Uplift, having abolished the Mock-Offspring and settled the fate of the
Bird of Nativity, cast about for some new Field of Endeavor.
And what more fitting than that they should light upon that hoary old
imposter masquerading under the several aliases Santa Claus, Saint
Nicholas, Kris Kringle, and Father Christmas?
At once the Propaganda was started.
Press agents were engaged, lecture tours arranged, magazines subsidized.
No matter what it might cost, this “Vulture gnawing at the Palladium of
Infant Emancipation” must be destroyed!!
Santa Claus, once, in the memory of living men and women, adored by
children and winked at by their parents, was now branded as an imposter,
a mountebank, a public nuisance, and a perverter of infant intelligence.
Santa Claus was an outlaw from the Commonwealth of Reason.
It was “thumbs down” for Santa!
It may be well to explain right here (since none of the events chronicled
in this History has yet happened) that the movement for the Emancipation
and Self-Determination of Infants, which has now taken such great
strides, had its initiation in the presidential term of Miles Standish
Sovietski when Congress extended the franchise to every child over five
years of age who had made any serious contribution to literature or
higher mathematics.
It was in the same year that President Sovietski signed the Sixty-fourth
Amendment to the Federal Constitution, prohibiting the publication of
fairy tales, and Congress suspended the Limitation-of-Search Act in order
that private libraries and nurseries might be raided without warning and
all copies of the forbidden works summarily seized and destroyed.
Simultaneously with the federal enactment, the states of Washington,
Illinois, Nevada, and Oregon, ever in the advance of any great
intellectual movement, passed laws prohibiting “_the personification
or representation, public or private, in theatre, music hall, club
house, lodge, church fair, schoolhouse, or private residence, of any
supernatural, fairy, or otherwise mythical person or persons or fraction
thereof_.”
The passing of a Constitutional Amendment was now an almost every-day
occurrence. Indeed, since the ratification of the Forty-fourth Amendment
prohibiting the use of sarsaparilla as a beverage (coffee and tea had
been legislated out of existence five years earlier) the enactment of
a new Amendment excited little or no comment. Even the Seventy-ninth
Amendment forbidding “_the use of caviar, club sandwiches, and buttonhole
bouquets, except for medicinal purposes_,” received only casual notice in
the Metropolitan Dailies.
The twentieth century was rapidly nearing its close and the political
apathy that for fifty years had been gradually benumbing the Public
morale now threatened to paralyze completely what little still remained
of courage and initiative.
Even the latest work of Bernard Shaw, “A Bird’s-Eye View of the
Infinite,” published (with a five volume preface) on Mr. Shaw’s hundred
and fortieth birthday, aroused so little resentment that his projected
visit to the United States had to be abandoned, in spite of the fact that
“Bean and Soup o’Bean,” written only a week earlier, was acknowledged to
have contributed largely to the triumph of the Seventy-ninth Amendment,
making Vegetarianism compulsory in the United States.
The Hundredth Amendment passed quickly though the earlier stages of
routine and perfunctory debate without any appreciable sign of anything
approaching popular protest.
Here and there a guarded expression such as “Poor old Santa! I’m sorry
he’s got to go!” was voiced, in the privacy of a club, by some elderly
gentleman. Nothing more.
Somewhere, behind Somebody, was a Power that directed and guided—perhaps
threatened. Nobody knew who or what or where it was or in what manner
it worked, but work it did and to such purposes that, after a scant
week of cut and dried speech-making that deceived no one, the Amendment
was submitted unanimously by both houses of Congress and the foregone
conclusion of ratification was all that remained to make the abolition of
Santa Claus an accomplished fact.
Then, inevitably as fish follows soup, followed the ratification.
The Hundredth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,
prohibiting Santa Claus, slipped through the ratification process like an
oil prospectus in a mail chute. There was only one hitch, Rhode Island,
but since Rhode Island had refused to ratify a single one of the last
Seventy-nine Amendments, her action was accepted as part of the program
and a proof of unanimity.
So Santa Claus was abolished?
Not so fast please!—Who’s writing this History anyway?
* * * * *
’Twas the night before Christmas
And in the White House
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a * * * * *
For the benefit of the clever reader who may have guessed the word left
out in the last line of the above quatrain, I will explain that the
asterisks are used in obedience to a clause of the Ninety-first Amendment
prohibiting, both in speech and print, the use of the word * * * * *
which, as the political emblem of the Free People’s Party (now happily
defunct), came into such contempt that it was made a misdemeanor “_to
print, publish, own, sell, purchase, or consult any book, pamphlet,
catalogue, circular, or dictionary containing the word * * * * *_” It
has been estimated that over eighty million dollars’ worth of Century
and Standard dictionaries were destroyed in the first year of this
Amendment’s operation. The loss in Nursery Rhymes, children’s books, and
Natural Histories is beyond computation.
But to return to the White House.
President John Quincy Epstein had retired to his study on the second
floor shortly before midnight, taking with him the engrossed copy of the
Hundredth Amendment which now only required his Spencerian signature to
expunge the name of Santa Claus forever from the American speech and
language as utterly and irrevocably as the forbidden word * * * * *.
The hours passed in a perfectly orderly manner, like school children at
a fire drill—_one, two, three, four_—without pushing or jostling—_five,
six, seven, eight_—(don’t you think history is much more interesting in
the form of a simple “Outline” like this than spun out in the common
manner?)—_nine, ten_—! At eleven o’clock the door of the President’s
study was burst open by the order of the Vice President, Rebecca
Crabtree, now, by a sudden and mysterious stroke of Fate, herself become
the President of the United States.
For John Quincy Epstein was dead.
How or just when he died will never be known. Always a cold, forbidding
(not to say prohibiting) man, his body when found was still cold—if
anything colder; his watch which should have marked the exact moment of
his demise, was ticking merrily, so the exact moment will forever remain
unrecorded.
But Santa Claus still lives and will live forever!
On the massive gold-inlaid-with-ivory desk (a Christmas gift from the
United Department Stores of America), lay a paper, inscribed, and signed
in the President’s handwriting, and sealed with his official seal.
It was the presidential veto of the Hundredth Amendment; and by virtue
of a clause in Amendment Thirty-three “_no Constitutional Amendment
vetoed by the President shall ever be resubmitted to the country nor any
fraction thereof_—”
Santa Claus will live forever! Hurray for Santa Claus!
[Illustration]
SAY IT WITH ASTERISKS
A vague and terrifying science, astronomy! Only as a subdued though
highly decorative lighting effect can I regard the stellar pageant with
equanimity.
To be sure I have learned to locate the Dipper and Orion and Cassiopeia’s
Chair and a few other popular favorites, but this painful knowledge
was acquired solely for its conversational value on summer evenings at
week-end, house or yachting parties.
Beyond that, all I know about the science of astronomy could be as
accurately demonstrated with the perforations of a colander, held up
to the light, as on the most perfect star map in the Encyclopedia
Britannica. If the truth must be told, I much prefer Asterisks.
* * * * *
With a moon and a mariner’s compass and a good road map or chart, the
traveler by land or sea can get along very well without the stars, but
in the trackless mazes of literature and art, how would the wandering
Philistine fare without Asterisks? An anthology or guide of any kind
without Asterisks would be as unthinkable as a Dalmatian dog without
spots or a red-headed boy without freckles.
Imagine yourself in the city of Berlin with a de-stellated Baedeker.
You would make Moses-when-the-light-went-out look like a torchlight
procession!
Not that I cite Herr Karl Baedeker as the model of stellar perfection.
Too many stars may prove as demoralizing as too many cooks. Even that
guide, topographer and friend of the tourist is at times bewildering, if
not misleading.
On page 133 of Baedeker’s Berlin, “_Furniture From the Boudoir of Queen
Marie Antoinette_” has two stars, ** while “_Elijah in the Desert_,” on
page 108, has, in addition to all his other troubles, to worry along with
one star.
And that is not the worst of it.
On page 163, “_a well-preserved Archæopteryx in Solnhofen slate_,” to me
by all odds the most interesting object in Berlin, has no star at all! *
* *
But no matter how annoying it is, you must never blame the Asterisks.
They only did as they were told and stood where Herr Baedeker placed
them and, if they did wrong, Herr Baedeker alone was responsible. A good
writer—or editor—is good to his Asterisks, and when he puts them in a
false position we must make due allowance.
If Asterisks could combine and form a protective union, there might be
some hope for them, but a flair for collective bargaining is not in their
nature. That being the case, I suggest the establishment of a Federal
Licensing Bureau empowered to investigate the qualifications of would-be
employers of Asterisks and issue or withhold licenses accordingly.
And it is high time something were done about it.
Only lately there has been brought to my notice a case of so flagrant
a nature that, were there such an institution as a Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Asterisks, I should feel it my duty to call
their attention to it.
To come down to brass tacks, as the saying is, the flagrant case of
cruelty to Asterisks, to which I refer, consists of a fat book, called
“The Best Short Stories of 1921.” Edited by Edward J. O’Brien—Published
by Small Maynard.
Never, I think, were a mob of overworked employees so pitifully huddled
together in an ill-ventilated factory as are the Asterisks in this
Sweatshop of Twaddle.
The Sweatshop proper—if a Sweatshop may be so qualified—is situated
in the rear of the book, occupying about a fifth of its volume, and
consists of:
A Bibliographical Roll of Honor of American Short Stories for 1920 and
1921 in which “_the best stories are indicated by an Asterisk_.”
A Roll of Honor of Foreign Short Stories in American Magazines in which
“_Stories of special excellence are indicated by an Asterisk_.”
Volumes of short stories published in the United States. “_An Asterisk
before a title indicates distinction._”
Volumes of short stories published in England and Ireland. “_An Asterisk
before a title indicates distinction._”
Volumes of Short Stories published in France. “_An Asterisk before a
title, etc._” Follows then a list of articles on the Short Story and last
of all An Index of Short Stories in Books, and here the Asterisks are
forced to work overtime and Mr. O’Brien’s English gets a bit sloppy. He
says:
“_Three Asterisks prefixed to a title indicate_ the more or less
permanent _literary value of the story_.”
“More or less permanent” reminds me of an advertisement I once saw in a
street car: “Face Powder makes your complexion _more irresistible_.” Is
it possible that Mr. O’Brien wrote it?
In the division entitled Magazine Averages, Mr. O’Brien comes another
cropper with “_Three Asterisk stories are of_ somewhat permanent
_literary value_.” Again, in the introduction, “_Sherwood Anderson
has made this year once more the_ most permanent _contribution to the
American Short Story_.”
Mr. O’Brien’s invention of varying degrees of permanence is an important
contribution to science and entitles him to receive at the very least the
Order of the Golden Asterisk of the Second Class with Palms.
* * * * *
Such, in brief, is the Sweatshop in the rear where the toiling
Asterisks labor in weary shifts of one, two and three, pounding out
asinine averages and percentages of permanency and near-permanency and
plu-permanency with a zeal that would do credit to the framer of a
Volstead Act.
Now let us walk round to the front of the Factory, where in his cosy
business office which he calls the “Introduction” the Foreman of the
works, Mr. Edward J. O’Brien, will tell us in the airy argon of the shop
all about the Fictional Flivvers—in which he is a second-hand dealer—how
they are made, what they are worth and, if permanent, just how long their
permanence will last.
As Foreman O’Brien warms up to his subject he will describe in vitally
pulsating phrases that would drive a movie writer mad with envy, the
convulsion of Nature that attended the birth of the American Short Story.
“_The ever-widening seething maelstrom of cross currents thrusting into
more and more powerful conflict from year to year the contributory
elements brought to a new American culture by the dynamic creative
energies, physical and spiritual, of many races_.”
All of which speechifying translated into plain talk conveys the
astounding information that the hooch of American Fiction is being brewed
in the much-advertised Melting Pot! Well, why couldn’t he say so and be
done with it?
Speaking of the Anglo-Saxon he says: “_The Anglo-Saxon was beginning
to absorb large tracts of other racial fields of memory and to share
the experience of Scandinavian and Russian and German and Italian and
Polish and Irish and African and Asian members of the body politic._” The
Melting Pot again! What did I tell you! Continuing, Mr. O’Brien describes
the process of fermentation as a new chaos set up by tracts of remembered
racial experience interacting upon one another under the tremendous
pressure of our nervous, keen and eager civilization. He doesn’t explain
exactly how a thing so completely lacking in the elements of design as
a chaos should be “set up” to get the best results. All he tells us is
that fresh chaos is good material for American literature, and that our
Mr. Anderson and others are very busy in a half unconscious way, trying
to make “worlds” out of it.
By “worlds” I take it Mr. O’Brien means something vast and vague and
“_vitally compelling_” and “organic” that our Mr. Anderson and others
will fuse into American Fiction “_in artistic crucibles of their own
devising_.”
On the whole, things look pretty bright for the American Short Story,
what with the “fresh living current which flows through the best American
work, and the Psychological and imaginative reality which American
writers have conferred upon it,” and the “seething maelstrom of cross
currents,” and the “dynamic creative energies,” and above all the
_chaos_, the great American Chaos—fresh—unlimited—inexhaustible—ripe
for the “artistic crucible,” in which it is soon to be fused into a new
cosmos of “organic fiction” by the White Headed Boy of the Western World.
* * * * *
On the other hand, how gloomy the outlook pictured by Mr. O’Brien for the
Englishman and the Scotchman and the Irishman! “Living at home—writing
out of a background of racial memory and established tradition.” It
fairly gives me the shivers. No wonder their fiction lacks compelling
vitality!
But wouldn’t you think that with all the Chaos lying round loose in
Europe these days, the Scotchman at least would grab enough of it to
create a bonnie new world of vitally compelling fiction for himself?
That’s what I thought, but it seems I thought wrong. The Foreign Chaos
differs from the Domestic variety in that it is “an end rather than a
beginning, a Chaos in which the Tower of Babel had fallen.”
Once more, to translate the O’Brien speechifying into speech—for the
benefit of readers who are not movie fans—the American brand of Chaos is
fresh and the European Chaos is stale.
The elemental principles underlying all forms of creation are the same,
whether you are creating a short story or a buckwheat cake. The same
dynamic laws must be obeyed.
You may have the very best possible formula for the creation of a
buckwheat cake and the best crucible—I mean the most artistic frying pan
that can be bought; but unless the contributory elements of heat, butter
and eggs are physically and spiritually beyond reproach, your buckwheat
cake will be a failure.
So, too, you may have the most perfect recipe for a short story—from
Mr. O’Brien’s own book—and you may have the most vitally compelling
Psychology—straight from the farm—but if your Chaos be of the European
cold-storage brand instead of the “strictly fresh,” or, better still,
“new-laid” domestic variety, your Short Story will be—like most of those
in Mr. O’Brien’s collection—quite unfit for human consumption.
* * * * *
That Mr. O’Brien is a scientist of the first rank has been amply proved
by his startling invention of comparative Permanence—see Roll of
Honor—but, though it is interesting to know that by the use of Asterisks
what was once believed to be the essential characteristic of Permanence
can be modified, I doubt if half of one per cent Permanence will ever
become popular.
But Mr. O’Brien has made another and more practical contribution to
science.
He has computed by means of Asterisks, that thirty-eight short stories by
American authors “would not occupy more space than five novels of average
length.”
What a priceless boon to the budding author about to embark upon his
first short story!
All he has to do is to borrow five novels of average length, cut out the
pages and divide the total number into seven equal piles, each one of
which will be seven and three-fifths of the total pile.
Six of these piles he may throw away or return to the friends who loaned
them—or the Public Library, as the case may be. He must then take the
seventh pile and placing the pages end to end on the floor—the roof of
the house will do if the floor be too small—and procuring a strip of
paper of exactly the same length, begin the Story at one end and continue
writing until he reaches the other end.
This will insure the work’s being of the right length for an American
Short Story, and, if Mr. O’Brien’s other two conditions as to “form and
substance” are properly fulfilled, the Story will be quite all right
and may be published—with three Asterisks—in the Roll of Honor for the
following year.
* * * * *
The luncheon hour at the O’Brien Sweatshop is devoted to an Efficiency
Drill of all the Asterisks employed.
The Drill lasts an hour and is designed to keep the Asterisks in perfect
physical condition for their arduous work.
First, there is a grand march of Asterisks in varying formations of ones,
twos and threes. This is followed by running matches and exhibitions of
high jumping, wrestling and leaping through hoops.
An exciting game of Roll of Honor closes the exercises.
This is the most violent exercise of all and consists of rolling
blindfold down an inclined plane and landing in a huge pile of short
stories.
The Asterisk that picks up the best Short Story, receives as a reward an
honorable mention in the Annual Report.
* * * * *
There have been many unkind things said about the late-lamented year
Nineteen Twenty-One, but after inspecting this work of Edward J.
O’Brien’s I am inclined to think that the title proclaiming it to be
a collection of Nineteen Twenty-One’s best Short Stories, is the most
slanderous statement of them all. It is enough to make even the Statue
of Liberty blush!
In no English-speaking country is the Short Story such a recognized
feature of everyday social intercourse as it is in America.
It is almost impossible for two Americans to meet anywhere or at any time
of the day or night without an exchange of Short Stories. Sometimes the
form of the telling is good, sometimes bad. More often it is very bad
form indeed, but two things the Story must have—to “get over”—substance
and brevity.
The same two things are demanded in the written story. I do not include
Form, because Form is essential to Brevity. Artistic Brevity cannot be
achieved without Form.
Substance, to paraphrase the Bard, is such stuff as Stories are made on.
It must be of good weave, or the story will not hold together.
Some of the Stories in the O’Brien collection are of a rotten fabric,
others, while well woven, have a most disagreeable pattern. Others again
are dyed with imported dyes from Kipling, Conrad and Company. At least
one of the stories has no fabric at all, but the weaver—like the Weaver
in the Fairy Tales—has gone through the motions of weaving so plausibly,
not to say impudently, that many, like Mr. O’Brien, are deceived by it.
Mr. O’Brien, defining Substance, tells us that it amounts to nothing
unless it be organic substance “_in which the pulse of life is beating_.”
Thereby he admits that Substance is Stuff, but insists that it must be
Live Stuff!
Mr. O’Brien is mistaken; in one of the finest Short Stories ever written
the Substance of the Story is a Shadow!
The Story is by “Anderson.”
What, _our_ Mr. Anderson?
Great Heavens, no! Hans Christian Andersen.
* * * * *
I have not the space to speak in detail of more than one of the Stories
in Mr. O’Brien’s collection, nor will it be necessary; one specimen of
the deadly _Amonita Bulbosa_ in a mess of mushrooms is enough to justify
the partaker thereof in damning the whole dish, if he live to express
any opinion at all; so, if in a collection that claims to be composed of
“Best Short Stories” I find one that is very bad in both Substance and
Form, indeed so bad in Substance that it hardly deserves to be called a
Story at all, I may surely, with perfect justice, damn the whole book as
being false to its title and not what it pretends to be.
But in censuring Mr. Anderson’s story “Brothers,” I am not so much
criticizing the author as admonishing the compiler of “The Best Stories”
for the gross misuse of an Asterisk.
One does not have to be an officer of the S. P. C. A. to rebuke a truck
driver who is abusing a horse that is hitched to a truckload of junk that
is much too heavy for it.
By the same token, I do not pose as a critic when I take Mr. O’Brien to
task for hitching an Asterisk to Sherwood Anderson’s story, “Brothers.”
I should not have noticed the Anderson load of junk, but for the
stupidity of its driver, which annoys me.
It is no way to treat an Asterisk.
* * * * *
The kindest thing that can be said of “Brothers” is that its inclusion in
a collection of American Short Stories puts it in a false position. It is
unmistakably American—the mark of the “Melting Pot” is all over it—and I
suppose it is Short, though it takes a lot of patience to read it, but it
is _not_ a story in the accepted sense of the word.
It starts nowhere, it does nothing and it gets nowhere, reminding one
vaguely of the three Japanese monkeys who see nothing, hear nothing and
say nothing.
To apply the O’Brien test, it has no Substance. The weaver went through
the motions of weaving, but he wove nothing. There is no “stuff” here.
Neither has it Form. The material—such as it is—is not shaped “into
the most beautiful and satisfying form by skillful selection and
arrangement.” That is to say, it violates Mr. O’Brien’s own rule.
If I were asked to give the thing a name, I should say that “Brothers”
is a sort of cross between a very dull parody of one of G. S. Street’s
“Episodes” and a grimy but ambitious newspaper “story” touched up with a
dash of that old-fashioned freak of lap-dog literature known as the “Poem
in Prose,” much petted by Turgenieff in the early eighties, a vehicle—if
one may be permitted to change similes in midstream—in which you pay as
you enter and as you leave, both.