One-minute review: Because she has nothing to eat and is constantly complaining of it, Jim shoots his daughter (for mercy’s sake, I guess). Seems the owner of his land, Colonel Maxwell, has taken all of Jim’s share of the profits for the death of a mule Jim had nothing to do with. Jim, of course is thrown into jail. The people release Jim fromjail as the sheriff conveniently disappears.
Comment: Another case of “justice” being unjust. “Pry that jail door open and let Jim out,” somebody said. “It ain’t right for him to be in there.”
75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World’s Literature. Ed. Roger B. Goodman. New York: Bantam Books. 1961.
One-minute review: a beautiful dancer makes herself available to the theater audience of lustful men through a lottery. The winner of the lottery for that night goes off with her to do what? Well, the winner of this night’s lottery is a black man who stands up and, in full view of the audience of lustful white men, tears his winning lottery ticket into tatters. It’s a matter of black pride to show disdain for a beautiful white female dancer. The whole audience jumps on him and pummels him into the hospital. Since there are no more lotteries for this particular dancer, the author won’t tell us the name of the theater.
75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World’s Literature. Ed. Roger B. Goodman. New York: Bantam Books. 1961.
One-minute review: This is no sci-fi story by Bradbury, the sci-fi master story teller. It’s a heart warming separation as Mr. Ramirez who did not have a legal visa in the U.S. must be transported back to Mexico from which he had come. He had had a good life in the U.S., boarding with Mrs. O’Brien. He liked her. To her, he was a good tenant. And now he must leave.
Comment: You get used to somebody; then, for no apparent good reason, he needs to go. Portrait of a relationship. The story of a good-bye. RayS.
75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World’s Literature. Ed. Roger B. Goodman. New York: Bantam Books. 1961.
One-minute review: Rich man’s cook roasts a crane for dinner. A female friend demands one of the roasted legs. Therefore, when the crane is served, it is brought to the attention of the rich man that the crane has only one leg.
The cook says cranes only have one leg. The rich man is furious. He asserts that cranes stand on one leg when they are sleeping, but they have two legs. He demands that his cook show him one-legged cranes.
The cook finds a flock that is sleeping and standing on one leg. The rich man yells at the cranes and they wake up, stand on two legs and take flight.
The rich man is about to thrash the cook, who says, “Well if you had yelled at the crane on the table as you yelled at the sleeping cranes, it would have put down the other leg.” The rich man laughed at the clever response and the cook is saved from a drubbing.
75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World’s Literature. Ed. Roger B. Goodman. New York: Bantam Books. 1961.
One-minute review: Five visits to the priest on behalf of his son—on his birth, his christening, his betrothal, his death by drowning and his donating money on behalf of his son for the poor. With the death of his son, Thord grows old.
Comment; The simple story of a father and his pride in his son. RayS.
75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World’s Literature. Ed. Roger B. Goodman. New York: Bantam Books. 1961.
One-minute review: On a ship, the Morrow, the narrator meets a beautiful woman sailing from England to America. In a violent storm, she is lost at sea and so is the Morrow, but, knocked unconscious, he wakes upon another ship with a roommate, someone he knows named Doyle. Somehow he has been transported to the ship City of Prague, also, like the Morrow bound for New York.
Seems Doyle and the beautiful woman lost with the Morrow were going to New York on separate ships because they are eloping against her parents’ wishes. When the narrator says her name, Doyle is in shock and worries that she will arrive in New York before him and will not know what to door where to go.
The City of Prague is incapacitated and has to be towed to New York, but the Morrow is never heard from again.
The narrator notices that both the beautiful woman on the Morrow and Doyle, on the City of Prague, are reading the same book and have underlined the same passage: “To sundry it is given to be drawn away, and to be apart from the body for a season….”
Comment: Like O. Henry, Ambrose Bierce, known as “Bitter Bierce,” is a master of the surprise ending. He likes to tell ghost stories and stories of the Civil War. He composed a dictionary of ironic, pithy definitions that are very well worth reading. RayS.
75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World’s Literature. Ed. Roger B. Goodman. New York: Bantam Books. 1961.
10-second review: Knight, sleeping in his bed with his wife, hears thieves invading his house. While the thieves listen outside his door, the knight tells his wife that everything he had accumulated he had stolen by means of a magic conjuration that enabled him to fly with the moonbeams and steal. The listening thief, attempts to follow the magic formula and fly with the moonbeams and crashes down out of the house to the ground where, with a broken leg, he is beaten severely by the knight and laments that he had been such a fool as to listen to the knight’s story about flying with moonbeams.
75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World’s Literature. Ed. Roger B. Goodman. New York: Bantam Books. 1961.
