More Classic American Short Stories
Ambrose Bierce A Horseman in the Sky
Kate Chopin Regret
James Fenimore Cooper Eclipse
Stephen Crane The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
O. Henry The Cop and the Anthem, The Princess and the Puma, The Whirligig of Life
The stories in this collection reveal America
in its rawness, its humour and its natural
splendour, presenting a rich panorama of
location and character and social detail.
These authors loved the land, its history
and its people. They knew both the beauty
and the toughness of life in emerging
America
Ambrose Bierce (1842–c.1914) was
born in Ohio, educated in Indiana and lived
in many different parts of America. He was
to become one of the most celebrated short
story writers and journalists of his day. A
veteran of the Civil War, he wrote
realistically and sympathetically of the
sufferings of soldiers. His success as a
writer of ghost stories may have been
prophetic, since he himself disappeared
mysteriously on a trip to Mexico in 1914
and was never seen again. In the novel The
Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes (1985), the author imagines what the final days of
Ambrose Bierce may have been.
The Horseman in the Sky is a dramatic
tale of a father and son who find
themselves on opposite sides in the Civil
War, where the son’s fulfilment of his
promise to ‘do his duty’ leads to the
inevitable and tragic conclusion.
Kate Chopin, nee Kate O’Flaherty,
(1851–1904), was born in St Louis,
Missouri, of Irish and French Creole descent.
She attended the Sacred Heart Academy
and after graduation married Oscar Chopin.
They settled first in New Orleans and later in
Cloutierville Louisianna. Surrounded by
Cajun culture, Kate found much material
for her future writing. Oscar died in 1884
and Kate moved back to St. Louis, where
she began writing to support her children.
She was immediately successful and her
stories about New Orleans and the bayou country, appeared in various periodicals
such as Atlantic Monthly. An early feminist,
Kate was ahead of her time. Her best-known
work, The Awakening outraged the
critics for depicting a woman who dares to
explore her own sexuality. She wrote:
‘Perhaps it is better to wake up after all,
even to suffer; than to remain a dupe to
illusions all one’s life.’
Kate Chopin’s short story, Regret,
focuses on Mamzelle Aurelie, a strong
resilient spinster of fifty, who proudly
manages a farm on her own. She is
contented with her life until four children
are sent to live with her while their mother
is away. Her growing attachment to the
children and their eventual departure
arouse emotions in Mamzelle Aurelie that
she is not able to contain.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851),
one of the country’s most popular novelists,
wrote numerous historical romances, the
most famous being The Last of the
Mohicans. Born into an eminent family in
New York state, he attended Yale College at
the age of 14 until a prank on a fellow
student caused him to be expelled. He
joined the merchant marine and then the
US Navy where he gained the knowledge of seamanship revealed in his many sea tales.
He married well and became a gentleman
farmer before achieving success as a writer
with his story of the American Revolution,
The Spy, in 1821. More success followed
with the first of his Leatherstocking Tales
featuring the frontiersman Natty Bumppo.
Translated into many languages, Cooper
was often called ‘The American Walter
Scott’.
Twenty-five years after the event,
Cooper wrote an account of the great
eclipse which he witnessed in 1806. In
Eclipse, he describes in affectionate detail
his town’s excitement at the first ‘fiery light
glowing among the branches of the forest’,
the feverish activity of the wildlife and the
changing spectacle in the landscape. The
optimism of the day is contrasted with the
misery of a condemned man in the local jail
watching the event through a cell window.
Stephen Crane, (1871–1900), who
grew up in a prosperous family near New
York City, left university to live rough in The
Bowery, where he researched his first and
unsuccessful novel, Maggie, A Girl of the
Streets. His second work, The Red Badge
of Courage, which brought him
international fame, depicted the horrors of the American Civil War. His interest in
men’s experience of war led him to Cuba to
report on their War of Independence. He
later was to cover the Spanish American
War, and the Greco-Turkish War. In 1897
Crane settled in England with his mistress,
Cora Taylor, the former owner of a
Jacksonville brothel. An exhausting and
stressful life-style led to his death from
tuberculosis at the early age of twenty-eight.
In The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,
Crane creates a vivid western melodrama.
With a minimum of descriptive flourishes
and an economical use of naturalistic
dialogue, he creates recognizable,
sympathetic characters and hints at a
change in the society of the west at the
beginning of the 20th century. Jack Potter,
the sheriff of Yellow Sky, is returning home
from San Antonio with a new bride. When
he arrives he has to face a stand-off with
the belligerent hellraiser, Scratchy Wilson.
Since Jack is unarmed he has to subdue the
old rowdy not with a gun but with his new
marital status. The west has for a moment
become domesticated.
O. Henry, (1862–1910), a master of
the short story, was born William Sidney Porter in North Carolina. He first worked as
a pharmacist in his uncle’s drugstore, then
moved to Texas where he was hired as a
sheep herder and ranch hand. After he
married and became a father, Porter took a
job as a bank teller and began writing
professionally for the Houston Post. In
1897, shortly after his wife died of
tuberculosis, Porter was found guilty of
embezzling funds and was sent to a
penitentiary. While in prison Porter began
publishing stories to support his daughter,
using the name O. Henry to disguise his
true identity. After his release, O. Henry
moved to New York and soon became one
of America’s most popular short story
writers. His use of a clever twist in the
narrative leading to a surprise ending was
referred to as an ‘O. Henry Ending’.
Marrying again in 1907 he found temporary
happiness but then succumbed to
alcoholism and died aged forty-seven.
O. Henry said: ’There are stories in
everything. I’ve got some of my best yarns
from park benches, lamp posts, and
newspaper stands.’ His witty narratives recreate
for us the spirit of an age: The Cop
and the Anthem is the story of Soapy, a
homeless New Yorker, who seeks shelter for the winter in a penal institution. Soapy’s
elaborate schemes to get himself arrested
are all doomed to failure until fate, in the
form of a burly policeman, intervenes. The
Princess and the Puma is a spoof on
mediaeval tales of damsels in distress and
heroic knights. O. Henry’s knight is a
cowboy and the damsel is the hard-riding,
sharp-shooting daughter of a rancher. The
Whirligig of Life is set in Tennessee where a
hillbilly couple ask a Justice of the Peace for
a ‘divo’ce’ because they ‘can’t git along
together nohow’. The wily Justice settles
the dispute with a trick or two of his own.
Notes by Garrick Hagon and Liza Ross
The music on this recording is taken from the MARCO POLO catalogue
KALINNIKOV Tsar Boris
8.223135
Budapest Symphony Orchestra / Antal Jancsovics
RAFF Symphony No 7
8.223506
Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra / Urs Schneider
RAFF Symphony No 3
8.223321
Czecho-Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra / Urs Schneider
SMETANA Suite from Smetana’s Sketch Book
8.223705
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava) / Robert Stankovsky
SMETANA The Fisherman
8.223705
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava) / Robert Stankovsky
CUI Orchestral Suite No 2 in E major Op 38
8.223400
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava) / Robert Stankovsky
Music programmed by Sarah Butcher
