The Lost Art of Story Telling - A tribute to O henry

The lost art of story telling: a tribute to O Henry

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In the beginning there was nothing but stories, stories handed down from generation to generation, of valorous heroes and charming damsels. Of travellers lost at the sea and singing mermaids, each story that pulled at the strings of our hearts and immortalized itself within the fabric of our beings. We grew up to stories, learning from their infinite wisdom and taking imperceptible lessons from those English textbooks as we moved from boyhood to adolescence and stepped gingerly into adulthood. The stories never abandon us, they watch over us, compelling us to remember them when a parallel life event makes us go…wasn’t there once a story like that!

Inseparable is, therefore O. Henry, the master storyteller’s contribution to our world of stories. William Sydney Porter, who went by the pen name O. henry, has delighted readers with over 380 short stories, which were published by the New York Times, a story a week for over a year since 1902.

In recent memory, O. Henry made a reappearance in bollywood screenplay, with Lootera , director Vikramaditya Motwane’s period romantic drama film, which won critical acclaim and rave reviews. Though the film is not entirely based on the legendary story, it borrows an important part of the script from the story. Rituparno Ghosh’s Raincoat deserves a special mention not only for its subtleties and alternate realism but also for being based on another O. Henry classic, the Gift of Magi.

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O. Henry’s short stories are an amalgamation of more such jewels, all fine specimen of the art of poignant storytelling that compete with none other but themselves in their sheer brilliance of portrayal of human emotions and the twisted curve of fate and life. His stories are marked with his signature surprise endings, which won him the acclaim of ‘American answer to Guy de Maupassant’. Both authors wrote plots with twisted endings, but O. Henry stories were much more colourful and spiced with witty narration. It shall be enough to state in praise of this extra ordinary writer that an annual award is named after him to celebrate short stories of exceptional merit since 1919, called of course, the O. Henry award.

O. Henry’s stories are set in his own time, and bring to life the sights and smells of the New York City as well as the cattle lands of Texas and the highlands of Arkansans. His characters are extremely believable, given to human failings, and at times some con tricks too. 

The character development in the short span of the story speaks of exemplary skill in delivering life to pen character in prose, in brevity. O. Henry can move you to tears as well as to laughter. The humorist in him tickles you one moment and makes you raise your brows in amazement when you didn’t see the end coming.

Best put in words of critic, A. St. John Adcock, for Waifs and Strays: Twelve Stories, by O. Henry, “He has all the gifts of the supreme teller of tales, is master of tragedy as well as of burlesque, of comedy and of romance, of the domestic and the mystery-tale of common life, and has a delicate skill in stories of the supernatural…"

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Notable among the many, is my personal favourite, ‘The Trimmed Lamp’. This masterpiece narrates the fate of two country girls trying to make a living in the big city, given to ambition and determination of making the cut to the upper class. While Nancy aspires to marry any rich millionaire who she hopes to catch at her departmental store someday, Lou seems satisfied in her ironing job and steady boyfriend, Dan. But when fate decides to have the last laugh, it swaps the destinies of the two bosom friends. O Henry had the deftness of master craftsman when it came to sparkling commonplace lives with unusual situations.  

Another, lesser known , but a beautiful pearl in the string is ‘Springtime Ala-Carte’a hopelessly romantic story, narrating the miseries of frugal living of typist Sarah in the city and her springtime longing for her lover Walter, who re-discovers her through half-comic and half-heart warming series of events. ‘Cop and the Anthem’ is a hilarious account of small-time scoundrel Soapy who tries every trick in the book to get arrested, in order to avoid spending harsh winters outside the prison.

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More famous ones, like the ‘Furnished room’ where a young man searches for his lost love around the filthy bedsides of New York, has an eerie feeling to it which you cannot shake off long after you have read the story.

The remembrances however are incomplete without the mention of his stories based in the southern states, about Con artists, Red Indians, Cowboys and of course ‘The Ransom of the Red Chief’ where two kidnappers fail to heed the old adage - never work with children.

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Such is the illustrious brilliance and diversity of O Henry’s story telling. Storytelling, the simple truth and honesty behind the art, is a treasure; we hang on, we have hope and we want to believe. Whenever a story is told with compelling resonance, people read, listen, take in what they can, dispense what they can pass on, and so the story goes on…….