Looking for authors similar to O. Henry

Hey, guys!

O. Henry is one of my favorite writers and I really enjoy his style of writing (interesting allusions, metaphors, clever turns of phrase, etc.).

I was hoping you could recommend some other writers or stand-alone novels/stories (of any genre) which I should like if I love O. Henry’s witty manner of storytelling and funny dialogues (“surprise twists” at the end are not necessary– just a compelling and witty writing).

Just to let you know, I’ve read Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Jerome K. Jerome and P.G. Wodehouse, but they didn’t really click with me the same way.

To give you an example of the kind of humour that I find entertaining, here’s an  excerpt from O. Henry’s novel “Two renegades”:

“Then and there those Colombians… dragged me before a military court. The presiding general went through the usual legal formalities that sometimes cause a case to hang on the calendar of a South American military court as long as ten minutes. He asked me my age, and then sentenced me to be shot.

“They woke up the court interpreter, an American named Jenks, who was in the rum business and vice versa, and told him to translate the verdict.

“Jenks stretched himself and took a morphine tablet.

“‘You’ve got to back up against th’ ‘dobe, old man,’ says he to me. ‘Three weeks, I believe, you get. Haven’t got a chew of fine-cut on you, have you?’

“‘Translate that again, with foot-notes and a glossary,’ says I. ‘I don’t know whether I’m discharged, condemned, or handed over to the Gerry Society.’

“‘Oh,’ says Jenks, ‘don’t you understand? You’re to be stood up against a ‘dobe wall and shot in two or three weeks — three, I think, they said.’

“‘Would you mind asking ‘em which?’ says I. ‘A week don’t amount to much after you’re dead, but it seems a real nice long spell while you are alive.’

“‘It’s two weeks,’ says the interpreter, after inquiring in Spanish of the court. ‘Shall I ask ‘em again?’

“‘Let be,’ says I. ‘Let’s have a stationary verdict. If I keep on appealing this way they’ll have me shot about ten days before I was captured. No, I haven’t got any fine-cut.’

 “Then I gives a silver dollar to one of the guards to send for the United States consul. He comes around in pajamas, with a pair of glasses on his nose and a dozen or two inside of him.

“‘I’m to be shot in two weeks,’ says I. ‘And although I’ve made a memorandum of it, I don’t seem to get it off my mind. You want to call up Uncle Sam on the cable as quick as you can and get him all worked up about it.’

“‘Now, see here, O’Keefe,’ says the consul, getting the best of a hiccup, ‘what do you want to bother the State Department about this matter for?’

“‘Didn’t you hear me?’ says I; ‘I’m to be shot in two weeks. Did you think I said I was going to a lawn-party?”.

P.S.

One other work that i felt was akin to O.Henry’s clever writing and the one i enjoyed a lot was Steve Toltz’s novel “A fraction of the whole”.

Thank you!  

P.P.S.

Made the same post at booksuggestions.

by reductoabsurdum