet, this guy always talks about his boss who was on vacation on his yacht enjoying the world. The boss was probably someone who had taken a few chances in life and had come out on top. He would be the person that I would be telling my son to try to be more like because I would like my son to have the best. Just makes sense. This is what Paul really wanted to do anyway, he just doesn't seem sure how to reach that goal.
When Paul runs away to New York he begins to do all of the things that he has always wanted to do. He wears nice clothes around town trying to fit himself to the person he sees himself as. He goes to parties and meets people who are very different from the boring folk back home. He felt that these were the people he wanted to be. He believed that he was where he belonged. Paul felt that he had always been meant for this and that he should have never been in the dull town that he was from in the first place. This quote from the story best describes how he felt:
“This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; this was what all the struggle was about. He doubted the reality of his past. Had he ever known a place called Cordelia Street, a place where fagged looking business men boarded the early car? Mere rivets in a machine they seemed to Paul,−−sickening men, with combings of children's hair always hanging to their coats, and the smell of cooking in their clothes. Cordelia Street−−Ah, that belonged to another time and country! Had he not always been thus, had he not sat here night after night, from as far back as he could remember, looking pensively over just such shimmering textures, and slowly twirling the stem of a glass like this one between his thumb and middle finger? He rather thought he had.�
While Paul is not the perfect model of a human being, I believe that Cather wants people to try to be little more like Paul in that we strive to be better than what other people want us to be and also try not to let those people tell us who we are and what we should do with our lives. (Don't stand in front of a train). I agree and I think that no one should allow themselves to forced to be someone they are not. Paul is a character who is constantly pushed by others into doing what they want and he bravely decided to get away from that and try somewhere else to be what he wanted. The means of getting there, however, were tragic.
Paul's Case is the tragic story of a young boy who was just a little different than the other boys his age. He loved colorful, beautiful things, he enjoyed the theater as well as music, and he also wanted to travel. While the other kids were rather tame and “dull� by Paul's standards, he wanted to be something more. He wished to live the actors and singers that he saw at the theater. He wanted to see new places and people. He wanted to go to parties and socialize with who he viewed as important people. That is why he was always dropping the names of the actors he knew from working at the theater. I feel that this is a story of a boy who wants to be different than those around him in any way that he can. He disapproves of the way that they live and wants something different for himself even if that means that he will have to kill himself in order to not be like them. This is why he does everything that he can think of in order to distance himself from the lifestyle of the town. Including stealing money and physically running away from the town. He just wants to be somewhere else where he can become who he wants to be.
I find it interesting that Paul's father wants him to be like the young man whom I see as a man who “settled� and never really went for anything or took any risks in his life. A guy who married an older woman who was the first woman who came along, he got an all right job, and had four kids. Yet, this guy always talks about his boss who was on vacation on his yacht enjoying the world. The boss was probably someone who had taken a few chances in life and had come out on top. He would be the person that I would be telling my son to try to be more like because I would like my son to have the best. Just makes sense. This is what Paul really wanted to do anyway, he just doesn't seem sure how to reach that goal.
When Paul runs away to New York he begins to do all of the things that he has always wanted to do. He wears nice clothes around town trying to fit himself to the person he sees himself as. He goes to parties and meets people who are very different from the boring folk back home. He felt that these were the people he wanted to be. He believed that he was where he belonged. Paul felt that he had always been meant for this and that he should have never been in the dull town that he was from in the first place. This quote from the story best describes how he felt:
“This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; this was what all the struggle was about. He doubted the reality of his past. Had he ever known a place called Cordelia Street, a place where fagged looking business men boarded the early car? Mere rivets in a machine they seemed to Paul,−−sickening men, with combings of children's hair always hanging to their coats, and the smell of cooking in their clothes. Cordelia Street−−Ah, that belonged to another time and country! Had he not always been thus, had he not sat here night after night, from as far back as he could remember, looking pensively over just such shimmering textures, and slowly twirling the stem of a glass like this one between his thumb and middle finger? He rather thought he had.�
While Paul is not the perfect model of a human being, I believe that Cather wants people to try to be little more like Paul in that we strive to be better than what other people want us to be and also try not to let those people tell us who we are and what we should do with our lives. (Don't stand in front of a train). I agree and I think that no one should allow themselves to forced to be someone they are not. Paul is a character who is constantly pushed by others into doing what they want and he bravely decided to get away from that and try somewhere else to be what he wanted. The means of getting there, however, were tragic.
September 9, 2013
A teenage boy, having problems at school, more in love with the theatre than studying, enamored with high society and wealth. But his family is not rich. With all his being he hates the ugliness and commonness of home and the street he lives in.
So he does something which enables him to live the life he wanted, the life he had always dreamed of, briefly and dangerously. He knows he could not sustain such a lifestyle for long, yet he is living his dream, ah to live for the moment! And ah, to kill oneself in a moment! He ends up jumping into the tracks of an oncoming train and, 'as he fell, the folly of his haste occurred to him with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he had left undone."
A fool or a hero? He didn't want the life that he was saddled in. He could have, of course, drove himself to change it, and failed nevertheless (like many). But he chose to succeed, even if his success was just a blink of an eye. Could it be that to surrender something one was given but which he didn't want is the only honorable response to a world that is deaf to his dreams?
We all die anyway.
So he does something which enables him to live the life he wanted, the life he had always dreamed of, briefly and dangerously. He knows he could not sustain such a lifestyle for long, yet he is living his dream, ah to live for the moment! And ah, to kill oneself in a moment! He ends up jumping into the tracks of an oncoming train and, 'as he fell, the folly of his haste occurred to him with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he had left undone."
A fool or a hero? He didn't want the life that he was saddled in. He could have, of course, drove himself to change it, and failed nevertheless (like many). But he chose to succeed, even if his success was just a blink of an eye. Could it be that to surrender something one was given but which he didn't want is the only honorable response to a world that is deaf to his dreams?
We all die anyway.
Read
April 13, 2011Warning Signs Missed
In 1905, when Willa Cather wrote “Paul’s Case�, parents, teachers, and even psychologists may not have readily recognized Paul as a child dealing with depression and sexual identity issues. His fastidious manner, obsession with art, but not as a participant, and his much greater obsession with money and its trapping, I believe shows signs of Paul’s depression and sexual identity issues.
Although Paul comes from a lower middle class family, he does what he can to dress up the frayed and worn clothes he wears. He wears an opal pin in his necktie, a “scandalous red carnation,� as viewed by teachers at his school, and has “something of a dandy about him� (516-517). He uses his eyes with their “hysterical brilliancy� in a “theatrical sort of way, peculiarly offensive in a boy� and is described by a teacher as not being strong (516). The narrator, without saying as much, I believe is letting us know that Paul is a homosexual youth. Everybody in Paul’s life and even Paul himself would have believed homosexuality was wrong. Although Paul can’t help who he is, he does his best to stay true to himself. I believe it is his constant feeling of alienation and his bleak prospect of the future that not only holds Paul in depression but also makes him completely self absorbed.
Paul’s depression and alienation blinds his view to any sort of a plausible future and without seeing a future he cannot care about the present. Paul doesn’t seem to care about anybody but himself. He believes that money could change his existence and that he should have been born to a higher financial status. He steals the money from the theater with no remorse or any thoughts of how it will affect his family. He never gives a thought to his farther or sisters even when he knows his father has paid back the stolen money and is looking for him. His only care is to, for a short time, live the life he believes was meant for him. My impression is that Paul, from the very beginning of the story, knows exactly how his story will end. He knows his trip to New York is a last hooray and a sort of goodbye to his life, that troubled him so much.
Some readers may see Paul’s suicide as his last selfish act in an array of selfish acts. I sympathize with Paul. He never felt comfortable or like he belonged. I think his alienation was so complete in his mind, that it was as if he was completely alone. Even in the end, he doesn’t think of loved ones, because he doesn’t believe he has any loved ones. His complete loneliness is shown when instead of thinking of family, that he should have a connection to, he thinks of a burial for his carnation that has drooped and lost its vibrancy. If Paul was born in the twenty -first century I believe he would have received help instead of scorn and suspension from school and also may have made it to his adulthood.
In 1905, when Willa Cather wrote “Paul’s Case�, parents, teachers, and even psychologists may not have readily recognized Paul as a child dealing with depression and sexual identity issues. His fastidious manner, obsession with art, but not as a participant, and his much greater obsession with money and its trapping, I believe shows signs of Paul’s depression and sexual identity issues.
Although Paul comes from a lower middle class family, he does what he can to dress up the frayed and worn clothes he wears. He wears an opal pin in his necktie, a “scandalous red carnation,� as viewed by teachers at his school, and has “something of a dandy about him� (516-517). He uses his eyes with their “hysterical brilliancy� in a “theatrical sort of way, peculiarly offensive in a boy� and is described by a teacher as not being strong (516). The narrator, without saying as much, I believe is letting us know that Paul is a homosexual youth. Everybody in Paul’s life and even Paul himself would have believed homosexuality was wrong. Although Paul can’t help who he is, he does his best to stay true to himself. I believe it is his constant feeling of alienation and his bleak prospect of the future that not only holds Paul in depression but also makes him completely self absorbed.
Paul’s depression and alienation blinds his view to any sort of a plausible future and without seeing a future he cannot care about the present. Paul doesn’t seem to care about anybody but himself. He believes that money could change his existence and that he should have been born to a higher financial status. He steals the money from the theater with no remorse or any thoughts of how it will affect his family. He never gives a thought to his farther or sisters even when he knows his father has paid back the stolen money and is looking for him. His only care is to, for a short time, live the life he believes was meant for him. My impression is that Paul, from the very beginning of the story, knows exactly how his story will end. He knows his trip to New York is a last hooray and a sort of goodbye to his life, that troubled him so much.
Some readers may see Paul’s suicide as his last selfish act in an array of selfish acts. I sympathize with Paul. He never felt comfortable or like he belonged. I think his alienation was so complete in his mind, that it was as if he was completely alone. Even in the end, he doesn’t think of loved ones, because he doesn’t believe he has any loved ones. His complete loneliness is shown when instead of thinking of family, that he should have a connection to, he thinks of a burial for his carnation that has drooped and lost its vibrancy. If Paul was born in the twenty -first century I believe he would have received help instead of scorn and suspension from school and also may have made it to his adulthood.
December 13, 2018
Es de esas historias tan intemporales que no puedes creer que sea real la fecha en la que fue escrito. Habla sobre el ser capaz de perderlo todo y sobre el suicidio.
August 10, 2016
The story shows why I wasn't satisfied with 'catcher in the rye'. This is kind of story that should be made compulsory in schools - that is, for all parents and teachers.
September 16, 2022
The first Willa Cather short story I've read and it was great.
June 24, 2023
Book #11 of 2023 reading challenge
Reading prompt : A classic ahead of its time in exploring a subject - homosexuality
“It was at the theatre and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love.�
These lines that caught my attention and piqued my interest in the story which I found quite dull till I reached there. Paul's case starts with him being called in the principal's office where every teacher of his is making a case against him and he is rather defiant and detached.
Slowly we are revealed how Paul does not like his life and craves an altogether different one. His house, his community, he finds mundanely dull and he thinks he is superior to everyone around him. His father compares him to a clerk living in his community, wants Paul to become like him which isn't exactly any achievement according to Paul. This frustration, mixed with a desire for a luxurious lifestyle, causes him to purposely separate himself from everyone else, leading to feelings of isolation.
Paul's annoyance and hatred towards his life is obvious in every line and every act he does. His indignation and indifference to his circumstances oozes throughout the book.
“Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty.�
As we further go into the story it is evident that
Paul is obsessed with money, and his belief that money will solve all his problems leads to unrelenting disappointment in his life. For him, theatre and music are the drugs. Paul uses art to escape his own consciousness, his mundane life.
This instant and shallow gratification is emphasized more when we are told that he didn't read novels which are also a form of the art but needs a proper dedication and concentration, so it doesn't attract his attention.
As written in the victorian era, discussing sex was inappropriate, so literature from the period could not use sexually explicit language or ideas; if it did, it would risk not being well-received, or even published so In my personal opinion, Cather is not sexually explicit; she imbues the story with innuendo that signals, perhaps unmistakably, a homosexual identity of the narrator.
His escape to new York can be considered as his escape from stigma around homosexuality. Everything builds up one on the other and leads to the catastrophe and his final escape from his reality which becomes too much to deal with for him.
Paul is rather unlikable and petty. He has achieved nothing of his own in his life, he hasn't even tried to do something good, forget about the great and his judgement of others feels laughable and condemnable both at the same time but I felt sad and sorry for the poor soul.
You can read the story here :
Reading prompt : A classic ahead of its time in exploring a subject - homosexuality
“It was at the theatre and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love.�
These lines that caught my attention and piqued my interest in the story which I found quite dull till I reached there. Paul's case starts with him being called in the principal's office where every teacher of his is making a case against him and he is rather defiant and detached.
Slowly we are revealed how Paul does not like his life and craves an altogether different one. His house, his community, he finds mundanely dull and he thinks he is superior to everyone around him. His father compares him to a clerk living in his community, wants Paul to become like him which isn't exactly any achievement according to Paul. This frustration, mixed with a desire for a luxurious lifestyle, causes him to purposely separate himself from everyone else, leading to feelings of isolation.
Paul's annoyance and hatred towards his life is obvious in every line and every act he does. His indignation and indifference to his circumstances oozes throughout the book.
“Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty.�
As we further go into the story it is evident that
Paul is obsessed with money, and his belief that money will solve all his problems leads to unrelenting disappointment in his life. For him, theatre and music are the drugs. Paul uses art to escape his own consciousness, his mundane life.
This instant and shallow gratification is emphasized more when we are told that he didn't read novels which are also a form of the art but needs a proper dedication and concentration, so it doesn't attract his attention.
As written in the victorian era, discussing sex was inappropriate, so literature from the period could not use sexually explicit language or ideas; if it did, it would risk not being well-received, or even published so In my personal opinion, Cather is not sexually explicit; she imbues the story with innuendo that signals, perhaps unmistakably, a homosexual identity of the narrator.
His escape to new York can be considered as his escape from stigma around homosexuality. Everything builds up one on the other and leads to the catastrophe and his final escape from his reality which becomes too much to deal with for him.
Paul is rather unlikable and petty. He has achieved nothing of his own in his life, he hasn't even tried to do something good, forget about the great and his judgement of others feels laughable and condemnable both at the same time but I felt sad and sorry for the poor soul.
You can read the story here :
June 14, 2016
I loved this story on a personal level. Very, very deep and can be applied to issues still ongoing today, sadly. 5/5 stars.
January 28, 2024
—well, he got what he wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel-organ. He needed only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own.
It was equally true that he was not stage-struck—not, at any rate, in the usual acceptation of the expression. He had no desire to become an actor, any more than he had to become a musician. He felt no necessity to do any of these things; what he wanted was to see, to be in the atmosphere, float on the wave of it, to be carried out, blue league after league, away from everything.
Until now, he could not remember a time when he had not been dreading something. Even when he was a little boy, it was always there-behind him, or before, or on either side. There had always been the shadowed corner, the dark place into which he dared not look, but from which something seemed always to be watching him—and Paul had done things that were not pretty to watch, he knew.
He rose and moved about with a painful effort, succumbing now and again to attacks of nausea. It was the old depression exaggerated; all the world had become Cordelia Street. Yet somehow he was not afraid of any-thing, was absolutely calm; perhaps because he had looked into the dark corner at last, and knew. It was bad enough, what he saw there; but somehow not so bad as his long fear of it had been. He saw everything clearly now. He had a feeling that he had made the best of it, that he had lived the sort of life he was meant to live, and for half an hour he sat staring at the revolver. But he told himself that was not the way, so he went downstairs and took a cab to the ferry.
September 14, 2023
Paul is not a artist; he is a viewer. He desires to hover above the cruel Earth on the carpet of Paradise without any forward-thinking toil on his part. Hence, his encounter with the locomotive, a fatal one, was inevitable.
June 16, 2012
The more I thought about this after I read it, the better I liked it. That isn't a typical pattern for me, but I love when it happens.
It's written in a very distant third-person voice. Nothing you learn about Paul comes from him. His actions are very, very guarded. When the plot takes the turn 2/3 of the way in, and Paul has actually gone and done something, and something entirely unexpected, it's surprisingly riveting. It's such a huge mistake, an he had my heart for it.
This story gets read a lot as being about repressed sexuality, which it might be, but it really just reads to me like it is about repression in general. I don't really care why Paul and his town reject each other, I just see how difficult the situation is. The people around Paul almost want him to fall, even though he's just a young teenager. And he is constantly poised to try and prove how much he doesn't care, how much better off he is without them. (Even though he is still right there, not away from them at all.) He's just lying, all around.
His swings through depression are awful and sad. His night in the rain, after he follows the singer, and decides he can't go home, but doesn't have anywhere else to go, so he does go home but spends the night in the freaking basement, it's terrible.
It seems to also be read as being about money, which he makes a grasp for at the end, and it seems like it's what makes him happy, and that his trouble starts when he runs out of it. I don't think that's right, though: I think it's about the artificiality he is obsessed with. He loves the controlled perfection of theater. He goes to a hotel, for goodness sake, and what is more artificial (and stagey) than that. The means he's using are artificial, the way he's acting is artificial, and of course, all of this feels like it sets him free from what he's trying to escape. But escapes don't work like that.
Unfortunately, I knew how it ended before I read it, because I added it to ŷ first, which shows it included in the book group right up on the top of the page. DOH. Hate that.
It's written in a very distant third-person voice. Nothing you learn about Paul comes from him. His actions are very, very guarded. When the plot takes the turn 2/3 of the way in, and Paul has actually gone and done something, and something entirely unexpected, it's surprisingly riveting. It's such a huge mistake, an he had my heart for it.
This story gets read a lot as being about repressed sexuality, which it might be, but it really just reads to me like it is about repression in general. I don't really care why Paul and his town reject each other, I just see how difficult the situation is. The people around Paul almost want him to fall, even though he's just a young teenager. And he is constantly poised to try and prove how much he doesn't care, how much better off he is without them. (Even though he is still right there, not away from them at all.) He's just lying, all around.
His swings through depression are awful and sad. His night in the rain, after he follows the singer, and decides he can't go home, but doesn't have anywhere else to go, so he does go home but spends the night in the freaking basement, it's terrible.
It seems to also be read as being about money, which he makes a grasp for at the end, and it seems like it's what makes him happy, and that his trouble starts when he runs out of it. I don't think that's right, though: I think it's about the artificiality he is obsessed with. He loves the controlled perfection of theater. He goes to a hotel, for goodness sake, and what is more artificial (and stagey) than that. The means he's using are artificial, the way he's acting is artificial, and of course, all of this feels like it sets him free from what he's trying to escape. But escapes don't work like that.
Unfortunately, I knew how it ended before I read it, because I added it to ŷ first, which shows it included in the book group right up on the top of the page. DOH. Hate that.
July 11, 2012
I had this book rated as five stars and remembered it as one of the few stories inflicted upon me in high school that I actually liked at the time rather than finding an affection for them later when they were no longer associated with the terror of English class. Sometimes there were extreme cases of that such as which I hated at the time, but that would later become favorites. Paul's Case worked out the opposite way.
The story is of a boy who finds his middle class life and school dreary. He weaves a fantasy world around the arts and to some extent the signs of wealth, treating school, family and friends with disdain, imagining himself to live in a bigger world. When his fantasy starts reaches the point of being too destructive upon his life, his father pulls him out of school and all contact with the arts and sets him to work, essentially forcing him to face up to life "as it is." Paul breaks and the story centers on his fantastic attempt to regain the fantasy and the tragic end it brings him.
The story is ultimately rather dreary and sad. I'm not sure why I liked it so much as a teenager. Perhaps the opening of the story having Paul in contact with his dreary teachers and their contempt for him resonated. He was my age, living in my town, and had some discontents that I could relate to. That said, I don't I either actually or as aspiration could relate to his escapism. My situation didn't cause the crippling depression that his did. The connection was somewhat weak.
At any rate, this was one of the ones that it was a disappointment to revisit.
The story is of a boy who finds his middle class life and school dreary. He weaves a fantasy world around the arts and to some extent the signs of wealth, treating school, family and friends with disdain, imagining himself to live in a bigger world. When his fantasy starts reaches the point of being too destructive upon his life, his father pulls him out of school and all contact with the arts and sets him to work, essentially forcing him to face up to life "as it is." Paul breaks and the story centers on his fantastic attempt to regain the fantasy and the tragic end it brings him.
The story is ultimately rather dreary and sad. I'm not sure why I liked it so much as a teenager. Perhaps the opening of the story having Paul in contact with his dreary teachers and their contempt for him resonated. He was my age, living in my town, and had some discontents that I could relate to. That said, I don't I either actually or as aspiration could relate to his escapism. My situation didn't cause the crippling depression that his did. The connection was somewhat weak.
At any rate, this was one of the ones that it was a disappointment to revisit.
June 7, 2015
Beautiful and sad. Paul was right, luxuriating in a grand New York hotel feels good. He stayed in the Waldorf. I recently had a $12 cappuccino at the Plaza. For 20 minutes, I was someone else. I did not follow that up with a trip to train tracks in New Jersey. Kudos to the high school English teacher who assigned that story to me way back when; I wish I remember who she was so I could give credit.
Here's a sign of the times or a sign of how clueless I was in high school: reading now about a teenage boy in 1905, I see that he's gay; I did not see that in 1988.
Cather's writing style is so clear and modern. I've previously read The Professor's House and Death Comes for the Archbishop. I'm going to have to read more of her work.
Here's a sign of the times or a sign of how clueless I was in high school: reading now about a teenage boy in 1905, I see that he's gay; I did not see that in 1988.
Cather's writing style is so clear and modern. I've previously read The Professor's House and Death Comes for the Archbishop. I'm going to have to read more of her work.
September 24, 2022
"Paul's Case" is an intriguing story that raises questions about how to deal with recalcitrant teenagers that we are no closer to answering today than we were when Willa Cather wrote it a century ago. (And I say this as an American teacher recently retired after decades of working with kids like Paul and sitting through well over a hundred meetings like the one that opens Cather's story.) While our meetings were generally in the morning before school, Paul's is in the afternoon in the principal's office at Pittsburgh High School, with his teachers and his father, who "confessed his perplexity about his son."
Paul has promise--most of these kids do--but his teachers are confused as well, and Paul's flippant attitude and dickish behavior don't help matters. Like I said, I've sat through a hundred or more of these meetings with sad parents, frustrated teachers, ineffective administrators, and pain-in-the-ass students. Sometimes things work out for the best: appropriate services are recommended; second (or third or fourth) chances are given; adjustments are made to the schedule, and the students go on to find success in the school setting. And sometimes, as with Paul, a satisfactory solution cannot be found and things just become worse for everyone involved. Sometimes much much worse.
My previous experience with Willa Cather left me not much interested in ever reading anything else by her. My Antonia, her novel about immigrants struggling out in the plains of Nebraska, left me cold. Nonetheless, I found "Paul's Case" quite appealing, in part because what Cather is describing for us is still very true to life today, if not specifically in the details, then in the crisis facing Paul when the world around this miserable teen is unable to give him what he wants or needs.
And I thought the story also very true to life in the way Cather doesn’t point the finger or give us easy answers because it's a combination of so many different things that are wrong working together to create the tragedy here, some of which are intrinsic with Paul himself and some of which are embedded in the world where he lives. Paul is a fuck-up, sure, but why would he want to be a part of the boring, bourgeois society his father represents or fall into place like the model young man on the block his father and neighbors hold him up to? How do you "fix" someone like Paul or even help a kid in Paul’s case? These are issues that teachers and parents struggle with today, and while the options were far fewer in Cather’s day, we still find ourselves perplexed with young people like Paul and rarely provide them with what they need to find their way in the world.
I'm reminded of what Mr. Antolini in The Catcher in the Rye tells Holden Caulfield, a direct literary descendent of Paul who also rejects the world around him and goes on his own bender in New York City a generation later. This passage from Chapter 24 kept resonating with me as I read "Paul's Case":
Like Holden, Paul is looking outwardly for something his world can’t provide him with, but like Holden he also fails to look at what is wrong with himself. And as with Holden, one of the core things "wrong" about Paul under the surface of his off-putting behavior at school and home has to do with his unprocessed grief regarding his mother's death. He cannot remember her, but her absence seems to play a role in his general discontent, and her embroidery work remaining on the wall of his bedroom serves as a reminder. (Next to her embroidery are pictures of John Calvin and George Washington, and those twin patron saints of Paul's society not only provide a painfully humorous detail but perhaps also give reason enough for an imaginative, sensitive young man like Paul reject the values of the mundane world he lives in.)
But there's something else really more "wrong" with Paul than with Holden because what ultimately saves Holden from Paul's fate and this terrible fall that Mr. Antolini is describing is Holden's intense compassion for the people in the world around him. Holden has a great concern for the underdog and a love for the innocent, and even though he dislikes most of the overbearing people around him, at the same time he empathizes with them and attempts to understand them. It could even be said that he loves these terrible people and the terrible world that he lives in, even though he has rejected it.
In contrast, to put it bluntly, Paul is a self-absorbed dick who has little of that essential humanity that Holden possesses. Paul rejects his pathetic father trying to keep the family whole; he despises his teachers; he has no concern for the working class he sees in his neighborhood or on the train, all people that Holden would feel empathy for. Paul might have found support from his English or drawing teacher, but unlike Holden who has found mentors in the adult world, Paul has unfortunately rejected them all.
One telling scene is the aftermath of the meeting at school which opens the story. The teachers feel bad about the meeting ("dissatisfied and unhappy," even "humiliated" by the "gruesome game of intemperate reproach"), even though all they have done is reported specifics of Paul's pattern of misbehavior and inattention in their classes. Paul, on the other hand, is light-hearted as he leaves school, whistling a tune from Faust. I'd say Paul is a bit of a sociopath, concerned only with himself, unable to process the events that have just transpired, unconcerned about the poor behavior he is demonstrating or the way he has embarrassed his father in front of the principal and the faculty.
Another significant detail is Paul's scornful response to his teacher who shows up at the opera where he works as an usher...he treats her as a trespasser into this magical world of art that he seems to claim as his own. It's an awkward moment, but while she feels foolish for her initial response, Paul rejects her for her common attire and thinks she "must be a fool." (Cather is doing something worth noting with the way "fool" is switched there.) This could have been a moment for Paul to reconsider things, to understand that he shares a love of music and theatre with his teacher. It could have led to something positive for Paul, but it didn't, and that's too bad.
There's a sentence that maybe is key to understanding what is truly wrong with Paul but it doesn't offer any hope to solving that problem: "in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness...a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty." (That's also another key difference between Paul and Holden, who on his part rejects the artificiality around him, both in human behavior and in the arts, and his failure to accept that artificiality as a part of life, too, results in his crisis.) Unfortunately, Paul just cannot find what he is looking for in the world and, to go back to Mr. Antolini's words, he gives up before he really even gets started in coming to terms with that ugliness in the world around him.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Reread for GoodReads short story discussion group
Paul has promise--most of these kids do--but his teachers are confused as well, and Paul's flippant attitude and dickish behavior don't help matters. Like I said, I've sat through a hundred or more of these meetings with sad parents, frustrated teachers, ineffective administrators, and pain-in-the-ass students. Sometimes things work out for the best: appropriate services are recommended; second (or third or fourth) chances are given; adjustments are made to the schedule, and the students go on to find success in the school setting. And sometimes, as with Paul, a satisfactory solution cannot be found and things just become worse for everyone involved. Sometimes much much worse.
My previous experience with Willa Cather left me not much interested in ever reading anything else by her. My Antonia, her novel about immigrants struggling out in the plains of Nebraska, left me cold. Nonetheless, I found "Paul's Case" quite appealing, in part because what Cather is describing for us is still very true to life today, if not specifically in the details, then in the crisis facing Paul when the world around this miserable teen is unable to give him what he wants or needs.
And I thought the story also very true to life in the way Cather doesn’t point the finger or give us easy answers because it's a combination of so many different things that are wrong working together to create the tragedy here, some of which are intrinsic with Paul himself and some of which are embedded in the world where he lives. Paul is a fuck-up, sure, but why would he want to be a part of the boring, bourgeois society his father represents or fall into place like the model young man on the block his father and neighbors hold him up to? How do you "fix" someone like Paul or even help a kid in Paul’s case? These are issues that teachers and parents struggle with today, and while the options were far fewer in Cather’s day, we still find ourselves perplexed with young people like Paul and rarely provide them with what they need to find their way in the world.
I'm reminded of what Mr. Antolini in The Catcher in the Rye tells Holden Caulfield, a direct literary descendent of Paul who also rejects the world around him and goes on his own bender in New York City a generation later. This passage from Chapter 24 kept resonating with me as I read "Paul's Case":
"This fall I think you're riding for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind...The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they even got started."
Like Holden, Paul is looking outwardly for something his world can’t provide him with, but like Holden he also fails to look at what is wrong with himself. And as with Holden, one of the core things "wrong" about Paul under the surface of his off-putting behavior at school and home has to do with his unprocessed grief regarding his mother's death. He cannot remember her, but her absence seems to play a role in his general discontent, and her embroidery work remaining on the wall of his bedroom serves as a reminder. (Next to her embroidery are pictures of John Calvin and George Washington, and those twin patron saints of Paul's society not only provide a painfully humorous detail but perhaps also give reason enough for an imaginative, sensitive young man like Paul reject the values of the mundane world he lives in.)
But there's something else really more "wrong" with Paul than with Holden because what ultimately saves Holden from Paul's fate and this terrible fall that Mr. Antolini is describing is Holden's intense compassion for the people in the world around him. Holden has a great concern for the underdog and a love for the innocent, and even though he dislikes most of the overbearing people around him, at the same time he empathizes with them and attempts to understand them. It could even be said that he loves these terrible people and the terrible world that he lives in, even though he has rejected it.
In contrast, to put it bluntly, Paul is a self-absorbed dick who has little of that essential humanity that Holden possesses. Paul rejects his pathetic father trying to keep the family whole; he despises his teachers; he has no concern for the working class he sees in his neighborhood or on the train, all people that Holden would feel empathy for. Paul might have found support from his English or drawing teacher, but unlike Holden who has found mentors in the adult world, Paul has unfortunately rejected them all.
One telling scene is the aftermath of the meeting at school which opens the story. The teachers feel bad about the meeting ("dissatisfied and unhappy," even "humiliated" by the "gruesome game of intemperate reproach"), even though all they have done is reported specifics of Paul's pattern of misbehavior and inattention in their classes. Paul, on the other hand, is light-hearted as he leaves school, whistling a tune from Faust. I'd say Paul is a bit of a sociopath, concerned only with himself, unable to process the events that have just transpired, unconcerned about the poor behavior he is demonstrating or the way he has embarrassed his father in front of the principal and the faculty.
Another significant detail is Paul's scornful response to his teacher who shows up at the opera where he works as an usher...he treats her as a trespasser into this magical world of art that he seems to claim as his own. It's an awkward moment, but while she feels foolish for her initial response, Paul rejects her for her common attire and thinks she "must be a fool." (Cather is doing something worth noting with the way "fool" is switched there.) This could have been a moment for Paul to reconsider things, to understand that he shares a love of music and theatre with his teacher. It could have led to something positive for Paul, but it didn't, and that's too bad.
There's a sentence that maybe is key to understanding what is truly wrong with Paul but it doesn't offer any hope to solving that problem: "in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness...a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty." (That's also another key difference between Paul and Holden, who on his part rejects the artificiality around him, both in human behavior and in the arts, and his failure to accept that artificiality as a part of life, too, results in his crisis.) Unfortunately, Paul just cannot find what he is looking for in the world and, to go back to Mr. Antolini's words, he gives up before he really even gets started in coming to terms with that ugliness in the world around him.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Reread for GoodReads short story discussion group
December 1, 2019
“It was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run.�
May 27, 2021
Es un relato muy breve, pero me ha gustado mucho reencontrarme con Willa Cather y reconocerla en esa forma de narrar distante que nos da todos los factores a analizar sin adelantarnos nada de sus conclusiones. En este caso seguimos a Paul, un joven estudiante que ha sido expulsado del instituto y que decide perseguir su sueño, alimentado por el teatro, de vivir a lo grande...
Seguir a Paul en el Nueva York de principios del siglo XX, me ha recordado a Holden Caulfield y a otros tantos rebeldes sin causa, inconformistas con sueños imposibles que deben compaginar sus aspiraciones artísticas con el materialismo más egoísta. Tienen sus diferencias, principalmente el estatus social de ambos, pero esta historia me ha hecho pensar mucho en el protagonista de El guardián entre el centeno, y en cómo podría haber terminado esa otra historia. También me ha resultado curioso que toque temas parecidos a los de El hermano Jacob, que leí también este año.
En fin, a mí me ha sorprendido (no miréis muchas reseñas porque está todo minado de spoilers) y creo que es una buena forma de acercarse a la autora. Breve, directa, concisa, nos expone el caso de Paul como si ella misma fuera una de sus profesoras. Y de hecho, por lo visto, se basó en uno de sus alumnos para escribirla.
Seguir a Paul en el Nueva York de principios del siglo XX, me ha recordado a Holden Caulfield y a otros tantos rebeldes sin causa, inconformistas con sueños imposibles que deben compaginar sus aspiraciones artísticas con el materialismo más egoísta. Tienen sus diferencias, principalmente el estatus social de ambos, pero esta historia me ha hecho pensar mucho en el protagonista de El guardián entre el centeno, y en cómo podría haber terminado esa otra historia. También me ha resultado curioso que toque temas parecidos a los de El hermano Jacob, que leí también este año.
En fin, a mí me ha sorprendido (no miréis muchas reseñas porque está todo minado de spoilers) y creo que es una buena forma de acercarse a la autora. Breve, directa, concisa, nos expone el caso de Paul como si ella misma fuera una de sus profesoras. Y de hecho, por lo visto, se basó en uno de sus alumnos para escribirla.
March 12, 2017
This piece is a powerful psychological delve into the mind of a young man who is on his way to complete madness, in no time. The main character, Paul, and the settings are described so fluidly, the reader can almost smell the bad food that he loathes. Paul believes he is born into the wrong class, and holds such disdain for his own family and neighbors that he can hardly stand to be around them. The story is symbolic. I felt compelled to read it more than once, even twice, and I still hope for another ending. As someone who loves to read the written word in such eloquent form, in my opinion, this story ranks nearly perfect.
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