'' TRAIN DREAMS '' : FILM HONOURS

TRAINS OF THOUGHT : Train Dreams on Netflix is a very beautiful film - but is devoid of the unsettling magic of the novella it is based on.

Denis Johnson's Train Dreams was first published in 2002 as a short story in the Paris Review. When it was reissued as a standalone novella almost a decade later, it was short listed for the Pulitzer Prize.

While the book did not win that year,  somewhat strangely, neither did anything else - for the first time in 35 years, the panel refused, without explanation, to choose a winner.

I have always liked this story because it brings to life the eerie and unsettling world of the  American frontier.

Train Dreams is a novella where each event and detail seem significant, fused into a larger tapestry of meaning.

And yet by the end of the book, the reader struggles to explain exactly what has happened. The effect is one of deep disturbance -somewhere between alienation, curiosity and longing. 

I imagine it bewitching the Pulitzer panel, stunning them into indecision.

The new movie, adapted and directed by Clint Bentley and now streaming on Netflix, is a beautiful meditation on themes of grief and loss and a frank account of an important phase in the history of the environmental crisis.

Whether you are a fan of Johnson's writing or have never read him before, you should take the time to watch it.

The World Students Society thanks Dominic Davies, a Reader in English at City St George's,  University of London in the UK.