Quote:
"[Wicklow's mind has been turned ... by all those dime novels and sensation-story newspapers about all kinds of dark plots and mysteries; he's always making up all kinds of fables."

From the original story:
Quote:
"It turned out that he was a ravenous devourer of dime novels and sensation-story papers -- therefore, dark mysteries and gaudy heroisms were just in his line."
In The Mark Twain Encyclopedia (1993), John H. Davis notes that "scholars generally have dismissed" this story, and "little attention has been given to the story's central themes: the contrast of excessive and empty imagination and the illusionary nature of truth. ... Wicklow's fiction-based illusions provide a case study of a youth's escape from reality," pointing to "a recurring Twainian theme -- romanticism as a threat to social and moral health."


In A Companion to Mark Twain (2005), Peter B. Messent notes that this story echoes Twain's friend William Dean Howells' "battle against ... sentimental and dime fiction." "... 'A Curious Experience' ... endorsed much the same message," "... in line with repeated attacks throughout [Twain's] work, from a realist perspective, on fraudulent sentimentality and romance."
