Dancing Dan’s Christmas by Damon Runyon, 1932
The magic trick:
Saving the peak of the story for the “one year later” epilogue
Tough to beat this one for light, comical holiday fare.
I particularly enjoyed the structure. It has a coda that gives us a “one year later” update on the story. And it’s this update that turns out to be the story’s show-stopping moment. It gives us a new sense of stakes for the main story that we didn’t realize while we were reading it.
And that’s quite a trick on Runyon’s part.
The selection:
Well, anyway, as Dancing Dan comes in, he weighs up the joint in one quick peek, and then he tosses the package he is carrying into a corner where it goes plunk, as if there is something very heavy in it, and then he steps up to the bar alongside of Charley and me and wishes to know what we are drinking.
Naturally we start boosting hot Tom and Jerry to Dancing Dan, and he says he will take a crack at it with us, and after one crack, Dancing Dan says he will have another crack, and Merry Christmas to us with it, and the first thing anybody knows it is a couple of hours later and we still are still having cracks at the hot Tom and Jerry with Dancing Dan, and Dan says he never drinks anything so soothing in his life. In fact, Dancing Dan says he will recommend Tom and Jerry to everybody he knows, only he does not know anybody good enough for Tom and Jerry, except maybe Miss Muriel O’Neill, and she does not drink anything with drugstore rye in it.
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