Henry Memorial Award that year as best short story. The Most Dangerous Game was originally published in the Januedition of Colliers Magazine. And there’s more – but we’ll get to that. On still another it evaluates existentialism. On another it tackles questions about man’s relation to the lower animals. On one level it is adventure and high drama. But The Most Dangerous Game wasn’t like most of his other stories. So one of the reasons that you don’t see Connell listed up there with Shakespeare, O’Neill, and Tolstoy is because his stories rarely dealt with stark human emotion and rarely tackled complex issues. Henry’s, in that it is generally designed to entertain and please the general audiences without making them ponder anything weighty. In fact I loved Brother Orchid, the one where the gangster hides out in a monastery and gets religion, but Connell’s writing is similar in some ways to O. While most of his other work is forgotten, this story stands the test of time.Ĭonnell, for the most part, made a very good living writing ‘schmaltz’ – Boy meets girl – Boy loses girl – Boy gets girl – Weakling proves his courage to girlfriend – Gangster sees the light and goes straight – The star can’t go on and the understudy who takes her place is a smash success – etc. Every list of the world’s greatest short stories that I have ever seen includes this story. Richard Edward Connell wrote four books, numerous screen plays, and hundreds of short stories, yet the one thing he’s remembered for is his short story, The Most Dangerous Game. “When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.”
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