This is kind of an amusing post for me to read, because when I was in HS almost all my friends read O. Henry! I don't think this was typical for high schoolers in the 2010s, but the reason for this is that they all played quizbowl, an academic trivia competition that happened to have a lot of O. Henry questions. O. Henry got asked about a lot because he was in a perfect sweet spot: he was "accessible"—that is, even a middle schooler could get something out of reading his stories, but he also wasn't one of those authors like Edgar Allan Poe where ~everyone~ had read his greatest hits. And his stories were also quite easy to write about in a clear way, so writers didn't have to spend as much effort on such questions. The end result is that O. Henry was one of the top 25 most common authors to appear as an answer in competition, and maybe even top 5 at lower levels.
People who got deeper into quizbowl didn't consider O. Henry to be "high literature", but he was one of those authors that you could always casually reference since just about everyone had encountered his stories in one way or another.
Here's an example of someone dropping an O. Henry reference in a competition question in an almost meme-like way:
> A musical artist who gained fame under a stage moniker named after these objects claimed in one song that he, “had a sit down with Farrakhan” and “Turned the White House to the Terror Dome.” Della sells her hair to buy Jim one of these objects for his watch in "The Gift of the Magi", and in calculus, a rule named after these objects states that the derivative of (*) f of g of x is f prime of g of x times g prime of x. The Communist Manifesto claims that the Proletarians have nothing to lose but these objects, and The Social Contract begins, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in” these objects. Fenrir was bound in, for ten points, what metal objects composed of several connected links.
(I'm planning to write a post about quizbowl at some point. Even though I would expect most Gen Zers on Substack to have at least heard of quizbowl, I don't get the sense that older readers really know much about what was going on inside this somewhat unusual subculture.)
Kentucky Public television had a quizbowl-type trivia show in the 80s where high schools competed against each other. I was on it as a freshman, as part of a team of three. Our whole 'Challenge' class took the day as a field trip to cheer us on.
I honestly don't remember if we won or not. The only thing I remember is that the girl I was obsessed with at the time hugged me and said she was proud of me, and that event blew every other detail out of my mind.
I loved quizbowl and it was amazing!! Gen Xers were all about it - in middle school we had the Economics Quiz Bowl, and in high school it was more general knowledge. One year the finals were at Disney World - so much fun.
Short stories are always popular because they give a reader the essence of life in the short form, and if you love a story, you could read it endlessly, as I do with Chekov's "Boring Life." I remember O. Henry's "The Gift of Magi" for over 60 years; this story was so romantic and dear to our Soviet children. To read such a light opinion of yours now, "I have no idea that they teach kids about this story," is very strange. And we still reread Edgar Allan Poe, in English, now.
Naomy, I am sorry, I don't understand your comment. Literature is not geography to teach, where is Moscow or New York. And, in any case, you don't want me to lecture here on the subject of teaching literature. For 72 years of my life, I still remember that story of The Gift of Maggy, isn't it magical?
Thank you so much for understanding my comment. The Gift of Magi is the story about so deep selfless love to each other, and a literary critic doesn’t understand the story and why the story is taught in the schools. It is amazing to me.
In the American Short Story unit that I taught my sons in our homeschool, O'Henry's "Ransom of Red Chief" and "The Last Leaf" were part of the syllabus. My spectrum kiddos roared with delight at Red Chief, but their amazing, emotional response to "The Last Leaf" astounded me. Both of them struggle with social-emotional cues and with inferences in fiction works--but that dreary O'Henry tale seemed to unlock a whole new world for them.
I know right. What's great about O. Henry is you read the story and you get it. You understand the story. Other stories--especially if you're young--you often feel like maybe you're not getting something.
Also in Saturday Evening Post, though later: Joan Didion (Slouching-stories), Shirley Jackson, J D Salinger (war stories but not Esmé), John O’Hara (who earlier helped to invent the New Yorker style short story, according to Charles McGrath), etc.
“Takedown” might not be the first thing that comes to mind regarding the London Review of Books, which publishes Perry Anderson, Patricia Lockwood, Adam Tooze, Jenny Turner and, once upon a time, Frank Kermode.
The question that has no answer is a question I really want answered! I grew up reading the short fiction in my mother's Good Housekeeping magazine, and I miss that. How did editors decide readers didn't want the short stories anymore? Why is there no record of these conversations and decisions? Did school English classes ruin the general public's taste for "reading short fiction for pleasure" because in school, for most people, it wasn't? Those literature anthologies of stories and novel excerpts and the list of questions at the end that had to be answered in complete sentences and handwritten in legible cursive might not have thrilled everyone. Maybe coming across a short fiction in a magazine triggered those English-class memories? I hope someday we will know the answer. It's been bugging me for years!
I would be interested in this question too. I read a comment on Substack notes recently where Alex Chee blamed Tina Brown, at the New Yorker, who reduced the number of short stores in the magazine--this had a ripple effect where other journals also killed or reduced their short story sections. https://substack.com/@querent/note/c-134817507?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=hjhja
I really enjoy your rabbit hole posts. And I LOL’d at your conclusion because as you were describing the stories I thought “these almost sound like they could be Naomi tales, if they were a bit edgier.” And also I thought: I should read these and try to copy the structure of one of these stories, but for today. Can’t wait to see what you do with your list.
Readin your article and the comments has got me thinking, yet again, what do we want from short stories or indeed literature. These days I find myself curled up with headphones on, music masking the TV in the other room and a book on my lap, talking to me. I study writing more now than I did when I was younger. Recently, I read the first chapter of Stoner by John Williams. That glimpse into the main character, could stand alone as a short story. It is written in such straight forward prose and yet I felt by the end of that chapter that I knew the man, I was immersed in his world, small, contained, broadening by his discovery and love of literature. The last paragraph, is particularly poignant. There's no exuberance. There's no arguments. Things are what they are. As I read this article, I realised O. Henry struck me the same way. Yes, his stories often had a twist and I find that occurring a lot in second rate short stories. The difference is that somewhere in those neatly packaged plots I find people I connect with. That got me thinking. How would someone growing up today write The Gift of the Magi? Would it be set in a post-apocalyptic future of fond objects that no longer had meaning but were treasured nonetheless? Or would it be set in our modern consumer world where nothing has meaning to either the giver or the receiver and yet the act of giving creates its own meaning.
Yes I've been thinking about this a lot too. I think what I want as a writer is to connect with a reader and produce something enjoyable that's worth their time--something I think O. Henry felt as well.
Brava! I loved this. I fondly remember being absorbed by O. Henry’s The Gentle Grafter which I discovered at my grandma’s house. I even tried to write a screenplay adaptation of some of the stories there when I was a high schooler. Anyway, good work…
Tales. They fall into.thr lovely category of tales. Often fable-like. Today's stories more introspective. Often of the navel-gazing variety. All good in their way and in their time. For those of us writing short stories, with so few print options, online magazines are salvation. And those of us reading, more than ever, perhaps the result of less time and/or shorter attention spans. Either way, stories are as essential as they were as cave drawings. Thx for all the good research.
"I can read volumes upon volumes upon volumes of 'good' stories, and they'll all be good in the same way. "
This gave me cause to reflect on short stories that I've read. About 20 years ago as a teen I read loads of Roald Dahl's short story collections. They all have a mean streak, most with an ironic ending. It's been a long time but I can still clearly remember the plot of about a half dozen of them. Most are quite distinct. About 8 years ago, less than half the time, I read a whole collection of Alice Munro short stories. I think I enjoyed them at the time but I can't remember a single thing that happened in them. Is that a weakness in me or the form?
I was waiting for you to mention F.Scott Fitzgerald!
You didn't mention his mentor, Hemingway, a popular writer if ever there was one, and HIS mentor, Sherwood Anderson.
I love the American short story, (am a died-in-the-wool Brit), and I think no one else does it so well. (That includes William Trevor and Chekhov, whom I find depressing).
I love the greats of the 50's and 60's,such as John Cheever. I think they absolutely nail down to earth realism which screens over a deeply philosophical point in each story, just the one, which you can easily miss if the seductive smoothness of the writing carries you away. These were compendium-ised in a Penguin edition "Stories from the New Yorker" which I devoured in my late teens.
Modern stories in the New Yorker don't grab me at all. Maybe it's my age, more likely that what you fell in love with in your youth can never be replaced.
I don't know if I'd call Hemingway the mentor to F. Scott--rather the reverse, F. Scott became well-known several years before Hemingway did (and F. Scott was always a much more popular story writer). Cheever is one I have to read! I've read a few of his more anthologized stories, but never a whole collection
> Modern stories in the New Yorker don't grab me at all. Maybe it's my age, more likely that what you fell in love with in your youth can never be replaced.
I'm glad O. Henry is getting reevaluated. His stories are much funnier and more subversive than, say, Modern Love. Which is to say, the "high culture" of today is much lower-brow than the culture that dismissed O'Henry as middlebrow.
I love Dwight MacDonald as a critic, but people take him a bit too seriously. He was notorious for typing first and asking questions later. He had very strong opinions but he also changed his mind a lot. People today interpret his opinions as probably harsher than he meant them to be.
You should write about James Gould Cozzens, a writer whose reputation was famously ruined by Dwight MacDonald. I've read one of his books, a novella called Castaway, that I thought was pretty good. Fringe conservative literary types have long been agitating for a Cozzens revival.
I read Castaway years ago, maybe after reading MacDonald’s takedown, and was intrigued by the early Cozzens. Castaway reads like sci-fi, and its department store setting seemed to anticipate movies like Dawn of the Dead, which takes place in a mall.
Possibly also worth mentioning are the pulp magazine, which got their start, more or less, at the turn of the 20th Century. Magazines like Argosy, which started in 1882 as a kid's magazine, and went through a couple of modifications (and a change of ownership) until it became a true pulp magazine in 1896, by which time it was fully devoted to adventure stories, and was published on pulp paper. Other general fiction pulps were Adventure, Blue Book, and Short Stories, as well as All Story Weekly which eventually merged with Argosy. And of course there were tons of specialty magazines, including of course the first science fiction magazines. These of course were aimed at a broader, in general lower class, audience than the magazines you discuss above. (Munsey's Magazine was of course also published by Frank Munsey, who was Argosy's publisher, and it seems to have been his more high-toned piece, though still more aimed at a popular audience than the Atlantic, etc., as indicated by a habit of including illustrations of semi-clad women.)
It really is something to see how much writers were paid for short stories in those days!
As for O. Henry, of course I read "The Gift of the Magi" in school, and also "The Ransom of Red Chief" (the one where kidnappers end up paying the parents to take the kidnapped kid back because he's so annoying.) A couple of years ago I found a couple of his short story collections (The Four Million and The Trimmed Lamp) at an antique store for next to nothing. I've been meaning to read them through -- I did sample The Four Million and I did note the variety of people he featured, and a definite sympathy for immigrants and poor people.
Yes! I have an article coming up on weird tales (because I've been reading Conan), and I've also been reading collected stories from the crime pulps and adventure pulps. Have even looked a bit into the sporsts pulps! What is wild about the pulp world is the amount of fan activity it created. Today there are way way more people devoted to preserving the pulps than there are to preserving the much more popular Sunday World, where O. Henry published his work.
My older brother collected the later novelizations of a lot of those pulp heroes like the Shadow and Doc Savage. This small convention in Pittsburgh is coming up in August.
Perhaps this is apropos of this most enjoyable discussion of O. Henry and the popular short story. In any event, allow me to recommend G.K. Chesterton’s discussion of the modern genre of the short story in his critical study of Dickens. In the chapter on “The Pickwick Papers,” Dickens opines:
“Our modern attraction to short stories is not an accident of form; it is the sign of a real sense of fleetingness and fragility; it means that existence is only an impression, and, perhaps, only an illusion….The moderns, in a word, describe life in short stories because they are possessed with the sentiment that life itself is an uncommonly short story, and perhaps not a true one. But in this elder literature, even in the comic literature (indeed, especially in the comic literature), the reverse is true. The characters are felt to be fixed things of which we have fleeting glimpses; that is, they are felt to be divine.”
The whole passage is of interest, not only to this discussion of O. Henry, but also to Naomi’s and others’ recent discussions of the decline of literary fiction.
This is kind of an amusing post for me to read, because when I was in HS almost all my friends read O. Henry! I don't think this was typical for high schoolers in the 2010s, but the reason for this is that they all played quizbowl, an academic trivia competition that happened to have a lot of O. Henry questions. O. Henry got asked about a lot because he was in a perfect sweet spot: he was "accessible"—that is, even a middle schooler could get something out of reading his stories, but he also wasn't one of those authors like Edgar Allan Poe where ~everyone~ had read his greatest hits. And his stories were also quite easy to write about in a clear way, so writers didn't have to spend as much effort on such questions. The end result is that O. Henry was one of the top 25 most common authors to appear as an answer in competition, and maybe even top 5 at lower levels.
People who got deeper into quizbowl didn't consider O. Henry to be "high literature", but he was one of those authors that you could always casually reference since just about everyone had encountered his stories in one way or another.
Here's an example of someone dropping an O. Henry reference in a competition question in an almost meme-like way:
> A musical artist who gained fame under a stage moniker named after these objects claimed in one song that he, “had a sit down with Farrakhan” and “Turned the White House to the Terror Dome.” Della sells her hair to buy Jim one of these objects for his watch in "The Gift of the Magi", and in calculus, a rule named after these objects states that the derivative of (*) f of g of x is f prime of g of x times g prime of x. The Communist Manifesto claims that the Proletarians have nothing to lose but these objects, and The Social Contract begins, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in” these objects. Fenrir was bound in, for ten points, what metal objects composed of several connected links.
ANSWER: chains
(source: 2017 Ladue Invitational Spring Tournament https://quizbowlpackets.com/1978/)
(I'm planning to write a post about quizbowl at some point. Even though I would expect most Gen Zers on Substack to have at least heard of quizbowl, I don't get the sense that older readers really know much about what was going on inside this somewhat unusual subculture.)
This is so funny! One of the most entertaining and informative comments I've ever gotten.
Kentucky Public television had a quizbowl-type trivia show in the 80s where high schools competed against each other. I was on it as a freshman, as part of a team of three. Our whole 'Challenge' class took the day as a field trip to cheer us on.
I honestly don't remember if we won or not. The only thing I remember is that the girl I was obsessed with at the time hugged me and said she was proud of me, and that event blew every other detail out of my mind.
I loved quizbowl and it was amazing!! Gen Xers were all about it - in middle school we had the Economics Quiz Bowl, and in high school it was more general knowledge. One year the finals were at Disney World - so much fun.
Short stories are always popular because they give a reader the essence of life in the short form, and if you love a story, you could read it endlessly, as I do with Chekov's "Boring Life." I remember O. Henry's "The Gift of Magi" for over 60 years; this story was so romantic and dear to our Soviet children. To read such a light opinion of yours now, "I have no idea that they teach kids about this story," is very strange. And we still reread Edgar Allan Poe, in English, now.
The story is just extremely clear--there's nothing to teach, no?
Naomy, I am sorry, I don't understand your comment. Literature is not geography to teach, where is Moscow or New York. And, in any case, you don't want me to lecture here on the subject of teaching literature. For 72 years of my life, I still remember that story of The Gift of Maggy, isn't it magical?
Thank you so much for understanding my comment. The Gift of Magi is the story about so deep selfless love to each other, and a literary critic doesn’t understand the story and why the story is taught in the schools. It is amazing to me.
In the American Short Story unit that I taught my sons in our homeschool, O'Henry's "Ransom of Red Chief" and "The Last Leaf" were part of the syllabus. My spectrum kiddos roared with delight at Red Chief, but their amazing, emotional response to "The Last Leaf" astounded me. Both of them struggle with social-emotional cues and with inferences in fiction works--but that dreary O'Henry tale seemed to unlock a whole new world for them.
I know right. What's great about O. Henry is you read the story and you get it. You understand the story. Other stories--especially if you're young--you often feel like maybe you're not getting something.
Thank you for this article. I will try to read O. Henry's short stories in italian. He must have been translated.
Great article. Maybe you could elaborate upon some of his “tricks”.
Also in Saturday Evening Post, though later: Joan Didion (Slouching-stories), Shirley Jackson, J D Salinger (war stories but not Esmé), John O’Hara (who earlier helped to invent the New Yorker style short story, according to Charles McGrath), etc.
“Takedown” might not be the first thing that comes to mind regarding the London Review of Books, which publishes Perry Anderson, Patricia Lockwood, Adam Tooze, Jenny Turner and, once upon a time, Frank Kermode.
The question that has no answer is a question I really want answered! I grew up reading the short fiction in my mother's Good Housekeeping magazine, and I miss that. How did editors decide readers didn't want the short stories anymore? Why is there no record of these conversations and decisions? Did school English classes ruin the general public's taste for "reading short fiction for pleasure" because in school, for most people, it wasn't? Those literature anthologies of stories and novel excerpts and the list of questions at the end that had to be answered in complete sentences and handwritten in legible cursive might not have thrilled everyone. Maybe coming across a short fiction in a magazine triggered those English-class memories? I hope someday we will know the answer. It's been bugging me for years!
I would be interested in this question too. I read a comment on Substack notes recently where Alex Chee blamed Tina Brown, at the New Yorker, who reduced the number of short stores in the magazine--this had a ripple effect where other journals also killed or reduced their short story sections. https://substack.com/@querent/note/c-134817507?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=hjhja
Interesting. I guess if the readership didn’t complain, that told the editors something. Thanks for the link!
I really enjoy your rabbit hole posts. And I LOL’d at your conclusion because as you were describing the stories I thought “these almost sound like they could be Naomi tales, if they were a bit edgier.” And also I thought: I should read these and try to copy the structure of one of these stories, but for today. Can’t wait to see what you do with your list.
I know! I feel very inspired and am now feeling like there's a lineage for what I do.
Readin your article and the comments has got me thinking, yet again, what do we want from short stories or indeed literature. These days I find myself curled up with headphones on, music masking the TV in the other room and a book on my lap, talking to me. I study writing more now than I did when I was younger. Recently, I read the first chapter of Stoner by John Williams. That glimpse into the main character, could stand alone as a short story. It is written in such straight forward prose and yet I felt by the end of that chapter that I knew the man, I was immersed in his world, small, contained, broadening by his discovery and love of literature. The last paragraph, is particularly poignant. There's no exuberance. There's no arguments. Things are what they are. As I read this article, I realised O. Henry struck me the same way. Yes, his stories often had a twist and I find that occurring a lot in second rate short stories. The difference is that somewhere in those neatly packaged plots I find people I connect with. That got me thinking. How would someone growing up today write The Gift of the Magi? Would it be set in a post-apocalyptic future of fond objects that no longer had meaning but were treasured nonetheless? Or would it be set in our modern consumer world where nothing has meaning to either the giver or the receiver and yet the act of giving creates its own meaning.
Yes I've been thinking about this a lot too. I think what I want as a writer is to connect with a reader and produce something enjoyable that's worth their time--something I think O. Henry felt as well.
Brava! I loved this. I fondly remember being absorbed by O. Henry’s The Gentle Grafter which I discovered at my grandma’s house. I even tried to write a screenplay adaptation of some of the stories there when I was a high schooler. Anyway, good work…
That sounds so cute! Glad you liked it =]
Tales. They fall into.thr lovely category of tales. Often fable-like. Today's stories more introspective. Often of the navel-gazing variety. All good in their way and in their time. For those of us writing short stories, with so few print options, online magazines are salvation. And those of us reading, more than ever, perhaps the result of less time and/or shorter attention spans. Either way, stories are as essential as they were as cave drawings. Thx for all the good research.
Thanks!
"I can read volumes upon volumes upon volumes of 'good' stories, and they'll all be good in the same way. "
This gave me cause to reflect on short stories that I've read. About 20 years ago as a teen I read loads of Roald Dahl's short story collections. They all have a mean streak, most with an ironic ending. It's been a long time but I can still clearly remember the plot of about a half dozen of them. Most are quite distinct. About 8 years ago, less than half the time, I read a whole collection of Alice Munro short stories. I think I enjoyed them at the time but I can't remember a single thing that happened in them. Is that a weakness in me or the form?
Oh yes Roald Dahl's stories are really something. He was a master! I should read a collection of his--I've only read the anthologized stories.
I was waiting for you to mention F.Scott Fitzgerald!
You didn't mention his mentor, Hemingway, a popular writer if ever there was one, and HIS mentor, Sherwood Anderson.
I love the American short story, (am a died-in-the-wool Brit), and I think no one else does it so well. (That includes William Trevor and Chekhov, whom I find depressing).
I love the greats of the 50's and 60's,such as John Cheever. I think they absolutely nail down to earth realism which screens over a deeply philosophical point in each story, just the one, which you can easily miss if the seductive smoothness of the writing carries you away. These were compendium-ised in a Penguin edition "Stories from the New Yorker" which I devoured in my late teens.
Modern stories in the New Yorker don't grab me at all. Maybe it's my age, more likely that what you fell in love with in your youth can never be replaced.
I don't know if I'd call Hemingway the mentor to F. Scott--rather the reverse, F. Scott became well-known several years before Hemingway did (and F. Scott was always a much more popular story writer). Cheever is one I have to read! I've read a few of his more anthologized stories, but never a whole collection
> Modern stories in the New Yorker don't grab me at all. Maybe it's my age, more likely that what you fell in love with in your youth can never be replaced.
It's not your age, they're much worse.
It's not just me, then!
I'm glad O. Henry is getting reevaluated. His stories are much funnier and more subversive than, say, Modern Love. Which is to say, the "high culture" of today is much lower-brow than the culture that dismissed O'Henry as middlebrow.
I love Dwight MacDonald as a critic, but people take him a bit too seriously. He was notorious for typing first and asking questions later. He had very strong opinions but he also changed his mind a lot. People today interpret his opinions as probably harsher than he meant them to be.
You should write about James Gould Cozzens, a writer whose reputation was famously ruined by Dwight MacDonald. I've read one of his books, a novella called Castaway, that I thought was pretty good. Fringe conservative literary types have long been agitating for a Cozzens revival.
I should definitely read Cozzens--several others have mentioned him to me as an underrated writer.
I read Castaway years ago, maybe after reading MacDonald’s takedown, and was intrigued by the early Cozzens. Castaway reads like sci-fi, and its department store setting seemed to anticipate movies like Dawn of the Dead, which takes place in a mall.
Yep, it reminded me of Dawn of the Dead. Apparently Sam Peckinpah wanted to make it into a movie which would've been a great fit.
But Modern Love is an NYT column, not by any means “high culture.”
This stuff is meat and drink to me!
Possibly also worth mentioning are the pulp magazine, which got their start, more or less, at the turn of the 20th Century. Magazines like Argosy, which started in 1882 as a kid's magazine, and went through a couple of modifications (and a change of ownership) until it became a true pulp magazine in 1896, by which time it was fully devoted to adventure stories, and was published on pulp paper. Other general fiction pulps were Adventure, Blue Book, and Short Stories, as well as All Story Weekly which eventually merged with Argosy. And of course there were tons of specialty magazines, including of course the first science fiction magazines. These of course were aimed at a broader, in general lower class, audience than the magazines you discuss above. (Munsey's Magazine was of course also published by Frank Munsey, who was Argosy's publisher, and it seems to have been his more high-toned piece, though still more aimed at a popular audience than the Atlantic, etc., as indicated by a habit of including illustrations of semi-clad women.)
It really is something to see how much writers were paid for short stories in those days!
As for O. Henry, of course I read "The Gift of the Magi" in school, and also "The Ransom of Red Chief" (the one where kidnappers end up paying the parents to take the kidnapped kid back because he's so annoying.) A couple of years ago I found a couple of his short story collections (The Four Million and The Trimmed Lamp) at an antique store for next to nothing. I've been meaning to read them through -- I did sample The Four Million and I did note the variety of people he featured, and a definite sympathy for immigrants and poor people.
Yes! I have an article coming up on weird tales (because I've been reading Conan), and I've also been reading collected stories from the crime pulps and adventure pulps. Have even looked a bit into the sporsts pulps! What is wild about the pulp world is the amount of fan activity it created. Today there are way way more people devoted to preserving the pulps than there are to preserving the much more popular Sunday World, where O. Henry published his work.
My older brother collected the later novelizations of a lot of those pulp heroes like the Shadow and Doc Savage. This small convention in Pittsburgh is coming up in August.
https://pulpfest.com/
There's a Munsey award.
Perhaps this is apropos of this most enjoyable discussion of O. Henry and the popular short story. In any event, allow me to recommend G.K. Chesterton’s discussion of the modern genre of the short story in his critical study of Dickens. In the chapter on “The Pickwick Papers,” Dickens opines:
“Our modern attraction to short stories is not an accident of form; it is the sign of a real sense of fleetingness and fragility; it means that existence is only an impression, and, perhaps, only an illusion….The moderns, in a word, describe life in short stories because they are possessed with the sentiment that life itself is an uncommonly short story, and perhaps not a true one. But in this elder literature, even in the comic literature (indeed, especially in the comic literature), the reverse is true. The characters are felt to be fixed things of which we have fleeting glimpses; that is, they are felt to be divine.”
The whole passage is of interest, not only to this discussion of O. Henry, but also to Naomi’s and others’ recent discussions of the decline of literary fiction.
Thanks for this! I'll have to look into that essay