Abstract

O'Brien's Tales of Horror

The article focuses on the book "The Diamond Lens," by Fitz-James O'Brien. O'Brien belongs to the small company of minor American classics that includes such names as Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Saltus. With them he shares an appropriate legend, and what few facts are known seem to support a glamorous superstructure. The stories show an inability to sustain an original intention, as though O'Brien, writing at top speed, had found himself too slow for the onrush of his imagination and had become impatient and bored before he reached the final paragraph. There is much of the actor's eloquence in O'Brien, the love of tinsel for tinsel's sake, and always the desire to bring his brief performance to a close by an unmotivated sword thrust of melodrama.