O. Henry

O. Henry: Obscenely and Outrageously Obliterated is a collection of eighteen classic William Sydney Porter 'surprise ending' short stories/novellas that have been imaginatively rewritten and satirized into adult parody form featuring adult content and language. This extremely humorous book is author’ Jay Dubya’s 34th published work. When the writer was a New Jersey public school English teacher for thirty-four years, he often enjoyed teaching and reading O. Henry’s 'influential literature' with his sometimes-enlightened middle and high school students. Even though O. Henry (1862-1910) had died at a very young age, he still managed to remarkably write over five hundred short stories and anecdotal sketches. W.S. Porter’s fiction often occurs in familiar U.S. environments and settings that he had known well during his short tenure on this planet, particularly New York City, Southern Texas, the mountains of Tennessee, Central America and the post Civil War American South. Most interestingly, many of O. Henry’s terrific short stories were authored while he was in jail. In 1892 Porter moved to Texas and soon became a teller at an Austin bank where the institution’s officials accused him of illegally manipulating funds into his own account. Porter fled to Central America but upon returning to the states after his wife became very ill, the on-the-lam short story author was captured and then convicted. Thus, one of O. Henry’s most famous stories 'A Retrieved Reformation' involves safecracker Jimmy Valentine getting out of prison and in a geographical sense, the writer’s humorous stories 'Shoes' and 'Shoes and Ships' both take place in Coralio, an imaginary seacoast village in Central America. It is widely believed that the unique writing name 'O. Henry' had been conceived in honor of a certain security guard named Orrin Henry, who had been employed at the federal penitentiary where the literary genius William Sydney Porter had been serving his bank felony sentence.