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
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reaction:
“The disaster ... is not the money, although the money will be missed. The disaster is the disrespect—this belief that the arts are dispensable, that they’re not critical to a culture’s existence.”
—Twyla Tharp (b. 1941)
“Children, randomly at first, hit upon something sooner or later that is their mother’s and/or father’s Achilles’ heel, a kind of behavior that especially upsets, offends, irritates or embarrasses them. One parent dislikes name-calling, another teasing...another bathroom jokes. For the parents, this behavior my have ties back to their childhood, many have been something not allowed, forbidden, and when it appears in the child, it causes high-voltage reaction in the parent.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)