美国-作家-O Henry
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O Henry
欧 享利

O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter in Greenboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his parental grandmother and paternal aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He continued to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving in 1882 to Texas, he worked on a ranch in LaSalle County for two years. In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach; they had one daughter and one son.

"It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are." (from The Octopus Marooned‘)
In 1894 Porter started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. It was at this time that he began heavy drinking. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1894 cash was found to have gone missing from the First National Bank in Austin, where Porter had worked as a bank teller. When he was called back to Austin to stand trial, Porter fled to Honduras to avoid trial. Little is known about Porter‘s stay in Central America. It is said, that he met one Al Jennings, and rambled in South America and Mexico on the proceeds of Jenning‘s robbery. After hearing news that his wife was dying, he returned in 1897 to Austin. In 1897 he was convicted of embezzling money, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. Porter entered in 1898 a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

While in prison, Porter started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. His first work, ‘Whistling Dick‘s Christmas Stocking‘ (1899), appeared in McClure‘s Magazine. The stories of adventure in the U.S. Southwest and in Central America gained an immediately success among readers. After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry. According to some sources, he acquired the pseudonym from a warder called Orrin Henry. It also could be an abbreviation of the name of a French pharmacist, Eteinne-Ossian Henry, found in the U.S. Dispensatory, a reference work Porter used when he was in the prison pharmacy.

O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and from December 1903 to January 1906 he wrote a story a week for the New York World, also publishing in other magazines. Henry‘s first collection, CABBAGES AND KINGS, appeared in 1904. The second, THE FOUR MILLION, was published two years later and included his well-known stories ‘The Gift of the Magi‘, about a poor couple and their Christmas gifts, and ‘The Furnished Room‘. THE TRIMMED LAMP (1907) explored the lives of New Yorkers and included ‘The Last Leaf‘ - the city itself Henry liked to call ‘Bagdad-on the-Subway.‘ In this sentimental piece, about two women artists and their failed artist friend, the theme is selfishness, as in ‘The Gift of the Magi‘, but there is also a lesbian undercurrent, which separates it from O. Henry‘s run-of-the-mill works. In ‘One Dollar‘s Worth‘ O. Henry criticized the merciless judicial system. Judge Derwent receives a letter from an ex-convict, in which the writer, ‘Rattlesnake‘ threatens his daughter and the district attorney, Littlefield. A young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, is accused of passing a counterfeit silver dollar, made principally of lead. Rafael‘s girl, Joya Trevi?as, tells Littlefield that he is innocent - she was sick, and needed medicine, and that was the reason why Rafael used the dollar. Littlefield refuses to help, and Joya says that "it the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz." When he drives out of the town with Nancy Derwent, they meet Mexico Sam, the writer of the letter. He starts to shoot them from distance with his rifle. Littlefield can‘t hurt him with his own gun which has only tiny pellets. Then he remembers Joya‘s words, and manages hit Mexico Sam, who falls from his horse dead as a rattlesnake. Next morning in the court he tells: "‘I shot him,‘ said the district attorney, ‘with Exhibit A of your counterfeiting case. Lucky thing for me - and somebody else - that it was as bad money as it was! It sliced up into slugs very nicely. Say, Kil, can‘t you go down to the jacals and find where that Mexican girl lives? Miss Derwent wants to know.‘"

Henry‘s best known work is perhaps the much anthologized ‘The Ransom of Red Chief‘ (see Howard Hawks and Nunnally Johnson), published in the collection Whirligigs in 1910. O. Henry‘s humorous, energetic style shows the influence of Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce. The story tells about two kidnappers, who make off with the young son of a prominent man. They find out that the child is a real nuisance. In the end they agree to pay the boy‘s father to take him back. - "Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you‘ll think I‘m a renegade. but I couldn‘t help it. I‘m a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of ‘em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit."

HEART OF THE WEST (1907) presented western stories, of which ‘The Last of the Troubadours‘ J. Frank Dobie named "the best range story in American fiction." ‘The Caballero‘s Way‘ featured as a character the Cisco Kid. During his life time, O. Henry published 10 collections and over 600 short stories. His last years were shadowed by alcoholism, ill health, and financial problems. He was a fast writer, like the Russian Anton Checkhov (1860-1904), but drinking on average two quarts of whiskey daily, did not improve the quality of his work. In 1907 O. Henry married Sara Lindsay Coleman, also born in Greensboro. The marriage was not happy, and they separated a year later. O. Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver on June 5, 1910, in New York. Three more collections, SIXES AND SEVENS (1911), ROLLING STONES (1912) and WAIFS AND STRAYS (1917), appeared posthumously. In 1918 the O. Henry Memorial Awards were established to be given annually to the best magazine stories, the winners and leading contenders to be published in an annual volume.

For further reading: O. Henry Biography by Alphonse Smith (1916); O. Henry: The Man and His Work by Eugene Hudson (1949); The Heart of O. Henry by Dale Kramer (1954); Alias O.Henry: A Biography of William S. Porter by Gerald Langford (1957); O. Henry, ed. by Eugene Current-Garcia (1965); O. Henry, Short Story Writer by Lucas Longo (1982); O. Henry: A Biography of William Sydney Porter by David Stuart (1987); O. Henry Biography by Charles A. Smith (1992); O. Henry; A Study of the Short Fiction by Eugene Current-Garcia (1993); O. Henry, ed. by Harold Bloom (1999); The Amazing Genius of O. Henry by Nicholas V. Lindsay and Arthur W. Page (2001) - See also: Raymond Carver, Truman Capote - Suom: Suomeksi O. Henrylt? on julkaistu valikoima Tiet?jien lahja (1979).
Selected works:

CABBAGES AND KINGS, 1904
THE FOUR MILLION, 1906
THE TRIMMED LAMP, 1907
HEART OF THE WEST, 1907
THE VOICE OF THE CITY, 1908
THE GENTLE GRAFTER, 1908
ROADS OF DESTINY, 1909
LO, 1909 (play, with Franklin P. Adams, music by A. Baldwin Sloane)
OPTIONS, 1909
STRICTLY BUSINESS, 1910
WHIRLIGIGS, 1910
LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE, 1910
THE TWO WOMEN, 1910
SIXES AND SEVENS, 1911
ROLLING STONES, 1912
WAIFS AND STRAYS, 1917
THE COMPLETE WRITING OF O. HENRY, 1918 (14 vols.)
O. HENRYANA, 1920
SELECTED STORIES, 1922 (ed. by Alphonse Smith)
LETTERS TO LITHOPOLIS, FROM O.HENRY TO MABEL WAGNALLS, 1922
POSTSCRIPTS, 1923
THE BEST OF O. HENRY, 1929
MORE OF O. HENRY, 1933
O. HENRY ENCORE, 1936
O. HENRY‘S NEW YORK, 1940
THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF O. HENRY, 1945 (ed. by Bennett Cerf and Van H. Cartmell)
THE POCKET BOOK OF O. HENRY, 1948 (ed. by Harry Hansen)
COPS AND ROBBERS, 1948 (ed. by Ellery Queen)
COMPLETE WORKS OF O HENRY, 1953 (2 vols.)
O. HENRY WESTERNS, 1961 (ed. by Patrick Thornhill)
THE STORIES OF O. HENRY, 1965 (ed.by Harry Hansen)
FOUR MILLION & OTHER STORIES, 1976
COLLECTED STORIES OF O. HENRY, 1986
THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF O. HENRY, 1994

the last leaf读后感
Last leaf, last love
Yesterday I heard a heart-stirring story written by O Henry. It said in an autumn, a sad girl lied on the bed. She has a bad serious illness. And she would die soon. She looked attentively at a leaf outside the window, and told to an old painter who cared for her that she would die when the last leaf fell. The old painter didn’t want the young girl to die; he wanted to give her a wish to live. He knew that there would be a rainstorm soon; the leaf will be blown off. For continuing the girl’s life, the old painter drew a green leaf on the wall when it rained heavily. The following day, the girl woke up, and she was surprised to see that the green leaf did not be blown off. Her wish came true, and her mood became better and better. In the end, the girl is recovered to health. When she walked out of the hospital, she found that the leaf was painted on the wall!
The old painter died, but the wish that a leaf never grew old came true in the girl’s heart. In fact, continuing the girl’s life is also the painter’s wish. If only the life never grow old, the wish will be young forever.
The picture is a good present, it encourage the girl to face everyday. Maybe sometimes, we don’t need to give somebody presents, flowers; I think they just need a wish, a wish to continue their life. Like the green leaf in the article, it will be the best medicine to a patient. The last leaf which the painter painted is full of love and wish; I think the painter wanted the girl to face sunshine happily. That’s enough.