| Title | : | The Complete Works of O. Henry |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0385009615 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780385009614 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 1692 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1937 |
The Complete Works of O. Henry Reviews
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What? Five stars to O. Henry? Outrageous! Ridiculous! Feeble-minded! Can I really have any pretentions to perspicacity? Is my judgment that whacked-out? Well, it's like this. It's a story.
Just like everyone else I was thoroughly inoculated against O. Henry in Junior High (now Middle School). I was spoon-fed "The Ransom of Red Chief" and "The Gift of the Magi" and "Alias Jimmy Valentine" until it was certain, as with polio vaccine, that I would be immune for life. Time passed. Lots of time. Time during which it never once occurred to me to cast another glance at O. Henry.
Then six years ago I was on a trip, visiting relatives. Not having a book with me (more fool I) I went to their shelves. There was little there I hadn't read. A volume of O. Henry caught my eye. I took it up. The Gift of the Magi was missing. The Ransom of Red Chief wasn't there. It appeared that the book contained some stories I didn't remember, if I'd ever read them at all. Long story short: in dire need of a fix of print, I read the book.
This was a different O. Henry, I thought. Or maybe in Junior High I hadn't noticed. The writer I was encountering was so obviously presenting two stories at a time. The saccharine production to be published by the daily paper for which he wrote. And then underneath it a series of ms. found-in-a-bottle messages from William Sidney Porter. Interesting messages. Signals. Like the adult story line in a modern children's movie. This was a rather dark man. And all the more interesting for it.
I bought and read Smith's biography of Porter. Paid six dollars for a used, two-volume, complete O. Henry. Read through the whole thing. Satisfied myself that what I'd seen in the selection on my brother's shelves reflected a more general reality. O. Henry is worth reading. By adults.
Here was a solidly alcoholic ex-con (graduated: 1902) staying alive for the last eight years of his short life (1862-1910) by scribbling in his dreary hotel room whatever came into his mind as a short story while he consumed straight scotch at the rate of at least a quart a day. And then wandered around Baghdad-on-the-Subway. With all Manhattan's perfectly normal, turn-of-the-century, everyday tragedy and drama that in most cases did not have happy endings. With Bill Porter to wrap it in shining paper tied with a bow. Except he didn't. He amused himself by flecking the paper with horse manure and cockroaches, with bile and vomit. He knew his clients couldn't tell the difference.
Which makes for an interesting read. Is this man the equal of the masters and mistresses on the top of the literary heap? Probably not. Is he a more interesting and rewarding writer than he's been credited to be for oh so long? Certainly yes. Worth your time.
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I’m going to be honest. I can’t find what I want for a complete works so I’m reading a couple collections of short stories. That’s good enough.
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I enjoyed this one, except that several (not most) of his stories describe members of minority groups in words we no longer use. Not excusing any offense that might be taken by a 21st century reader, but you should remember that such notions were commonplace when he was writing. If you can work your way through the gag reflex on that point, you'll be greatly entertained.
He's a terrific wordsmith and sent me to the dictionary frequently with words that are listed in the OAED as "archaic". Some are sweet love stories about couples who nearly missed the match, others are about matches that survive difficulties.
Many stories seem to be the result of O. Henry working out scams and flim-flam schemes he'd have liked to committed. Others tell of dignity and nobility among common folks. It isn't as if he doesn't work over some themes, but each story stands on its on.
I read from an unindexed Kindle version, and I'm not going to go back and count, so I'm not sure how many stories are in this anthology, but reading a few of them each day has taken many, many weeks. Pack a lunch, and read this someplace where you can laugh out loud. -
“And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part” (p. 1,046).
The above is vintage O. Henry — as is the following: “(l)ove and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving” (p. 382).
Both, I suspect, come from deep within the heart of an author whose collected works of fiction I’ve just finished. These works — all short stories, by the way, and all written in a single decade — were dropped into my lap, as it were, by Ms. Serendipity in the form of a Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc. compilation (© 2006) when I passed by her one day at the 8th Street Book Exchange in Park Slope, Brooklyn (NY). One thousand four hundred and twenty pages of fine print (and two months) later, you could say I’d been blessed — and given the gift of a lifetime. (Or at least “…of the Magi” — O. Henry’s most famous short story and quite possibly the best short story in the North American Canon.)
But there are others, dozens of others.
My favorites? “The Gift of the Magi,” of course. But also “The Last Leaf”; “Springtime à la Carte”; “The Third Ingredient”; “The Greater Coney”; and “The Church with an Overshot-Wheel” — just for starters. And for the sheer musicality of the piece, “The Caballero’s Way.”
Consider the lyricism of this paragraph from “The Clarion Call”: “All over the city the cries were starting up, keen and sonorous, heralding the changes that the slipping of one cogwheel in the machinery of time had made; apportioning to the sleepers while they lay at the mercy of fate, the vengeance, profit, grief, reward and doom that the new figure in the calendar had brought them. Shrill and yet plaintive were the cries, as if the young voices grieved that so much evil and so little good was in their irresponsible hands. Thus echoed in the streets of the helpless city the transmission of the latest decrees of the gods, the cries of the newsboys — the Clarion call of the Press” (p. 518).
But before we leave O. Henry’s observations of Manhattan — the setting, in my opinion, for his best stories — consider the author’s less than dewy-eyed view of the denizens of that same woe-begotten island in the very next story, “Extradited from Bohemia”: “The most pathetic sight in New York — except the manners of the rush-hour crowds — is the dreary march of the hopeless army of Mediocrity” (p. 519). The rest of the paragraph bears direct citation, but I’ll leave that to you to discover on your own.
In “The Last of the Troubadours,” O. Henry makes clear on which side of the fence the likes of you and me are standing, even if his Latin is more colloquial than correct: “You should know that omnoe personoe in tres partes divisoe sunt. Namely: Barons, Troubadours and Workers. Barons have no inclination to read such folderol as this; and Workers have no time: so I know you must be a Troubadour, and that you will understand Sam Galloway. Whether we sing, act, dance, write, lecture, or paint, we are only troubadours; so let us make the worst of it” (p. 1,155).
And so, quite appropriately, from the author of “A Dinner at _____” on what we ‘troubadours’ might realistically expect — our so-called ‘rate of return’ — we have:
“ ‘See that auto-cab halfway down the block? I shouted. ‘Follow it. Don’t lose sight of it for an instant, and I will give you two dollars!’
“If I only had been one of the characters in my story instead of myself(,) I could easily have offered $10 or $25 or even $100. But $2 was all I felt justified in expending, with fiction at its present rates” (p. 1,324).
Wishing, perhaps, to establish a sleuth as memorable as Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes or Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe, O. Henry establishes for the length of a couple or three stories his French detective Tictocq and plays farcically (yet fantastically!) with the French language, character and mythopoesis in “Tracked to Doom.”
Apart from having written some achingly sentimental (though not maudlin…never maudlin!) stories, O. Henry can be piquantly acerbic — as can be seen in this parody of a certain (other) notable author’s style:
“ ‘Now look across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay. At my finger. At my finger. Across the bay. Across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay.’ This for about three minutes.
“He explained that this was a test of the action of the brain. It seemed easy to me. I never once mistook his finger for the bay. I’ll bet that if he used the phrases: ‘Gaze, as it were, unpreoccupied, outward—or rather laterally — in the direction of the horizon, underlaid, so to speak, with the adjacent fluid inlet,’ and ‘Now, returning — or rather, in a manner, withdrawing your attention, bestow it upon my upraised digit’ — I’ll bet, I say, that Henry James himself could have passed the examination” (p. 1,215).
O. Henry’s prose is no less barbed when he turns the jib of his pen to public readings by fellow writers, as he did in “The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes”:
“ ‘Perhaps,’ said Jolnes, with a smile, ‘it might be called something of the sort. To be frank with you, Whatsup, I’ve cut out the dope. I’ve been increasing the quantity for so long that morphine doesn’t have much effect on me anymore. I’ve got to have something more powerful. That telephone I just went to is connected with a room in the Waldorf where there’s an author’s reading in progress. Now, to get at the solution to this string’ ” (p. 1,232).
Even entire countries are not immune to the rapier-like slash of O. Henry’s wit, the evidence for which we see in “A Ruler of Men” when he refers to a certain fictive South American country (sounding suspiciously like Ecuador, by the way) as “that land of bilk and money” (p. 1,278).
It is generally acknowledged that O. Henry was a tippler, and that he died — at least to some degree as a result of this little vice — with exactly 23¢ in his pocket. But I would suggest that anyone who can write so lovingly of a certain weed as O. Henry did was no less a lover of tobacco—which, at today’s tax-engorged prices here in NYC, would’ve given him up for dead long before the alcohol did him in. We find, then, the following in “Transformation of Martin Burney”:
“For three days he managed to fill his pipe from other men’s sacks, and then they would shut him off, one and all. They told him, rough but friendly, that of all things in the world tobacco must be quickest forthcoming to a fellow-man desiring it, but that beyond the immediate temporary need(,) requisition upon the store of a comrade is pressed with great danger to friendship” (p. 1,249).
And from the same story:
“ ‘You like-a smoke while we wait,’ he asked.
“Burney clutched it and snapped off the end as a terrier bites at a rat. He laid it to his lips like a long-lost sweetheart. When the smoke began to draw(,) he gave a long, deep sigh, and the bristles of his gray-red mustache curled down over the cigar like the talons of an eagle. Slowly the red faded from the whites of his eyes. He fixed his gaze dreamily upon the hills across the river. The minutes came and went” (p. 1,250).
I would be doing O. Henry a disservice if I failed to include at least one citation on his favorite subject. To wit:
“ ‘So, as I’ve said, a woman needs to change her point of view now and then. They get tired of the same old sights — the same old dinner table, washtub, and sewing machine. Give ‘em a touch of the various — a little travel and a little rest, a little tomfoolery along with the tragedies of keeping house, a little petting after the blowing-up, a little upsetting and a little jostling around — and everybody in the game will have chips added to their stack by the play’ ” (p. 386).
A word or two of caution to the reader who comes to O. Henry for the first time: cozy up to a good dictionary (I, personally, learned about two hundred new words in this reading); then put your widgets and gadgets away and find a quiet, well-lit place. O. Henry’s stories require intense concentration. The master of the surprise ending may insert a turnabout word or phrase at any point in his narrative or dialogue…you may miss it (as I did many times in spite of reading under the best of all possible circumstances — viz., on a quiet little hill in an out-of-the-way corner of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden)…at which point, you will have lost the entire thread of the story.
And get used to the Latin “viz.” (anglice: ‘namely’). O. Henry uses it over and over again — as he does “table d’hôte” (the rough equivalent of which would be a communal table at a ‘prix fixe,’ or, in other words, a ‘cheap or set meal’). And then, bon appétit! Or rather, bonne lecture!
RRB
10/24/13
Brooklyn, NY -
Favorite stories:
The Gift of the Magi
The Pimienta Pancakes
"Me?" said Jud. "I don't ever eat 'em."
A Chaparral Prince
Last night he came with his armed knights and captured the ogre's castle.
Roads of Destiny -
Clearly there are some real stinkers here (I'm smelling you, Gift of the Magi). But every once in a while these stories seem to collapse space and time and someone living 100 years ago has my exact same sense of humor and it's like looking at photographs of your ancestors and realizing they were just like you.
Sorry I'm sort of having a Dead Poet's Society moment. Feel free to beat me with a crowbar.
Bring a sense of patience and a dictionary from about 1910. Sometimes you'll feel like you're translating Chaucer when you read an O.Henry story, but unlike Chaucer, there is actually a payoff. -
Too many stories in a row reveal that O. Henry was a bit of a one trick pony. But what a trick and with that pony, the show's still irrestible.
The ever-present twist, great language, fun stories, characters and times well described and interesting.
I love O. Henry and I also clearly like sentence fragments. -
When this edition says "complete" it means COMPLETE: everything from his first stories to unfinished odds and ends. That's... a lot of O. Henry. There are all the stories we know, and many that are still really good but dated or otherwise inaccessible, and quite a few that I enjoyed even though they were less-known or even more cliche than usual. Henry had a gift for structuring a story and keeping it taut and lean, and it's a pleasure to see his craft in detail. Of course, the problem is that there's a lot of casual racism fouling the works. Some stories it's just a sort of vague background haze over everything, like most of his stories set in Central and South America (where he fled to avoid being arrested for embezzlement, which I never knew!) Some stories, it's a random racist slur just dropped into an otherwise perfectly fine story. As his career progressed, he apparently became fond of the stock character of the genteel old Southern gentleman of the Lost Cause and the delicate faded maidens of the South, and he uses them to "romantic" effect, sometimes with an agonizingly racist "faithful old servant" thrown in. His very latest fragments become allegories and encomiums about the Good and the Right, discussions of Heaven and Humanity... and then the collection closes with a little ditty about Mexican-Americans making dogs and cats into tamales to feed to "gringos," ending the whole thing like a gross wet fart. I think curated collections of O. Henry are the way to go.
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Read:
The Four Million
Heart of the West
The Gentle Grafter
Roads of Destiny
Cabbages and Kings
Options
Sixes and Sevens
Rolling Stones
or the first 1,000 or so pages. -
One of the finest unsung authors of the 20th century, O. Henry's brilliance lies in his ability to capture,with absolute precision, the idiosyncrasies of the average Joe (and Jane, of course) and portray them with such candor and humor that every character is endearing and sears into your memory. Humans are complex and who knows why they do whatever they do. O. Henry doesn't attempt to unravel or psychoanalyze his characters but serves them up quite deliciously with his charming wit and excellent puns, warts and all, as they are. A story- teller par excellence! Be it romance, comedy or plain good old Irony- a genre grossly unexplored in today's time! A man for all seasons, with stories that capture your emotions no matter how many times you read them.
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If ever one wishes to indulge in irony, O. Henry is a great place to start. I inherited this rather frail copy. I turn the pages with care and generally look for a gutenberg version if I want to actually work with the text.
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The absolute master of the short story. This collection and an equally good collection of stories by Saki got me hooked to the short story genre for life.
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Originally published on my blog
here in March-September 1999.
The Four Million
A common location and subject - New York and the four million people who lived there at the turn of the century, unite O. Henry's earliest collection of short stories. Each story is fairly typical of his work - short, the longest in this edition being four pages; having a happy ending which may seem a little sentimental to modern tastes (though that doesn't stop people reading, say, Louisa M. Alcott). Each one is skilfully written, painting a picture of its characters in a few phrases.
Most of the characters in these stories belong to one fairly specific group of people, not unrelated to the market for the journals and magazines in which the O. Henry's stories were originally published. They are mainly young people in low-paid office work (stenographers and the like), living in cheap boarding houses and eating in cheap restaurants.
The best stories are perhaps those which have some sort of wry twist, rather than the sentimental happy endings of the others, such as Lost on Dress Parade or The Coming Out of Maggie, while those in which a man forgets he married the night before - of which there are several - are the weakest. O. Henry also attempts something rather different in Memoirs of a Yellow Dog, and this does not quite come off.
Heart of the West
In O. Henry's second collection of short stories, the location shifts from New York to Texas, at the end of the era which inspired the Hollywood "Wild West". As in most of Henry's work, the stories are brief with a romantic ending (though this collection includes some that do not even have a happy ending). His West is not as remote from reality as Hollywood's, but his reliance on the good side of human nature does make his stories appear to inhabit the realms of fantasy.
The life in these stories is not as violent, not as ruled by the gun, as it is in the Hollywood version, nor is it quite so simplistic. There are no real bad guys, just unfortunates who have allowed circumstances to get on top of them, or drink to rule their lives. They are generally redeemed through exposure to the honest, open-air life of the country, which Henry seems to have regarded as one to admire and which he certainly seemed to use to take people out of the way they lived before into a morally clean world.
Henry's general theme, the mysterious ways of men and women in love, is apparent in may of the stories in this collection. (A plot shared by several, for example, is the rich man not permitting his daughter to marry the poor but honest man she loves but whom he believes is a fortune hunter.) This emphasis, which seems to be on the sentimental and arch side to a modern reader, makes Henry's writing seem old-fashioned; but it cannot be denied that he was a master of the short story genre.
The Gentle Grafter
This particular collection of O. Henry's short stories was the first one I read, many years ago, and it remains one of his best in my opinion. Like earlier collections, the stories share a common theme. In this case, though, the theme itself helps to prevent the descent into sentimentality which is Henry's main fault as far as modern readers are concerned. The world portrayed by The Gentle Grafter is that of the small time conman; the stories generally describe a particular deception.
The stories - all but one - share a main character, Jeff Peters. This adds cohesion to the collection, something which Henry takes further in Cabbages and Kings, which lies between a novel and a short story in form. Jeff Peters is a conman with a conscience, which makes him a sympathetic rather than a villainous character. Some of his conscience is more humorous than moral, like his insistence that none of his customers go away completely empty handed, even if what they receive bears no relation in value to the amount of money they have been parted from. On the other hand, he does refuse to cheat widows or orphans, an at one point when he discovers that his partner in one scam has done just that he insists that all the money is returned.
Roads of Destiny
Roads of Destiny is O. Henry's longest collection of short stories, containing tales that are longer than the two or three page miniatures which fill the other volumes of his work. The title story is probably his lengthiest individual story. It is distinctly more experimental than most of O. Henry's output, being reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce or Edgar Allan Poe. The idea is simple enough; the young French shepherd David sets out for Paris, seeking fame and fortune with his poetry, the toast of his native village. He reaches a junction, with no clues as to which way to go. The story then splits into three, one part for each choice (left fork, right fork, or turn back). But the road he takes doesn't matter, for they all lead to his destiny: to be killed with a pistol belonging to the Marquis de Beaupertys. The story itself is told in Henry's usual style, so it is rather less hard edged than Bierce or Poe, but it carries an unusually stern message (that we cannot escape our fate).
There is a book by Peter Dickinson called Chance, Luck and Destiny, a collection of anecdotes, stories, and non-fictional writing (if you count descriptions of methods used by fortune-tellers as non-fiction). One of the strands which runs through this book is a set of stories based on the Oedipus legend, which detail different ways in which he could have lived his life, yet still have ended up killing his father and marrying his mother. For example, in one version, he could have disbelieved the oracle, returning to his adoptive parents, taken part in a war with Thebes in which he killed Laius in battle and received Jocasta as part of the booty.
Such non-linear narratives are today relatively common, particularly after the popularity of role playing game books, where the reader chooses from a series of options at the end of each section. ("If you go through the door, turn to page 67.) But Roads of Destiny is one of the earliest examples of such writing that I know of.
Cabbages and Kings
Cabbages and Kings is still a rather unusual book, even after the experimentation with narrative form that has characterised much of twentieth century literature. With Roads of Destiny it was clear that O. Henry occasionally wanted to do new things with the short story form, and not just continue to produce the slightly sentimental shorts which had brought him popularity.
He experimented with the form of the short story while continuing to write about the same sorts of subjects in the same accessible style. In Cabbages and Kings it is the idea of a collection of short stories that Henry plays with, writing what is in effect a novel consisting of short stories. Some parts of the book amount to chapters put in to glue the stories together, while other stories have little relevance to the main plot.
This main plot is concerned with revolutionary politics in the fictional South American state of Anchuria, particularly the involvement with them of American citizens resident in the country. The President of Anchuria, Miraflores, has fled the capital with $100,000 from the treasury; he must be captured before he reaches the coast. In the coastal town of Coralio, he and his mistress are discovered, Miraflores kills himself, but the money disappears. The only two people who could know anything about it, the American Goodwin who found him, and Miraflores' mistress, now married to Goodwin, are too important to be suspected, and Goodwin is well known for his honesty.
As the new president, Losada, begins to show signs that his rule will become oppressive even by the standards of South America at the time, opposition grows; and this forms the background to Cabbages and Kings. However, the best stories as short stories are those which have little relationship with this background, such as the sequence starting with Shoes centring on the young US consul John de Graffenried Atwood.
This indicates that in the end Cabbages and Kings fails as an experiment; Henry's craft is so wedded to the short story form of which he was one of the greatest masters that the extended structure does not come at all naturally. The single background is a bit of a straightjacket, and it tends to fragment whenever Henry has an idea which interests him.
Options
Options, O. Henry's sixth short story collection, marks a retreat from the experiments of Cabbages and Kings and Roads of Destiny. The stories in Options are all typical Henry, masterfully put together short stories perhaps a little sentimental for modern tastes. Unlike earlier collections, Options lacks any unifying themes. It contains stories set in each of the venues established as Henry's location in these earlier collections: the big city and the West of the United States, and South America. This diversity is reflected in the collection title.
Options is perhaps the most unsatisfactory of the collections published in Henry's lifetime, having the thrown together feel that characterised the ones made of stories not previously published in book form that appeared after his death. Its diversity does make it reasonably interesting to read through in one sitting, but I prefer the virtuosity apparent in the earlier collections where Henry continually finds new variation on a theme (most obviously in The Gentle Grafter).
Sixes and Sevens
The last collection of O. Henry's short stories made during his lifetime, like the preceding one (Options), is a heterogeneous group of tales typical of the writer. He left approximately as much uncollected material, generally not as high a standard as that which had been published in book form.
My favourite story in Sixes and Sevens is The Champion of the Weather, in which a cowboy from the remote Kiowa Reservation visits New York. He is amazed when no one speaks to him the whole time he is there - this general consequence of modern city life is totally foreign to him. The story is about his efforts to have a conversation about anything with someone, including the weather. It is an inconsequential little tale, but it shows Henry at his amusing best. -
What a character. Like any formula writer, you know exactly what you're getting, going in - a setting, a character, an event, a resolution, a twist ending. So be it. The guy was writing for magazines and readers who demanded the formula.
And it's fun! He is clearly having a blast slipping his weary little philosophical observations into the cracks between the plot furniture. And he is clearly on the side of the underdog, the little man, the one passed over, the outcast (as long as they're not brown, obviously, because he spends a lot of time exploring the turn-of-the-century American flirtation with being a colonial power in Latin America and the Pacific, and the only characters granted any humanity in those settings are the runaway expats whiling away the days in idyllic beach towns, while everyone else is colored in various shades of "dusky", and even back in New York City, Italians and Irish and other flavors of immigrants find roles more as hangers to support a really badly transliterated accent rather than protagonists - all of which is itself an interesting window into what was popular and fun in America circa 1900).
Did he want to do more with these stories? It sure looks like it - his favorite grifter story is really about an American Native guy struggling to find a place in society, and when he writes in the style of fairy tales, they're subversive little twists on the idiocy and futility of trying to make your life into fantasy.
Did he ever accomplish more? No, not really. Master of the form, but never really managed to deliver a message beyond "ah, how ironic!" -
It would be an exaggeration to state that each and every O. Henry short story is a masterpiece; but I'd still recommend a complete edition of his works, just because he has written so many great short stories and you never know in which collection they might turn up. To me, he is one of the greatest American authors of all times, and a true virtuoso of short story. He is known for his surprise endings, but many of his short stories are so much more than just cleverly constructed plot twists. Stories like "The Last Leaf", "Municipal Report", "A Double-Dyed Deceiver", "The Whirligig of Life", and many others, are emotional and touching, each in its own way; many of his stories are sad and even tragic, and some are genuine tear-jerkers. O. Henry's short stories form a unique world, and this world deserves to be explored to the full.
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O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) - Cadıların Ekmek Somunları
Çizimi bitirdiği vakit kurşun kalem izlerini, bir avuç dolusu bayat ekmek kırıntısı ile siler. Bu yöntem, kauçuk silgi ile silmekten çok daha iyidir. Bluemberger ekmeği hep buradan alırdı. Şey, bugün… Şey, biliyorsunuz Hanımefendi, o tereyağı pek de… İşte, Blumberger’in çizdiği planlar artık hiçbir işe yaramaz, tabi sandviç sarmak için küçük parçalara ayrılıp kullanılabilir! -
On the whole, generally entertaining, but this is really more O. Henry than almost anyone is going to want to read. He had the ability to churn out some genuinely good stories, but along the way he put out some clunkers too. He was always about setting up the surprise or ironic ending; when he could pull that off well things go great, but when he’s stumbles it makes it clear that he really didn’t have that much else to offer.
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I grew up reading these stories and having them read to me. I love them and reading them as an adult is comforting. However, I have to be critical of this work too. O. Henry is racist, plain and simple. He is not kind to people of color and describes them in derogatory ways. When I was reading I did my best to make note of these stereotypes and call them out as illogical and untrue. Read critically, but enjoy!!!!
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What a guy
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Hb, "Authentic Ed..", Doubleday 1927, Fwd. Wm Lyons Phelps, not H. Hansen. Acceptable cond.
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It's been a long time since I read my last O Henry short story (1977?). I started in 9th grade and wound up in when I was almost 30. Always a good read.
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I'll remain forever devoted to O.Henry for his legacy of short stories, no matter how far I stray in my quest to explore other storytellers.
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One of my favourite writers of all time! I stayed at the Chelsea where he lived and worked for a time- to hone in on my own prose. I'll come back later to give a full review.
