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:
“Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.”
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“In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”
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