Editorial Content for Alias O. Henry
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Reviewer (text)
When life gives you lemons, as the saying goes, make lemonade.
Ben Yagoda’s lemon was that he wanted to write a biography about O. Henry. Upon learning that a great one had been done already, his lemonade was converting his project into historical fiction.
Yagoda, who has published several books on language and journalism, does a commendable job in his first novel. The research and attention to detail as he describes New York City in the very early 1900s are top-notch. As someone who is enamored with the beauty of words, he freely uses the vernacular of the day (some of which might require the use of a dictionary).
"Yagoda...does a commendable job in his first novel. The research and attention to detail as he describes New York City in the very early 1900s are top-notch."
This is a yarn of secrets. Everyone has at least one. For journalist and short story writer William Sydney Porter --- alias O. Henry --- it’s more than one (even when it comes to telling the curious story of how he chose that pen name). ALIAS O. HENRY demands a lot from the reader, who has to keep the multiple narrative threads and fabrications straight. Among others with secrets are a potential love interest, Porter’s bosses, his enemies, and various people he enlists as his eyes and ears. Porter may have some skeletons in the closet, but at heart he is a decent man, interested in helping those less fortunate and relishing in taking down those in power.
Yagoda takes great pains to describe life in New York. It’s a mostly dark picture, with abject poverty, dirty streets and tenements, but with glimpses of entitlements for the upper class that include fine dining and entertainment. Through it all, Porter struggles to meet his writing deadlines, living hand to mouth with his earnings while still trying to help the underdog.
Yagoda, who among his many books served as editor of O. HENRY: 100 Stories, incorporates his previous works in building his wide-ranging tale. He includes bits and pieces that easily could have been inspired by WILL ROGERS: A Biography, as well as THE SOUND ON THE PAGE: Style and Voice in Writing. And why not? Just because these are works of nonfiction doesn’t mean the topics can’t be repurposed.
Teaser
O. Henry, born William Sidney Porter, arrived in New York City fresh from the Ohio Penitentiary, where he had served three-and-a-half years for embezzlement. The American magazine had just reached its pinnacle as an enterprise, and the short story was the most popular medium in entertainment. Porter was in the city to write. From his cell, he already had sold a number of stories to big magazines, and within five years of arriving in Manhattan, he would become the most successful fiction writer in the country. But he never --- never --- said anything about his prison experience, or, indeed, anything about his past life. Anything true, that is. In life as well as on the page, Porter was a yarn-spinner of the highest order. In this twisting tale, Ben Yagoda uses the novelist’s art to get at the truth that lay behind Porter’s reticence, and in doing so, he presents an iridescent portrait of New York at the time.
Promo
O. Henry, born William Sidney Porter, arrived in New York City fresh from the Ohio Penitentiary, where he had served three-and-a-half years for embezzlement. The American magazine had just reached its pinnacle as an enterprise, and the short story was the most popular medium in entertainment. Porter was in the city to write. From his cell, he already had sold a number of stories to big magazines, and within five years of arriving in Manhattan, he would become the most successful fiction writer in the country. But he never --- never --- said anything about his prison experience, or, indeed, anything about his past life. Anything true, that is. In life as well as on the page, Porter was a yarn-spinner of the highest order. In this twisting tale, Ben Yagoda uses the novelist’s art to get at the truth that lay behind Porter’s reticence, and in doing so, he presents an iridescent portrait of New York at the time.
About the Book
O. Henry, born William Sidney Porter, arrived in New York City fresh from the Ohio Penitentiary, where he had served three-and-a-half years for embezzlement. It was the dawn of the 20th century, a time of remarkable change when the city’s physical presence was being altered by new skyscrapers and subways, and its character by waves of immigrants. The American magazine had just reached its pinnacle as an enterprise, and the short story was the most popular medium in entertainment.
Porter was in the city to write. From his cell, he had already sold a number of stories to big magazines, and within five years of arriving in Manhattan, he would become the most successful fiction writer in the country. But he never --- never --- said anything about his prison experience, or, indeed, anything about his past life. Anything true, that is. In life as well as on the page, Porter was a yarn-spinner of the highest order.
In this twisting tale, Ben Yagoda uses the novelist’s art to get at the truth that lay behind Porter’s reticence, and in doing so, he presents an iridescent portrait of New York at the time. As Porter makes the city his home, he becomes embroiled in a blackmail scheme, and as he attempts to extricate himself, we meet newspapermen and grifters, street urchins, train robbers, detectives, shopgirls and prostitutes. Yagoda cleverly hints at the origins of some of Porter’s best-known stories and allows other legends of the time, such as law man Bat Masterson, Mark Twain, Irving Berlin, George Bellows and Thomas Edison, to flit, often unremarked, across the pages of this deeply researched work of historical fiction.
