Zhao Xin | Short Story Series XI: O Henry's "Foreword"

Zhao Xin | short story series 11:

O Henry's Preface

"O.Henry was a prominent American novelist who expressed American society in the early twentieth century with novel ideas, witty language, and suspenseful mutations, and opened up the way for the American short story. His works are full of interest in life, and have been called 'the encyclopedia of American life'. If it is called an encyclopedia of life, is it all about everything?

Born in 1862 to a family of physicians in Greensboro, North Carolina, O.Henry, whose real name was William Sidney Potter, was apprenticed at a pharmacy in his hometown at the age of fifteen, and worked as a cattle rancher for two years in 1882 at a ranch in Western Texas, where he changed careers as an accountant, a land bureau clerk, a journalist, and a cashier at the First National Bank in Austin, Texas. In 1887 he married Athol Estis and had a daughter. While working at a bank, Porter bought a weekly magazine called Rolling Stones and published satirical and humorous sketches (some of which were collected in an album titled Rolling Stones). At the end of the nineteenth century, the working system of the Western Bank of the United States was not very standardized, and the bank where Porter worked was short of cash, and Porter left home to avoid trial and wandered to Honduras in Central America. In 1896, he learned that his wife was critically ill and ventured back to China to visit. When his wife died in 1897, Potter himself was arrested in April of the following year and imprisoned in the Ohio state prison. Life experience is very rich.

The prison authorities, taking into account Porter's knowledge and experience in pharmacy, sent him to serve as a pharmacist in the prison infirmary. Outside of work, he began to write carefully, supplementing the living expenses of his daughter outside prison with the income from the manuscript. In 1899, he published his first short story in the then influential magazine McClure, signed 'O Henry'.

The pseudonym, one said, was the name of the author of a French pharmacopoeia used by the prison medical office, and the name of a prison guard, in any case, the writer signed 'O Henry' immediately attracted the attention of readers and the interest of the publishing community. Prison becomes a turning point.

In 1901, O.Henry was released early for his good performance. In 1902, he moved to New York, specializing in writing, contracting with the New York newspaper Le Monde to provide a weekly short story while also writing for other newspapers. At the height of his creativity, his health began to deteriorate, and with the misfortune of his second marriage, he began to drink heavily, and finally became exhausted, and died of illness in New York on June 5, 1910. "--Regret.

In his lifetime, O.Henry wrote nearly three hundred short stories and one novel. The novel Cabbage and the Emperor, published in 1904, is set against the backdrop of the fictional Latin American Republic of Anchuria and exposes the colonialist policy of plunder by American adventurers. The Vesuvius Fruit Company in the novel alludes to the infamous United Fruit Company of the United States, a "country within a country" with supreme privileges, who, in order to depress the local banana export tax and grab excess profits, will not hesitate to launch a rebellion and military coup to replace the government that does not obey orders. In this novel, the writer unfolds several parallel threads in an attempt to paint a broad picture, but the internal connection between the chapters is not very close, and it can be established as several short stories, which is the natural expression of the writer's unique artistic approach. In addition to "Cabbage and the Emperor", some short stories such as "The Problem of Average Altitude", "The Meaning of the Drunkard", and "The Liar of Double Materials" are also based on Latin American life, which is exotic and flavorful. Although the time is not long, the creation is also rich.

Some of O.Henry's short stories depict the life of the american western prairies and cattle herders are mainly collected in a collection titled "The Heart of the West." Writers often quote Kipling: 'The West is the West, the East is the East, and they never meet.' But his intentions were different from those of the English poet who glorified imperial expansion. When O.Henry spoke of the West, he referred to the vast, free, romantic southwestern states of the United States; the East referred to the industrially developed northeastern states centered on major cities such as New York and Chicago. In the writer's mind, the erosion of capitalist civilization in the west is not so obvious, and the people are simple, industrious, upright, brave, full of vigor and vitality, and have not yet fallen into the vices of the bourgeoisie of mercenary interests and deceit. "Hygiene of solito ranch" writes about a discredited gambler who comes to the steppe from a big city of sound dogs and horses and drunken money fans, and regains his confidence in health and life through labor and proximity to nature. --Creative tendencies.

"A large proportion of O.Henry's short stories deserve attention to depicting life in the big cities of the United States, especially New York. Writers have a bumpy life, often get along with frustrated and frustrated little people at the bottom of society, have a deep love for them, and understand their thoughts and feelings. In O.Henry's writing, the big city of asphalt roads and reinforced concrete is a spooky and ruthless behemoth, 'people say it has a heart of stone, they say it has no compassion, people compare its streets to wild jungles and lava deserts', but in the forest of high-rise buildings, on the barren asphalt road, there are unexpectedly magnificent flowers of human nature, and the writer seeks and finds a unique legend —a legend of love, friendship, self-sacrifice, a beautiful mind and a noble feeling. "Maggie's Gift", "The Policeman and the Hymn", "The Last Ivy Leaf" and other articles are well-known and popular works about small people in New York. The writer titled the collection describing the life of the citizens of Manhattan, New York, "Four Million", because some writers at that time believed that it was the four hundred "upper class" who formed the basis of New York society, and only they were important, but O Henry thought that it was not the four hundred self-interested capitalists who should be paid attention to, but the four million ordinary people of New York. --Civilian tendencies.

"Some of O'Henry's work depicts liars. He took the form of a storyteller, told by Jeff Peters in a playful, angry, cynical and ridiculous tone, showing that bourgeois society is nothing more than a society of deceitful and black-eating liars, many morally upright 'upper class figures' are just successful high-ranking liars, political dignitaries sell official titles, financial giants are commonplace, and even a marriage advertisement can be used to amass wealth; the establishment of so-called charity is a clever trick to deceive money ("Lecture on the Mathematics of Philanthropy"). "The Path We Choose" exposes the law of 'the weak eating the strong' and 'big fish eating small fish' in capitalist society, showing that robbers and financial capitalists are essentially no different. The bandits who block the road and the capitalists who manipulate speculation will do whatever it takes to put their opponents to death. Exposing capitalist society.

"O.Henry is a writer of unique styles, his works are humorous, witty, concise and vivid. He is good at capturing the ridiculous and philosophical dramatic scenes in life, using comic-like brushstrokes to outline the characters, grasping the characteristics from the subtleties, depicting them in the language of the image, swinging freely, left and right, so that the characters in the pen have flesh and blood and lifelike. ------------------

"O.Henry shows astonishing ingenuity in his handling of the novel's endings." The O.Henry-esque ending' is famous in American literature. He first revealed some situations in the process of storyline development, as a foreshadowing, buried the foreshadowing, but the most important facts have been kept secret, and at the end, the peak turns around, suddenly cheerful, producing an unexpected and finishing effect, revealing to the reader the meaning of the whole story and the full truth of the character and behavior, so that the reader can't help but clap the case in shock, can't help but admit the reasonableness of the story, and admire the cleverness of the author's conception. It is a feature, but it feels deliberate and boring after a long time.

"The end of O.Henry's novel is wonderful, and the beginning is also extraordinary. The writer's humorous, light and lively opening statement is mostly mixed with figurative associations, quotations, character portrayals, and lyrical discussions, especially the organic combination of lyricism and exposition, so that the reader's spirit is invigorated and eager to know the following. The beginning is also a feature.

"Writers often use slang, puns, falsifications, harmonics, and old canonical novelties. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, made up of large numbers of immigrants, and the words German, French, and Spanish are often used in O.Henry's writings, citing Greek and Roman mythology and biblical allusions." - Contextual differences.

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In this way, O.Henry has many conditions to become a writer and is a "writer of people".

Still looking forward to it.