Word: haras
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...Hara has a way of turningout long, disorganized and absolutely pointless short stories. Words come so easily to him that he just writes and writes with little thought to the direction he is taking. Presumably, these aimless rambles are supposed to be catching the spirit of an era, or painting an unforgettably quaint character; but all too often they just wander...
Unfortunately, Assembly is loaded with this sort of story, although, happily, none of the others can approach "Mrs. Stratton" for length. Apparently though, O'Hara felt guilty about including so many uneventful tales, for he tries to make up for it with several others in which all kinds of wild, unbelievable things happen in every paragraph...
...easy. It does require a certain gift to be able to think of these things, but merely conjuring them up is not enough. The ground must be laid for these occurrences, and their causes must be woven into the story and into the actions of the characters. O'Hara refuses to do this, and thus these stories are pulp-magazine fare...
...first things a student learns in English C is not to put enigmatic, infinitely wise, mysterious last lines on the ends of short stories. The attempt to give a story greater significance by attaching a pseudo-meaningful tag to it, simply doesn't work. But O'Hara can't resist this childish practice. "The High Point" ends...
These exit lines, like so much of recent O'Hara, make readers laugh unintentionally. And when they're laughing at you instead of with you, you aren't doing very well