O. Henry’s story “Tommy’s Burglar” was Library of America’s Story of the Week.
I’d read a lot of O. Henry without running into that one.
It’s a spoof on a minor genre that was popular around 1900: A burglar breaks in and confronts an innocent child, who helps the burglar find his humanity. The burglar is reformed.
The restrictions of that genre — or is it a mini-genre, trope or cliché? — led to some mawkish writing. O. Henry had fun:
The burglar got into the house without much difficulty; because we must have action and not too much description in a 2,000-word story.
If you want to know what could possibly go wrong with a formulaic, 2,000-word story for pulp-fiction readers, O.Henry offers a crash course.
Today, an endless stream of shows comes to us through cable and satellite TV, and critics seem surprised that very few of these shows are good. In 1900, newspapers and magazines were full of stories in all genres. O. Henry reminds us that very few of them were good.
• If this collection of notes has an editorial program, it might be that the world would be a happier place if public-spirited readers signed up for Library of America’s free Story of the Week. You can see what you’d be in for here:
https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/p/stories-sorted-by-author.html
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