O. Henry had an f'ed up life

Did you know that O. Henry, "father of the twist ending", had a seriously f'ed up life? His stories are rather optimistic and fun, completely in contrast to his reality from what I can tell.

He made up a cute, memborable pen name because he didn't want his work associated with his real name, which was in turn associated with his conviction and imprisonment for embezzling money from a bank. (Which is a bit of a shame, really, since his real name was William Sydney Porter, which is a hell of a classy writer's name and fits his writing very well.)

It's be nice if the ending of his own story was "after his release from prison in 1901, he lived a fabulously successful life as a hot-aire balloonist" or "he returned to Honduras and was appointed Dictator for Life, whereafter he invented ping pong." But, alas, the twist ending for Henry's life is depressingly commonplace: he became an alcoholic, his second wife left him, and he died in 1910 of cirrhosis of the liver. Not so much a twist as a plain downer.

It's one thing to embezzle money -- I mean, who hasn't? -- but to skip town and run off to Honduras? That takes some imagination, and a willingness to live within your own life story as a story. He returned to the U.S. and to certain arrest after learning that his wife was dying of tuberculosis, and he was convicted after she died. He wrote his famous stories while in jail in order to provide for their young daughter.

Throw a murder, an icy blonde, and an isolated creep or two into O. Henry's life story, and you've got yourself a Hitchcock movie.

Every student short film in America has O. Henry to thank for its big stunning twist ending. And for that, sir, we shake our fists at you! You are to blame for the racist blind man who turns out to be black! And the quarter that completes an ironic journey from rich person to homeless to car accident of rich person that collides with the homeless person! And the person fantasizing about the rest of his life which he will never lead because he is in fact DEAD! And the irritating waiting room that turns out to be HELL!

But you can't trust my word on it...because I'm actually YOU IN AN ALTERNATE LIFE!!

Sally Mann, photographer

I recently saw a show of verite photographers (my term; I can't even remember what the museum called them, or how they justified grouping them together. Basically, the photographers all take photos of their friends and family, but not like you and I do; they keep the ugly shots). It included Nan Goldin and Philip-Lorca Dicorcia. Also Tina Barney and Larry Sultan.

All had some interesting and arresting shots, but most of them became overwhelming in abundance, and they have an underlying bleakness with which I am all too familiar. I wasn't in the mood, I guess.

Then there's Sally. Sally's photos of her three kids and her rural Virginia surroundings have one thing the other photos don't: hope for the future. There's a tremendous determination in Mann's photos, an insistence on looking at the world around you, not as you want it to be, but as it is, and in admitting that it won't last. I get the feeling from her photos that life is brutal and gorgeous and worth fighting for, and that you'd better be ready to scrap. There's an unflinching tenderness in these photos that I've only seen so powerfully presented in Steinbeck novels, maybe, or in Emmylou Harris's voice.

It's like they're saying, "Keep trying. It's worth it."