Pittsburgh Paradox: A City Haunted by God and Steel
…The train, Cather writes with auspicious significance, was bound for Pennsylvania. With good reason “Paul’s Case” has been read as a queer encomium, his tragic death a “gay suicide.” Without discounting that, note how Cather’s description of Paul’s death also has mystical elements with his final merging into an infinity pregnant with meaning. As much martyrdom as suicide, and while the character rebels against Pittsburgh’s Calvinism, it was within…
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