"Nowhere is there anything just like them. In his best work--and his
tales of the great metropolis are his best--he is unique. The soul of
his art is unexpectedness. Humor at every turn there is, and sentiment
and philosophy and surprise. One never may be sure of himself. The end
is always a sensation. No foresight may predict it, and the sensation
always is genuine. Whatever else O. Henry was, he was an artist, a
master of plot and diction, a genuine humorist, and a philosopher. His
weakness lay in the very nature of his art. He was an entertainer bent
only on amusing and surprising his reader. Everywhere brilliancy, but
too often it is joined to cheapness; art, yet art merging swiftly into
caricature. Like Harte, he cannot be trusted. Both writers on the
whole may be said to have lowered the standards of American
literature, since both worked in the surface of life with theatric
intent and always without moral background, O. Henry moves, but he
never lifts. All is fortissimo; he slaps the reader on the back and
laughs loudly as if he were in a bar-room. His characters, with few
exceptions, are extremes, caricatures.
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