In reviewing once more the short stories published in American
periodicals during a year, it has been my pleasant task to study the
imaginative interpretation of the period of which these short stories
are the chief documentary expression. Last year I was moved to compare
the American short story with that of other countries, and was driven to
the conclusion that we were developing a new literary form, organically
different from everything that preceded it, and still in the interesting
process of developing its own technique.
The truth is that the American short story cannot be reduced to a
literary formula, and if we are to measure its progress at all, it must
be, as Mr. Chesterton once happily phrased it, with a growing reed. In
the past it has been a frequent comment on our literature and our life
to find that its interpretation in the hands of our writers was less
individual and more standardized than in other countries. There is still
much truth in this observation, and were the fact which it chronicles a
completely true generalization, I should have little hope for any future
literature of permanent importance in this country.
But during the past few years, slowly and naturally as the budding and
growth of a plant, a new spirit in fiction has been making itself felt
and spreading itself in many directions throughout the country. It had
been felt in poetry much earlier, and the full fruition of its art in
our poetry has almost come, but in fiction it is still young and
requires much fostering in the hands of our native writers.
Our artists are beginning to think of life wholly in terms of the
individual, and to substitute the warmth of the individual in place of
the generalised and sentimentalised types to which our American public
has been so whole-heartedly accustomed.
In these annual studies of the American short story, 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 of life which flows through the best
of our work, and the psychological and imaginative reality that our
writers have conferred upon the substance of it.
No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic
substance. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and we are
still surrounded by it in almost all of our magazines. The new impulse
must find its own substance freshly, and interpret it naturally in new
forms, rather than in the stereotyped utterances to which we have been
so long accustomed.
During the past year I have read about twenty-five hundred stories, and
from this number I have sought to select those which have rendered life
imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. As the most
adequate means to this end, to reaffirm my explanations of previous
years, I have taken each short story by itself, and examined it
impartially. I have done my best to surrender myself to the writer’s
point of view, and granting his choice of material and personal
interpretation of its value, have sought to test it by the double
standard of substance and 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 obtain
substantial embodiment when the artist’s power of compelling imaginative
persuasion transforms them into a living truth. I assume that such a
living truth is the artist’s essential object. 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 known as the test of substance.
But a second test is necessary in this qualitative analysis if a story
is to take high rank above other stories. The test of organic substance
is the most vital test, to be sure, and if a story survives it, it has
imaginative life. The true artist, however, 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
year-book without comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group
consists of those stories which may fairly claim to 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 year-book 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 year-book 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 a spiritual sincerity so earnest, and a creative belief so strong,
that each of these stories may fairly claim, in my opinion, a position
of some permanence in our literature as a criticism of life. Stories of
such quality are indicated in the year-book index by three asterisks
prefixed to the title, and, if by American writers, are also listed in a
special “Roll of Honor.” In compiling this list, I must repeat that 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 this list, an asterisk is prefixed, and this
asterisk, I must confess, reveals in some measure a personal preference.
Stories indicated by this asterisk seem to me not only distinctive, but
so highly distinguished as to necessitate their ultimate preservation
between book covers. 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
or, as a general rule, a short story whose publication in book form
seems likely. 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. It only remains now to point out
certain passing characteristics of the year for the sake of
chronological completeness.
The short stories published by Wilbur Daniel Steele during the past year
have placed him with Katharine Fullerton Gerould at the head of his
fellow-artists. It has been a rare pleasure to perceive his deepening
substance and the gradual perfecting of his art. Irvin S. Cobb, whose
great gifts are indubitable, has published more than one short story
this year of permanent literary importance. Were his production less,
and his standards more rigidly artistic, he would soon share with Fannie
Hurst the distinction of interpreting with fine democratic heart the
heart of the American people as adequately as Mark Twain and O. Henry.
Vincent O’Sullivan, an American who has returned home after many years
in English and French environments, has brought back to our fiction a
subtle humor and finesse of execution which promises work as fine as
that of the best Continental masters. Of the younger men and women who
begin to define their place in our literature, I have found the work of
Frederick Stuart Greene, Richard Matthews Hallet, Jeannette Marks,
Gordon Arthur Smith, and Robert W. Sneddon the most uniformly
satisfying. The two most distinctive new writers who have published
short stories this year are Francis Buzzell and Sherwood Anderson. It is
no mere coincidence that the finest expression of our national life
among the younger men is coming out of the Middle West. _The Midland_
has been a fruitful influence, and out of Chicago have come a band of
writers including Anderson, Buzzell, Hecht, Lindsay, Masters, and
Sandburg with an altogether new substance, saturated with the truth of
the life they have experienced. I prophesy that the novels which
Sherwood Anderson, Francis Buzzell, and Ben Hecht will publish during
the next two or three years will mark a new era in the history of
American fiction.
Of the new periodicals which have made their appearance during the past
year, _The Seven Arts Magazine_ is easily the most promising. In its
pages, one finds already the most representative work of the best among
our Eastern interpreters. It should serve the same torch-bearing
function in the East as _The Midland_ continues to serve in the Middle
West, and with no less distinction, though with more sophistication.
Three new periodicals are introducing foreign masterpieces of the
contemporary short story to us in adequate translations: _The Russian
Review_, _The Stratford Journal_, and _The Pagan_.
As it was my pleasure and honor last year to associate this annual
volume with the name of Benjamin Rosenblatt, whose story “Zelig” seemed
to me the finest flowering of the literary year, it is my happiness this
year to dedicate the best that I have found in the American magazines
during the past year as the fruit of my labors to Richard Matthews
Hallet, who has contributed to American literature in “Making Port” a
story of noble imaginative substance and consummate literary art.