C. Alphonso SmithCritiques
Auteur de Short Stories Old and New
Critiques
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In his introduction, Smith states that "Every short story has three parts, which may be called Setting or Background, Plot or Plan, and Characters or Characters". He then defines each part -- and, then, before each short story is introduced, he describes what these three parts are (which occasionally causes spoilers). This feature sets this short story collection a bit apart from most others.
Some stories were re-reads for me (i.e. The Gift of the Magi); some were ones in which the basic plot I was familiar with (i.e. Rip Van Winkle), and some were completely new to me (The Necklace, though I had heard of the author before). Most would probably not be new to someone highly educated in literature, and such a person might not need Smith's discussion before each story, but I enjoyed this over all. I admit though, that I skimmed over Kipling and didn't really read it at all. My favorites were O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" and de Maupassant's "The Necklace" -- I like the surprising twist endings that those provided.
The short stories in this volume are as follows:
"Esther" -- Old Testament
"Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers" -- The Arabian Nights
"Rip Van Winkle" -- Washington Irving
"The Gold Bug" -- Edgar Allan Poe
"A Christmas Carol" -- Charles Dickens
"The Great Stone Face" -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Rab and His Friends" -- Dr. John Brown
"The Outcast of Poker Flats" -- Bret Harte
"Markheim" -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"The Necklace" -- Guy de Maupassant
"The Man Who Would be King" -- Rudyard Kipling
"The Gift of the Magi" -- O. Henry