In reviewing once more the short stories published in American
periodicals during the year, it has been interesting, if partly
disappointing, to observe the effect that the war has had upon this
literary form. While I believe that this effect is not likely to be
permanent, and that the final outcome will be a stiffening of fibre, the
fact remains that the short stories published during the past ten months
show clearly that the war has numbed most writers’ imaginations. This is
true, not only of war stories, but of stories in which the war is not
directly or indirectly introduced. There has been a marked ebb this year
in the quality of the American short story. Life these days is far more
imaginative than any fiction can be, and our writers are dazed by its
forceful impact. But out of this present confusion a new literature will
surely emerge, although the experience we are gaining now will not
crystallize into art for at least ten years, and probably not for
longer. If this war is to produce American masterpieces, they will be
written by men of middle age looking back through the years’ perspective
upon the personal experience of their youth. Such work, to quote the old
formula, must be the product of “emotion remembered in tranquillity.”
Not long ago Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, the keenest of the younger critics,
was pointing out to us the value of a usable past. Such a usable past
has clearly failed us in this emergency, but the war is rapidly creating
a new one for us, if we have the vision to make use of it. During the
past four years English writers have had such a past to fall back upon,
when their minds failed before the stupendous reality of the present,
and so they have come off better than we on the whole. It was such a
usable past, to point out the most signal instance of it, that inspired
Rupert Brooke’s last sonnets, which will always stand as the perfect
relation of a noble past to an unknowable present.
But if we are to make our war experience the beginning of a usable past,
we must not sentimentalize it on the one hand, nor denaturalize it
objectively on the other. Yet that is precisely what we have been doing
for the most part, even in the better war stories of the past year. The
superb exception is Wilbur Daniel Steele’s “The Dark Hour,” published
last May in _The Atlantic Monthly_.
I can do no better than to refer the reader to Henry Seidel Canby’s two
admirable articles during the past year, in which he has developed these
points far more adequately than I can pretend to do here. In his essay,
“On a Certain Condescension Towards Fiction,” published in _The Century
Magazine_ last January, and in the companion article entitled
“Sentimental America,” published last April in _The Atlantic Monthly_,
he has diagnosed the disease and suggested the necessary cure. While I
am not a realist in my sympathies, and while the poetry of life seems to
me of more spiritual value than its prose, I cannot help agreeing with
Professor Canby that our literary failure, by reason of its
sentimentality, is rooted in a suppressed or misdirected idealism, based
on a false pragmatism of commercial prosperity, and insisting on
ignoring the facts instead of facing and conquering them.
To repeat what I have said in these pages in previous years, for the
benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and
principles of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the
task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary
fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists,
may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in
formulæ, and organized criticism at its best would be nothing more than
dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead.
What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh
living current which flows through the best of our work, and the
psychological and imaginative reality which our writers have conferred
upon it.
No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic
substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is
beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair
to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination
than we display at present.
The present record covers the period from January to October inclusive,
1918. During the past ten months I have sought to select from the
stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life
imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. Substance is
something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather than
something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a
story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist’s power of
compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth.
The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis
is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected
facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently called the test of
substance.
But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other
stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into
the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and
arrangement of his material, and by the most direct and appealing
presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.
The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous
years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first group consists
of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test
of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the
yearbook without comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group
consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they survive
either the test of substance or the test of form. Each of these stories
may claim to possess either distinction of technique alone, or more
frequently, I am glad to say, a persuasive sense of life in them to
which a reader responds with some part of his own experience. Stories
included in this group are indicated in the yearbook index by a single
asterisk prefixed to the title.
The third group, which is composed of stories of still greater
distinction, includes such narratives as may lay convincing claim to a
second reading, because each of them has survived both tests, the test
of substance and the test of form. Stories included in this group are
indicated in the yearbook index by two asterisks prefixed to the title.
Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories which
possess, I believe, an even finer distinction—the distinction of uniting
genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven pattern with such
sincerity that these stories may fairly claim a position in our
literature. If all of these stories by American authors were
republished, they would not occupy more space than five novels of
average length. My selection of them does not imply the critical belief
that they are great stories. It is simply to be taken as meaning that I
have found the equivalent of five volumes worthy of republication among
all the stories published between January first and October
thirty-first, 1918. These stories are indicated in the yearbook index by
three asterisks prefixed to the title, and are listed in the special
“Rolls of Honor.” In compiling these lists, I have permitted no personal
preference or prejudice to influence my judgment consciously for or
against a story. To the titles of certain stories, however, in the
“Rolls of Honor,” an asterisk is prefixed, and this asterisk, I must
confess, reveals in some measure a personal preference. It is from this
final short list that the stories reprinted in this volume have been
selected.
It has been a point of honor with me not to republish an English story,
nor a translation from a foreign author. I have also made it a rule not
to include more than one story by an individual author in the volume.
The general and particular results of my study will be found explained
and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of the volume.
The Yearbook for 1918 contains three new features. I have compiled an
index of all short stories published in a selected list of volumes
issued during the year; another index is devoted to critical articles on
the short story, and noteworthy reviews published in English and
American magazines and newspapers this year; and I have added exact
volume and page references to the index of short stories published in
American magazines.
As in past years it has been my pleasure and honor to associate this
annual with the names of Benjamin Rosenblatt, Richard Matthews Hallet,
and Wilbur Daniel Steele, whose stories, “Zelig,” “Making Port,” and
“Ching, Ching, Chinaman,” seemed to me respectively the best short
stories of 1915, 1916, and 1917, so it is my wish this year to dedicate
the best that I have found in the American magazines as the fruit of my
labors to Arthur Johnson, whose stories, “The Little Family,” “His New
Mortal Coil,” and “The Visit of the Master” seem to me to be among the
finest imaginative contributions to the short story made by an American
artist this year.
_Edward J. O’Brien._
_Bass River, Massachusetts_,
November 6, 1918.