SOURCE: "Aesthete in America: The Short Stories of James Gibbons Huneker," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. II, No. 4, Summer, 1965, pp. 358-66.

In the following essay, Rottenberg assesses the short stories by Huneker collected in the volumes Melomaniacs, Visionaries, and Bedouins.

In 1964 Painted Veils, The only novel which Huneker ever wrote, appeared in a paperback reprint as a "classic of American realism," the sign of a belated revival, perhaps; but the short stories, collected in Melomaniacs (1902) and Visionaries (1905), as well as a few in Bedouins (1920), have never been reissued and remain virtually forgotten and unread. Mencken, who thought Huneker unequalled as a critic of music and literature, might have said deservedly so—"I can see no great talent for fiction qua fiction in these two volumes of exotic tales," (a judgment with which Huneker, with his proverbial modesty and good humor, agreed, although he could not forbear calling...