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2.7 It Might All Be Redrawn: To Love and To Honor by Octavus Roy Cohen (1925)

Things were always going to be different when they looked back. It was not always clear how but in the midst of twenty-five years, life had changed and the friendship built between George Potter but his attorney continued to grow. Though the attorney worried about George’s social life, he was excited to participate in the 25 th anniversary celebration of Mr. and Mrs. Potter. He’d been there for their wedding and he would be there for this fete. George had set everything up—the event would look exactly as the wedding had a quarter of a century ago. George was still a bit romantic and his longing for the past coincided with his eagerness for the future. That wedding is the central conceit of Octavus Roy Cohen’s 3 page story "To Love and to Honor." A clinic in the economy of storytelling, the romantic engagements of George Potter are relayed through his friend and attorney who fills in all the details we need to know, and some that we don’t (George had a "very excelle...
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2.8 Could It All Be So Simple?: The Mummy's Foot by Theophile Gautier (1840/1890) trans. Lafcadio Hearn

It was all a dream. Whether those words make you think of the wisdom of Biggie or the famous ending to that towering work of German Expressionism, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920), I've always been fond of the multiple possibilities encased the phrase. For most of my teenage years those words were my obnoxious response to friends who feared that I might spoil a movie or television show they hadn't seen:  "See so then Tony Soprano walks out of the room and…" "Don't say anything I've got the episode taped!" "Oh, it's all a dream." Theophile Gautier (1811-1872) That the concluding twist of a story could be the revelation that it was only (or that it was all) a dream is, at this point, so rote and hackneyed my response was always met with a raised eyebrow and a guffaw (in the light way akin to "foh.") Played on to the point of absurdity, the twist can now seem somewhat surprising, as it does in ...
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1.5 The Storing of Sweet Water: The Fourth Man by John Russell (1919)

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...
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