"The Girl"

"Girl" is what I would call a vignette. I think that's the proper term in that it's mainly a "zoom-in" of a complete picture. O. Henry gives the reader very little to go on as to what the meaning of the situation is. It begins with "Hartley" pursuing a young woman, having hired a private detective to discover her location. He approaches her on the stairs of apartment building she lives in, and their conversation leads us to believe that there is a sinister situation between them.

As I said to a friend earlier, O. Henry strikes me as the original, and definitely more light-hearted M. Night Shyamalan. Many, if not most, of his stories end unexpectedly with a surprising, and usually amusing, revelation. "Girl" is an example of this. It's also an example of the beauty of a short story. I used to think it was more difficult to write a novel because novels are so long and detailed. I think I have such a taste for O. Henry because he opened my eyes to the truth about short stories. From the very moment I finished "The Gift of the Magi" years ago, I realized how difficult it is to say something so poignant in such few words comparatively. I think most scholars would agree that a well-written short story is basically poetry written in prose. It's said that when Virgil was writing the Aeneid, he'd spend half the day writing an entire page, and the other half whittling it down to a single line or two. That is the essence of poetry. A page's worth of meaning expressed in a single phrase.

Something that I appreciate about "Girl" is that he saves the surprise for as long as he possibly can. Up until the last few lines of the story you still believe that an unfortunate occurrence is pending. It is only at the last moment that you realize what has happened.

I would also like to point out the following passage as absolutely incredible description. It's truly an example of "painting with words."

Vivienne was about twenty-one. She was of the purest Saxon type. Her hair was a ruddy golden, each filament of the neatly gathered mass shining with its own lustre and delicate graduation of colour. In perfect harmony were her ivory-clear complexion and deep sea-blue eyes that looked upon the world with the ingenuous calmness of a mermaid or the pixie of an undiscovered mountain stream. Her frame was strong and yet possessed the grace of absolute naturalness. And yet with all her North- ern clearness and frankness of line and colouring, there seemed to be something of the tropics in her -- something of languor in the droop of her pose, of love of ease in her ingenious complacency of satisfaction and comfort in the mere act of breathing -- something that seemed to claim for her a right as a perfect work of nature to exist and be admired equally with a rare flower or some beauti- ful, milk-white dove among its sober-hued companions.

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In conclusion, I'd like to interrupt the short story reading, seeing as it's Christmas, to begin a reading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I was watching Bill Murray's Scrooged last night and, as much as I like the movie, I remembered how wonderful the original is. Merry Christmas!

O. Henry

"O. Henry" was born William Sydney Porter, 1862, in North Carolina. While William Sydney Porter lived a troubled life full of alcoholism, ill health, failed marriages, and was imprisoned for embezzlement, "O. Henry" produced some of the greatest short stories in American fiction, each in turn filled with a quaint, colloquial humor, the triumph of true love and a firm belief in the better part of humanity. In 1910, at age 47, Porter died virtually penniless after publishing 300 stories and having been held as America's most beloved short story writer. We can only hope that, in the end, Henry believed in Porter as much as he did in all the lonely, lovable old sinners he scribbled into existence.