Reviews for Whirligigs

The average rating for Whirligigs based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-09-01 00:00:00 Kathleen Simmons This is one of the best volumes of O. Henry's. Like all of his books, some stories are better than others. But none are complete duds and some are real gems. My favorites in this book are "Calloway's Code", "Tommy's Burglar" and "A little Local Colour". In "Calloway's Code", a reporter covering the Russo-Japanese War wants to get a story by the Japanese censors. He comes up with an ingenious code, but back in New York, his editor can't make sense of it. He consults all sorts of newspapermen, but no one can crack it. Then an unassuming reporter looks at it and realizes Calloway's made use of all the newspaper cliches. "Hotly" stands for "contested", "brute" for "force", "beggars" for "description", and so on. "Tommy's Burglar" is also about cliches, this one the sentimental story of how a burglar is confronted by a small boy as he steals the few valuables of a family of modest means. The boy offers him a meal and then feeling guilty and ashamed, he becomes a new man. But in this version, the characters know they are in the story and any sentimentality is dispatched with haste. This is true meta-fiction at its best. I wish all the anthologies containing "Gift of the Magi" would be forced to replace it with this tale. "A little Local Colour" a fellow tells his friend he wants to experience the local color of the Bowery. When they come upon a man spewing all the slang he'd come to expect from reading about it, he learns the man is actually a college professor given to affectation. When they meet a real man of the Bowery, he uses impeccable English and is annoyed at the insinuation he'd do anything else. Here O. Henry is making fun of the way writers', newspapers, magazines, etc, had made dialect into a fetish. What might have been refreshing with the advent Tom Swayer had become both tired and preposterous.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-03-28 00:00:00 Mike Kondi Great title! ["Whirligigs" is O. Henry's 10th book, released in 1910 - the year he died.] Apparently O. Henry never wrote a novel! (Though de Maupassant did.) He has a magnificent, erratic style I am tempted to call "operatic pulp": "Hartley pressed the 'McComus' button. The door latch clicked spasmodically - now hospitably, now doubtfully, as though in anxiety whether it might be admitting friends or duns. Hartley entered and began to climb the stairs after the manner of those who seek their friends in city flat-houses - which is the manner of a boy who climbs an apple-tree, stopping when he comes upon what he wants." That's from "'Girl.'" I read this book slowly, at my dad's house, and have forgotten this story, which is the sixth in the collection.… Part Two Now I remember! "'Girl'" is a sexual joke. Hartley, a 29 year old broker, appears to be having an affair with a radiant young woman named Vivienne. He hires a detective to track her down, visits her in her apartment, says things like: "My dear girl, have I not told you that you shall have everything that your heart can desire that is in my power to give you?" It turns out he's hiring Vivienne as a cook!