The Fool-Killer, by O. Henry

 Audiobook

SUMMARY

Rudolph Kerner was the son of a very rich man. He wanted to be an artist, and he was in love with a beautiful working girl, so a poor girl. His father didn’t like his son’s ideas about vocation and marriage, but Kerner was stubborn as artists and lovers have to be.

However, the story begins by telling us about a bogeyman, a spirit or a ghost that people allude in order to frighten or threaten children; or parents make use of his name to make their children obey. Our bogeyman is Jesse Holmes, otherwise called the Fool-Killer, because his aim are fools; it is a terrific and bloody character.

But the core of our story is a dinner at Farroni’s. Kerner and the narrator had dinner there, and after dinner, they drank an absinthe drip. This is a kind of cocktail, and absinthe is a strong liquor: it has 65% of alcohol. The narrator got drunk and started to see strange things. He saw Jesse Holmes coming to their table and sitting with them, although he wasn’t sure if the character was real or only a product of his intoxicated imagination.

There, the Fool-Killer threatened to kill Kerner for being a fool, that is, for disdaining his father’s fortune by wanting to live the poor life of an artist and by marrying a poor girl. But Kerner doesn’t seem to see or to hear the Fool-Killer. Once this bogeyman had said his ultimatum, he went out of the restaurant. Our narrator, understanding the danger his friend was in, ran after Jesse Holmes and tried to persuade him to forgive or forget Kerner. The bogeyman yielded at last and asked him to fetch Kerner on the street. He was afraid for his friend, but Kerner thought he was only drunk; he was to take him home, when, on the street, the Fool-Killer stopped them and addressed Kerner.

What did he tell him? Did he kill him?

 

QUESTIONS

-Do you think it is necessary (or useful) to have a bogeyman to make children obey?

-In every culture, they have their own bogeyman. What can be the reason for this creation?

-According to the cliché, a real artist has to be poor. On your point of view, how true is this cliché?

 

VOCABULARY

Southrons, parlor rifle, slosh, crinkly, dipper, limned, kalsomining, street-sprinkler, jag, clay-eaters, give in

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson, by O. Henry

 

Audiobook

SUMMARY

Dry Valley Johnson was a shepherd and had lived in the country all his life. Then, when he was 35 (or 38), he decided he wanted to change his life and live gently as a villager, so he moved to Santa Clara, a small town, and bought a house there.

Dry Valley, although he wasn’t old, was regarded as an old bachelor who had no interest in women; he even avoided their presence. However, according to the school mistress, he was handsome enough.

Short after settling in his new abode, someone gave a strawberry to taste, and, as he found the fruit astonishing, he decided to dedicate all his time and his energy to grow this plant in his garden. He prepared the ground and bought a lot of books about strawberry farming.

His garden had a picked fence around, but his neighbours were a family with a lot of children, and so possible poachers. In order to protect better his crops, he brought a long, strong whip to drive away any predator. He exercised with the weapon until he got a fine aim.

One day, when he was away from home, the children raided his garden and ate as many strawberries as they could. When he was back and saw the attack, he took his powerful whip and chased the invaders away. All of them but Panchita flew away; she was a beautiful girl of nineteen with brilliant thick black hair. Instead of running away, she kept her post and looked defiantly with a strawberry between her white teeth at Dry Valley and scorned to move, even knowing he had hit the mark with her brothers.

Dry Valley got paralysed with love. He didn’t know the feeling and was stupefied.

That vision made him change his lifestyle; now he bought the most fashionable clothes in town and an elegant and modern carriage. Afterwards, he went to his neighbours to ask a date with Panchita. Panchita said yes, and the large family were delighted with the prospect of marrying one of their children. And in order to make himself agreeable to the girl, Dry Valley tried to behave as a younger man.

But one day, after sprucing himself up, when he was at the door of Panchita’s to pick her up, he saw her disguised as himself making fun of him for her brothers, who were having a great time with the mockery. Suddenly, Dry Valley saw he had made a fool of himself pretending to be young and fashionable. He went back home, changed to his old country clothes, gave his new clothes to his cook and tried to forget all about Panchita.

The girl, seeing that her suitor didn’t come for her, went to see if something had happened to him, because all the time he had been punctual. But when Dry Valley saw Panchita, threw her out of his house, saying he regretted being caught by his infatuation and telling her keeping off him.

However, that evening, someone got through his fence and trespassed on his garden. The man was on the watch and took his sharp cracking whip…

 

QUESTIONS

-Do you know any very curious recipe (or remedy) taken from a magazine or told you by some old people?

-Why do you think that a “bachelor with a hobby” could be an encumbering (or “earthcumbering”) thing?

-“Someone gave him his first strawberry to eat, and he was done for.” This sentence carries a biblical sense. Have you experienced something that has changed your life forever?

-What do you know about the song “Strawberry Fields Forever”, by John Lennon?

-Have you ever “seen yourself in a mirror”, in the sense of our story?

-Would you give, as Faust, your soul (or something less valuable) to recover your youth? What would you give?

 

VOCABULARY

nux vomica, bay rum, range, cot, cross strains, morning glory, gourd vines, drove, fleet, mesquite thicket, weathered, hectic, jay-bird, desecrated, iver (=quiver), macaw, charter, trotter, damper, revelry, lawn, locoed, motley

The Count and the Wedding Guest, by O. Henry

Audiobook

A summary

Another summary

Power point

SUMMARY
Andy Donovan, a young man who lived in a boarding house, met a new boarder called Miss Conway and almost immediately felt in love with her. Miss Conway was a very discreet woman, but one day she appeared gorgeously dressed in mourning black. Mr Donovan got astounded seeing her so beautifully attired, but respected her grief and offered her to share her feelings and to listen to her sad story.
She told him she was on the point of marrying an Italian Count, Fernando Mazzini, but unfortunately, he had an accident and he died. The girl was unconsolably sorry, and Donovan felt pity for her. In telling her story, the girl even showed a picture of her late fiancé.

So, Donovan, even as he knew it would be a difficult enterprise for him to try to replace the charm of her dead boyfriend, after a month he succeeded in getting her love.

Once they announced their engagement, Donovan told her he was a bit worried because he had to invite a close friend of his to their wedding and didn’t know if she would like it. The man was "Big Mike" Sullivan and, although he was a very important person in New York, he had friends in all the social classes. But there was a reason why he couldn’t invite him to the wedding, and he couldn’t discover it. He asked her if she really loved him more than he loved Count Mazzini, and at that moment she went down and started to cry. Yes, she loved Donovan, but she lied about her past. So, she asked him if she would forgive her.

Who was Big Mike? What was the lie?

 

QUESTIONS

-What can it be the difference between pity and love? Have you read the novel Beware of Pity, by Stefan Zweig? (There is also a film)

-We don’t know anything about the life of the two protagonists. Can you imagine what kind of life they lived?

-Why is Big Mike important? What, according to you, was his job?

-What do you know about Mazzini? And about Tammany? P’pkispee? The Bowery, in New York?

 

VOCABULARY

unobtrusive, blighted, hop-skip-and-a-jump, hoisted, cinch, mullygrubs, stringing, livery, trousseau, locked, to the mustard, look swell, Bully girl!

Brickdust Row, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Script for a movie (a very free adaptation)

SUMMARY

Alexander Blinker, our hero, was a very rich man. His fortune came from “lands, tenements and hereditaments”. As he was a bachelor, and the summer was about to begin, he decided to go to the woods in the North to enjoy some holiday. He wanted to go immediately, but his lawyer said he had to stay in the city two days more in order to sign a thick collection of documents. He didn’t like the idea of spending two boring days more in the city, but he acknowledged the necessity of signing these documents.

To kill time, he went to one of his clubs, but seeing it was full of boring old fogies, all of a sudden, he said he would go to Coney Island. Coney Island is actually a peninsula in the South of Brooklyn, and it has a log beach and a big Fun Fair. Its visitors were usually ordinary people, not rich people as Blinker. To go there, he had to take a boat full of people looking for fun; but also, there was a pretty young woman sitting on a stool, alone. Blinker was not far from her; a puff of wind almost carried his hat away, but he grabbed it in a moment. The girl (whose name was Florence) acknowledged his gesture with a smile, thinking he was greeting her, and Blinker went and sit next to her. They began a conversation, and they introduced each other, although Blinker didn’t say he was very rich; instead, he said he was a bricklayer. Florence said she was a working girl, a milliner. And they started to like each other. Nevertheless, Florence was a bit suspicious about his name, but at least he didn’t say his name was “Smith”. They agree to visit the fun fair together, Florence acting as a Cicerone, as Blinker had never been there.

At the beginning, Blinker was a bit uncomfortable with so many people jostling around them and so many harsh lights and noises, but at the end he felt the place and the atmosphere romantic. They ride all the devices of the amusement park.

At the end, they had to go back home.

When they went aboard the boat, Blinker started to feel he was in love with Florence, and, when a steamer run into their boat and they were about to sink, he felt sure and declared his love. But she answered coldly to his passion and told him that all the men said the same; however, he tried to persuade her that he wasn’t like the other men. In answer, she told him she knew what men were like because she usually met other men she picked up on the street (she picked them up on the street because her place had no parlour, and so it was too small for inviting people). Blinker was now a bit puzzled.

In the end they landed safely but…

Did Florence accept his love? Did he tell her he was really a rich man?

 

QUESTIONS

-Do you think swearing / cursing is rude? Or does it depend on the situation? How do you vent your wrath?

-What kind of girl is Florence? Is she a kind of escort, or only a girl who wants some amusement?

-Perhaps this story reminds you of the film Pretty Woman. Would you be able to detail all the clichés this film has?

-In your opinion, is romanticism an essential feature of a good relationship?

-Can everybody change radically their way of life? For instance, can a robber become an honest man? How can do it? Or will our past never stop going after us?

 

VOCABULARY

estate, bay rum, thumb-handed, runabout, fogies, steward, roe, tittered, pier, brazenly, incog, bantering, millinery, trumpery, spangled, incorporated, drab, slip, yawed, rent, slats, bow, stern, wall flower

The Princess and the Puma, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Analysis

Summary

SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza

This O. Henry story occurs in a region with farms, cowboys, ranchers and varied animals, including very dangerous ones.
It is strange to think about a princess in this context, but in fact there existed a complete “royal family”.

The king was an old, terrific farmer, a man who became richer and richer, and finally owned a large extension of land, the Espinosa Ranch, with uncountable cattle, and thus he, Ben O’Donnell, was called “the Cattle King”.
As for the queen, a Mexican girl became a good wife, and somehow succeeded teaching Ben how to behave better or how to manage his thunder-like voice. When the family prosperity arrived to an oppressive point, she quietly abandoned realm and life.

They had a daughter, Josefa, the Princess, who inherited some positive aspects from her parents, being a mild, beautiful, intelligent girl. Moreover, she was incredibly skilled with weapons like few men could be.

An attractive and rich heiress, Josefa was in the marriage plans of Ripley Givens, an Espinosa’s foreman.

One day, Givens arrived to a place called White Crossing; he was tired and far away from the Ranch, and he decided it was better to pass the night there. There was a river with nice water running and great trees. Near the river banks, it grew suitable grass for the horse to eat, and it could be a comfortable bed for Givens himself. The rancher had tobacco and coffee and felt satisfied with his circumstances. Anyway, he laid the pistol belt on the grass: it was necessary to be watchful about the Mexican lions.

Givens was approaching the river for water, when suddenly he discovered unexpected presences. There was a side saddled pony, and rising from the edge of a water hole was Josefa. Not only the pony and Josefa were there, but, at short distance, a terrifying Mexican lion stay hidden in the vegetation. Givens had to do something… his six-shooter was not at hand… so, crying loudly, Givens jumped between the Princess and the beast. At the same time, the man heard two shots and was flattened to the ground by the heavy lion.

While Josefa calmly reloaded her silver mounted 38, with a sarcastic smile in her face, Givens could move from under the dead animal, feeling a defeated knight, his dream about the girl lost and burnt.

Anyway, he immediately came out with a curious explanation, and while touching tenderly the dead lion, he exclaimed “poor old Bill!” Givens version sustained that Bill, his innocent pet, had escaped from the camp, probably exhausted because a little annoying terrier arrived to the site and frightened him. And now poor Bill was hungry, and perhaps he expected Josefa would help him. Josefa couldn’t have known, Givens said, but some reproach appeared in his face.

Josefa seemed deeply ashamed and guilty, also admired Givens, who had risked his life to protect his pet. With tears in her dark, sweet eyes, she asked forgiveness. And Givens yielded.

It was already dark, Josefa should be accompanied to the Espinosa Ranch; consequently, both rode their ponies side by side, hand in hand, along the prairie.

The King appreciated Givens courtesy and offered him to pass the night in the ranch, but the foreman declined and trotted away.

At that point, Josefa proudly referred to her father how she had set two bullets to that killer Mexican lion, the “Gotch-eared Devil”; she recognized the animal for the slice on the left ear that old Gonzales had cut off with his machete. From the dark royal chamber, the thunder royal voice expressed the sincerest approval to the Princess.

QUESTIONS

-Who was Danaë and with is it her relation with the story? And Momus?

-Why didn't Givens tell Josefa the truth about the lion?
-Why did Josefa pretend to believe Givens's lie?
-At the end of the film Speed, after overcoming all the dangers, the male protagonist says to the female star that relationships that arise from extreme situations don't usually last. What is it your view about it?
-According to your opinion, what animals could be treated as pets and which ones not? Do you think animals must have some rights?

VOCABULARY

six-shooters, rattlers, prickly pear, cow-puncher, outfits, yearling, mesquite, gar, sacuista, jar, gouging, rastle, wrangler, quarry, demurred, steers, settled his hash, Bully for you!

The Thing's the Play, by O. Henry

Audiobook

SUMMARY

The story starts with a conversation between a journalist and the narrator. They are in a theatre watching a show. On the stage, there is a man playing the violin. The journalist tells our narrator he had to write a humorous column about the violin player, but his story was so sad that he only could be able to write a tragedy.

But after hearing the story, our narrator disagreed and said he could make a funny tale of it. And here you go:

Frank Barry and John Delaney were bosom friends. They both were in love with the same woman, a girl of 18 called Helen. But as Helen only loved Frank, she got married to him and John was just the best man. However, after the wedding ceremony, when the happy couple were on the point of going on their honeymoon, John ran to see Helen while she was alone in her room to declare his passionate love for her, entreating her to run away with him and forget her husband. But Helen didn’t think at all about forgetting her husband and rejected Frank outright. John, desperate, apologized and said he would disappear into exotic countries to try to make up for his disappointment.

But casually, Frank saw John kissing Helen’s hand to say goodbye forever and thought his just married wife was having an affair with his best friend. Frank, desperate, run away from Helen’s home and never came back.

Twenty years passed by without any news from Frank or John. Helen Barry was now the owner of her mother’s shop and lived alone. She was 38, but her beauty never had faded. She got proposals, but her answer was always, “I’m a married woman.”

However, the business didn’t go so well as before, and she had to rent two rooms of her house.

She didn’t have to wait long for tenants. One of them was a violin player called Ramonti who was looking for a quieter place to live in, and Helen’s house was perfect for his ears.

After a time, another tenant came. This man was very chatty and told Helen a lot of stories and showed certain admiration for the landlady. Helen thought that he could be her lost husband, but she didn’t want to betray herself so early: he wanted to punish him a little for his long absence.

But one evening, Ramonti stated his love for Helen. He was a quiet and friendly man, but he had amnesia: he didn’t know exactly who was and what was his previous life because he had had an accident and had lost all his old memories. He only knew how to play the violin and that he loved her devotedly.

Helen felt joyous again, as when she was young. Still, she rejected him with the old sentence “I’m a married woman”, and he had to go back to his room and play the violin.

An hour later, the second tenant appeared and revealed to Helen who he was: he was John Delaney and his love for her was intact. He knelt down before her as twenty years before and kissed her hand asking her to marry him. He also told her that that fateful wedding day he met her husband on the street and, out of irrepressible jealousy, punched him; Frank fell down, hit his head on the ground, was unconscious and had to be carried to a hospital. Nevertheless, John didn't know for sure if Frank was dead or alive.

And all of a sudden, all was clear for Helen ―she knew what she had to do.

 

 

QUESTIONS?

-Is it possible to love two men or two women at the same time? Have you seen the film Keeping the Faith?

-The narrator says one should get elated if one had had a secure husband and, in addition, a devoted admirer. Would you feel the same way? Have you seen Beröringen, by Bergman?

-In which context does Hamlet say the sentence “The play is the thing”: I’ll have grounds / More relative than this —the play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King? What does the phrase exactly mean? Why in our story is it the other way round, “The thing is the play”?

-What do you know about The House that Jack Built?

-What stories do you remember about amnesic people?

 

VOCABULARY

fell down on, write up, hooks, curtain raiser, stationery, best man, gibbering, hominy, fire-escape, babble, amaranth, galluptious, legal cap, quaint, innuendo

The Buyer from Cactus City, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Movie (only the first scenes)

SUMMARY, by Glòria Torner

As many others stories by O. Henry, this one, The Buyer from Cactus City, is placed in Old South settings and New York, with an exposition of the life of ordinary people, using local colours and a realistic dialogue.
The story begins with a description of Cactus City (Texas), a rich town of twenty thousand people where the important building from Navarro & Platt is located. It’s a big store full of different things you can buy.
Every year, the older partner, Navarro, is going to New York to buy new merchandises for his emporium. But this year, as he feels a little tired, he wants to stay at home. Then, he orders his junior member, called John Platt, to make the trip to the Big City, (New York) to buy for his department store goods, especially, women’s suits.
Two weeks later, Platt, a wealthy and handsome Westerner, called ironically “Mister Texas”, a ranch man who has become a businessman, arrives in New York and enters the wholesale trade from Zizzbaum & Son, located in Broadway, to purchase some things for his business. Old Zizzbaum receives Platt, who is not impressed by New York. For that reason, Zizzbaum tells his son, Abey, to show him different places of Broadway that evening.
The next day, Zizzbaum, who wants to encourage his customer in sales, calls a sophisticated model from his trade, Helen Ashley, and commands her to try on different dresses in front of Platt. The model, aware of her duty part, agrees. Immediately, he finds her very beautiful. At that moment, the narrator says: “Platt felt for the first time the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon him.”
Following with his plan, Zizzbaum arranges a dinner at 7:00 p.m. between John, the customer, and Helen, her employee. Now, John notices that Helen is his ideal. He is a young, rich business Westerner in love with a model. He imagines and tells her he will buy a beautiful car and a house, but she, disgustedly, replies she “has heard that before”.  For Helen, this evening is just following her working day and, frankly, she informs Platt she is only out with him to play this role, otherwise she’ll lose her job.
Platt insists and declares his love and gives her a diamond ring he has bought. Misunderstanding him, she reacts by getting angry because she believes he wants to abuse her. Immediately, she wants to leave the restaurant telling him to take her to the boarding house where she lives. There she slaps his face. But the persistent Westerner, who only wants about marrying her, increases his infatuation looking for an honest, sincere relationship and... just then a ring falls at her feet, but it isn’t the same ring: she sees that it is actually a wedding ring.
As many times in the stories of this author, the plot goes on in one direction, and just when the reader thinks they can predict the ending, finally, it turns to another different direction.
Surprise ending?  Does she change her mind because she realizes her mistake? Is there a change of reaction when she wants to know where is Cac, Carac, Caracas City?

QUESTIONS

-Do you think a mercenary marriage could be happy? And a marriage without romantic love?
-In your view, is the girl in the story, Helen, treated like an object by her boss? In your opinion, are some jobs (like models) offensive for people’s dignity?
-Helen doesn’t mind going away to live in an unknown place. What conditions you wouldn’t agree with for a marriage, or for a job?

VOCABULARY

obtain, be sneezed at, tan, shied, whirl, lay-down collar, wholesale, smuggled, crowbait, incidentally, oilily, evening gown, tulle, Don’t get fresh 

A Service of Love, by O. Henry

Audiobook

Analysis

Summary and analysis

SUMMARY

This is a story of true love.

Joe Larrabee and Delia Caruthers wanted to be artists: the boy, a painter, and the girl, a musician. Both of them went to New York from their villages in search of opportunities.

They met in a club where people talked about art and artists, and they fell in love and got married straight away. Happier couldn’t they be: they had their art and they had each other. But they had to live in poverty. Their love was “through thick and thin”.

They attended lessons to improve their art; Joe painted in the great Magister workshop, and Delia’s teacher was Rosenstock.

But the money didn’t last as much as they would like, and they had to do something to earn their living; so Delia looked for pupils to teach piano classes, and Joe had to sell his paintings to any redneck that came from the country, for example, Peoria; but neither of them allowed the other to abandon their art.

So they went on being short of money for a while. Every day they told each other their daily routine and how they did in their jobs. But one day, Delia came home with her hand bandaged; she told her husband she got burnt serving a dish to her pupil at her house (according to Delia, the pupil was a General's daughter). But Joe knew where the cloth for the bandage came from and started questioning Delia. At the end, she had to tell the truth, and so he also had to confess his secret. Was this disclosure going to kill their love?

 

QUESTIONS

What is love? Can you give us an ultimate definition? Do you think sexual love is essentially different from friendly love?

How do we know if they had or didn’t have talent? Are there any hints in the text?

How do you know if a person has any talent?

Tell us something about Émile Waldteufel, oolong, Joseph Rosenstock, Benvenuto Cellini.

Do you believe in living “through thick and thin”? Do you have any anecdotes about this romantic ideal?

 

VOCABULARY

chipped in, atelier, A sharp, janitor, dresser, mantel, sandbag, switchman, chafing dish, hatchet, scalloped, trump, veal, goatee, freight depot, Welsh rarebit [rabbit, sic], iron, make up

By Courier, by O. Henry

The Go-Between (a novel and two films)

Audio with text

You can find another another audio (slower) here

SUMMARY

In this story, a young man starts a communication with a young woman of his acquaintance through a boy who acts as a messenger (or perhaps a bit more than a messenger). The woman is sitting on a bench in the park. The man arrives, sees her and calls a boy who is nearby. He asks him to deliver a message to the woman and gives him a tip. The woman answers the man’s message using the same way. But the messenger conveys the messages using very different words to the ones he gets. Anyhow, man and woman understand what he says. But at the end, the man thinks that, for an unmistakable understanding of the communication, it’s necessary a written message.

QUESTIONS

Why did the author make the messenger change the message’s language? 

What do you know about the Greek myth of Hermes?

What channels of communication do you use and what do you use them for? Do you still send letters or postcards by standard mail?

According to your view, jealousy: is it something genetic, or social? How can you stop being jealous (if you believe it is a negative feeling)?

What do you know about the expression "don't kill the messenger"?

VOCABULARY
striding, tagged, countenance, moose, sake, plaid bicycle cap, song and dance, paramount,

pleas, conservatory, propinquity, soft-soap, beat the band, ski-bunk, bum, sport

October and June, by O. Henry

SUMMARY, by J. Guiteras

The captain, who had kept his uniform worn out by time and service in a closet, was enchanted by the sweet and smiling lips of a woman.

He received a letter from this woman telling him that she would not marry him because of the age difference between them.

The captain, who was rich and handsome, did not resign himself to this refusal and took a train to see her so that she could reconsider.

She stood firm in her decision, arguing that within a few years one of them would want to be quiet at home and the other would be crazy about going out to parties.

The captain was sad because he had lost the battle and returned home.

The next day he reflected and came to the conclusion that Theo, the woman, was right, since one of them was 28 years old and the other was only 19 years old.

 

Reflection: I feel sorry for them because a younger person can always learn a lot from another one who is older and with experience and has a lot to teach to a youngster.

 

QUESTIONS

-Why was the age gap very important in the past, and now isn’t so?

-Do you think we’ll be able to overcome all the clichés? Are prejudices good or bad for daily life?

-In your opinion, what is the relation of the title with the story?

 

VOCABULARY

gloomily, rugged, squared, ‘Pon

BIOGRAPHY, by Begoña Devis

William Sydney Porter was born in North Carolina in 1862 and died in New York in 1910. He was a great writer known as O. Henry after a cat he lived with for a time. He is considered one of the masters of the short story. His admirable treatment of surprise narrative endings popularized in English the expression "an O. Henry ending".

He had an eventful life. His mother died when he was three, and he and his father moved to his paternal grandmother's house. As a child he was a good student, and a great reader. He graduated from his aunt's school, who continued teaching him until he was 15. He then began working in his uncle's pharmacy and finally graduated as a pharmacist.

In 1882 he went to Texas, hoping that a change of scenery would improve his persistent cough. There he worked there as a ranch hand, as a cook and as a nanny. When his health improved, he went to Austin, where he worked as a pharmacist and where he began writing short stories. He was popular in the social life in Austin for his storytelling and musical talent. At this time, his problems with alcohol abuse began. In 1887, he eloped with the young Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy family. In 1888 they have a child, who died. In 1889, a new daughter, Margaret, was born.

In 1894, Porter founded a humorous weekly magazine called The Rolling Stone.  Then that magazine collapsed, and he moved to Houston, where he was a journalist at the Houston Post.

The most transcendental event occurred in 1895, when he was accused by the First National Bank of appropriating money that he had under his responsibility. On the eve of the trial he sailed for Honduras, where he lived for seven months, and where he wrote several stories, many of which appear in the book Cabbages and Kings, in which he coined the term «banana republic», phrase subsequently used to describe a small, unstable tropical nation in Latin America.

In 1897 he returned to Austin when he knew that his wife was dying, and after a few months he was arrested and convicted, spending three years in the Columbus (Ohio) prison. There he continued writing short stories to support his daughter. When he was released from prison, he changed his name to O. Henry and moved to New York, where he lived until his death.

In New York, the city the writer loved and the setting for many of his stories, O. Henry gained public recognition, but he had a deep problem with his alcoholism. Indeed, there is an anecdote that his most famous story, "The Gift of the Magi", was written under the pressure of a deadline, in just three hours and accompanied by a whole bottle of whiskey.

From December 1903 to January 1906, he wrote a story a week for the New York World, his most prolific period. He remarried in 1907 to his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Lindsey Colem, who left him in 1909.

O. Henry died on June 5, 1910 of cirrhosis of the liver. His funeral was held in New York and he was buried in Asheville, North Carolina. His daughter, Margaret Worth Porter, died in 1927 and was buried next to her father.

In the United States, the O. Henry Award for short stories, one of the most important in the world, was created in his memory. Among other writers, it has been awarded to William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Truman Capote, Raymond Carver, Saul Bellow and Woody Allen.

Bedbugs, by Clive Sinclair

BIOGRAPHY
There is another famous Clive Sinclair, the one who was an entrepreneur and an inventor. He’s known for having produced the first pocket calculator, and then, the home computer ZX Spectrum.
But our Clive Sinclair is the author.
He was born in London in 1948. He was of Jewish origin, and his surname was Smolensky. He studied at different universities: East Anglia, California and Exeter.
He defined himself as a short stories’ writer. Even his first novel, Bibliosexuality, was originally a collection of short stories linked one to another.
He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1981 for his collection Hearts of Gold.
Asked about what he wrote, his answer was “Sex, death and Jews”, but he was also fascinated with cowboys and the Far West, and True Tales of the Wild West is a collection of stories in the Western style.
He also was compared to Kafka, Borges and Nabokov. In 1983 he was chosen as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists alongside with Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan and Graham Swift.
He died aged 70 in London.
 
SUMMARY
Joshua, a university English teacher with a marriage in failure, is offered to give a summer course in Cambridge about First World War Poets to a group of German students, mostly girls. He accepts the offer because of the money and also because, as he is a Jew, can avenge his people and forefathers calling mentally his course “Rosenberg’s Revenge”, being Rosenberg one of the poets who was Jewish. But, although Cambridge is only thirty miles from his place, Bury St Edmund, he has to sleep in the college because he is also going to provide the students some entertainment, not only lessons. But the rooms the university has provided for him and his students are infested with bedbugs coming from a nearby building, recently demolished.
So he starts the lessons, where he finds some unfriendly students and some acolytes. One night, for the evening entertainment, they went to the theatre where they could see The Lesson, by Ionesco, a controversial play since it’s an allegory against the Nazis. After the play, Inge, his main devotee, goes with him to a pub where she proposes to produce a similar play. Then, at the college, Inge goes to Joshua’s room with the excuse of exterminating his bedbugs, but there she has an accident going down the modernist stairs, and they get laid.
On the last Saturday, Joshua takes his students on a visit to Bury St Edmund, where he lives and where Rosenberg trained before going to the front. Inge has a minor accident, and he decides to take her home to cure the small scratching; there they find his wife, and, as if his wife doesn’t show any suspicion about their affair, they had a nice dinner.
On Tuesday they have the show, but before the performance, Joshua has a strange vision: he sees, or dreams to see, his wife dead in their kitchen with a knife stuck in her belly. The play is a very singular one: it’s similar to Ionesco’s because there are only three characters, but in our case, Joshua is dressed up as a woman, Inge as his husband, and another student is a TV set. The story ends when Joshua disguised as a housewife shoots her husband six blanks, shouting madly “Daughter of Germany!”
 
QUESTIONS
-What do you know about…?
            bedbugs, lice, fleas, ticks, mange
            Rosenberg (Great War Poet)
            Bury St Edmund
            The Lesson, by Ionesco
            Baader-Meinhof
            Martin Buber
-Do you think Germans are still anti-Semites?
-Anti-Semitism is something you find in a lot of countries and in a lot of epochs? What can be the reason?
-“Women not interested in War? What nonsense! War involves everybody.” Debate: do you think women have to be involved in military conflicts? Or: if you want to stop a military conflict, you mustn’t take part in it?

VOCABULARY
congress, bantam, looms, concerns, rubbed the cow’s nose, routed, phony, counterfeit, lop off, rash, hives, louse, prowler, spunk, pardon my French, Aussie, hatch, sulks, loony, crannies, Spreadeagled, supine, agape, gibbering, cavorts, comes, props, blanks