Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/263

 THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 243 �special distinction is that he deprived it of all authority in itself and made it the humble servitor of previ- sioned effect. �It is interesting to observe that while Foe's stories _ fall into many_topical divisions^ Jie exemplified only two structural types. He_began with the^stqry in which the last paragraph is the key. The^susp_ense_is cumu- Iative~from the beginning and is relieved only at the end. This is the type of story that O. Henry has il- lustrated with a brilliancy and resourcefulness that have led not a few critics to see in his work the discov- ery of a new territory rather than the happy coloniza- tion of an old. This kind of story is necessarily short because suspense, especially the tragic kind that Poe frequently imposes, becomes burdensome if the finale is needlessly or heedlessly delayed. Masterpieces of this type are The MS. Found in a Bottle, Berenice, Morella, The Assignation, A Descent into the Mael^ strb'm, Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, Wil- liam Wilson, The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, and Th_c Cask oj AmontilladdQt ( *he first was written in 1833, the last in 1846. We may call this the cuneiform type because it is wedge-shaped, coming to a point or edge at the end. Perhaps, if we think of background, plot, and character as narrowing upward to the apex or point of culminating effect, a better name would be the A type. �The_second type preserves ^ ���totality of ejfect^as successfully a^s__the_A_tyge_; but J:here_ is ji jpause m..lhsjroi(3djie_pf the_story :__a _partjof the denouement has been glimpsed but not the whole. Curiosity is not relaxed but released for a more in- ��� �