Charles Waddell Chesnutt remains one of the great, underappreciated masters of the short story in American literature. He could wipe the floor with O. Henry and Faulkner, but is sadly too often overlooked, though recent years have seen more light shown on his brillaint body of work.
Of the stories Chesnutt wrote, my favorite remains "The Goophered Grapevine." The tale uses many techiques such as the frame story, and ultimately, at the end of it, it is realized the narrator, Uncle Julius, is being a bit of a trickster. The story is about a haunted grapevine. The narrator tells it to keep others away, though actually he is using the grapes to make his own wine. The story he tells is of a slave, Henry, who uses the grapes to stay young after they get a spell put on them by a voodoo priestess. His master sells him young, and then at the end of the grape season, buys him on the cheap when he goes back to his original age. The owner focuses so much attention on the racket he has going with Henry, he forgets to tend to the grapes and Henry dies when they do. The story within the story throws an interesting light on market capitalism, while the frame story is a bit of trickster genius.
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