SOURCE: An introduction to Selected Short Stories of William Dean Howells, edited by Ruth Bardon, Ohio University Press, 1997, pp. xiii-xxvii.

The heavier critics have under-rated Benchley because of his "short flight," missing his distinguished contribution to the fine art of comic brevity. He would thank me not to call him an artist, but I think he was an artist who wouldn't give up to it, like a busy housewife fighting the onset of a migraine headache.

It was an artist, to cite outstanding proof, who wrote (in another book) that brilliant and flawless parody of Galsworthy called "The Blue Sleeve Garter." He had all the equipment for the "major flight," but he laid it aside to lead one of the most crowded private lives of our century. Even so, he somehow found time to work on an ambitious enterprise, a book about the satirists of the Queen Anne...