Critical Reaction
Fritz Leiber, in his essay "A Literary Copernicus", praised the story for the "supreme chill" of its final line. Peter Cannon calls the tale "a well-nigh perfect example of Poe's unity of effect principle", though he cites as its "one weakness" the "contrived ending". An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia dismisses the story as "relatively conventional".
Read more about this topic: Pickman's Model
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