Overton's Overture

It makes some sense that Bret Harte’s “The Luck of the Roaring Camp” is the sixth story in this collection. Published in 1868 this is the oldest story included so far, though Harte’s tale of “the West” takes the ideals embedded in stories like “The Two-Gun Man” and cuts through them with more than a bit of irony. “Luck” is perhaps the most passionate but least sentimental story so far. Couple quick contextualizing remarks: The story was first published in Overland , a journal co-founded by Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard and Ina Coolbrith. Based in California, Overland had the gracious support of that American bard on the east coast, Mark Twain. The journal was a labor of love for Harte. The publication of Harte’s story in an early issue of Overland , brought with it by controversy due to subject matter and its rather bleak vision of the gold rush. In his book The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature Ben Tarnoff suggests ...

Five stories in I’m still unsure what the distinguishing characteristics of “adventure” are. It may be some time until we can understand what differentiates the first five tales from those in other categories such as “courage” or “men.” After all, these stories have been about men and courage, whether in war or in scenes of suspense. That said, the sixth story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” fits into what my conception of “adventure” might be. I imagine it was exciting for Overton to anthologize this story as "The Most Dangerous Game" was published in  Collier’s in 1924—the first year Overton was the journal’s fiction editor. There is an essay to be written about the way certain editors ushered short stories into journals and then solidified their status through anthologization.  This looks something like my high school textbook, where I first read this story Richard Connell’s tale of a wealthy Russian who hunts humans out of sheer boredom is both an indictme...

The short stories described so far have all pivoted on a rupturing of expectations. From the plot twists that define O. Henry’s “Friends in San Rosario” and White’s “The Two-Gun Man” to the changing roles inhabited by Albert Gordon in Richard Harding Davis’ “The Reporter Who Made Himself King,” these tales have always taken a turn. John Russell’s “The Fourth Man” follows this trend, twisting faux-scientific expectations that have been predicated on political-social systems in the service of an anti-racist story. The question of honor among thieves also undergirds Russell’s narrative. Eventually adapted into a popular radio drama for CBS, “The Fourth Man” tracks the attempted escape of three white convicts from a prison in the Pacific island of New Caledonia. The award-winning Dr. Dubosc, the roguish Fenayrou and the many sobriquet’d killer “The Parrot” have broken out of the prison. The three men have taken a nameless black native of New...

There is a moment in the penultimate episode of the 2016 mini-series  The People v OJ Simpson  that re-framed how I understand narratives. While the whole show is about the importance of persuasive stories this episode examines what it means for a script to escape the control of the author. In “Manna from Heaven” Marcia Clark and Chris Darden discover something new in the audio tapes which feature officer Mark Fuhrman detailing, with pride, his racist practices in the LAPD.  While Fuhrman’s vicious quotidian account has already made the tapes controversial, Clark and Darden listen and hear the officer misogynistically insulting Margaret York, one of the highest ranking women in the LAPD. York is also Judge Lance Ito’s wife. This bit of information, combined with a form signed by York that acknowledges that she had no prior relation to Fuhrman, threatens to ruin the case and cause a mistrial. O. ...

To put it mildly, my knowledge of turn of the twentieth century literature is limited. When I came across “A Lodging For the Night” it was the first time reading this collection I recognized the author’s name. Robert Louis Stevenson, best known for  Treasure Island  and  The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , is the first non-American author and his story is the least interested in the codependent logics of colonialism and “the frontier.” Cover page for a very limited run in 1900 Where Davis plotted an anti colonial tale about communication as a form of imperialism, and where White focused on the limits and spaces beyond “the frontier,” Stevenson’s “A Lodging for the Night” hones in on time and place. We begin at the beginning: “It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous, relentless persistency…” What follows is a speculative account of what happened to the modern French poet François Villon, who disappeared sometime in 1463. ...

If “The Two-Gun Man” relied on simple interactions, some definition of dignity relayed through a quiet dedication to duty, and agreements made through hard-won handshakes, this story instead focuses on the complicated ways that capitalism and technology breed a desire for success. Forget countless hours of toiling away: this is about how you get over on someone. Critical to such an endeavor is an understanding of news media and technological medium.  Richard Harding Davis’ “The Report Who made Himself King” opens with a comment that stands as the stories central conceit: “The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter is the one who works his way up.”  Working your way higher is first and foremost about beguilement and legerdemain.  That process of punching up becomes the operating principle as Davis details the various transformations of Yale-educated Albert Gordon, from New York journalist to Opekian King to man-on-the-run. When we begin Gordon...

Part of what comes with the subtitle “Adventure” is the promise of action. I expected that the prose of this first section would try  to be exciting. Each of the ten tales would be like some kind of fast-paced Saturday morning cartoon. Most likely there wouldn’t be any fine Italian cuisine as in Samurai Pizza Cats or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but the first story might have some danger to dish. I thought things would move quickly, and characters would persistently be on the verge of death. I imagined that life would ornately pop and the alleged barren ruggedness of Marlboro men in the desert plains would reveal some elaborate interiority. Even as I held these predictions, I knew they were silly. That was clear reading this opening entry by the spiritualist writer Stewart Edward White. Here is a slow four chapter participant in the myth-building of the the American West.  “The Two-Gun Man” begins with a characterization of, Buck Johnson, the protagonist...