THE SHORT STORY

There is a story current among companionable golfers of a countryman who

reluctantly accepted an invitation from a group of friendly associates

to try his unpracticed hand at golf. When they all arrived at the links,

his friends carefully placed the little carbonadoed sphere upon the tee,

and told their aged neophyte that he must try to send this little

painted ball to the first hole--plainly marked by the distant waving red

flag toward which they pointed. The stalwart old man swung his club

valiantly, hit the golf-ball a square, ringing blow, and watched it

eagerly as it made its long, swift flight toward the far-off

putting-green. His three friends, all loudly congratulating him upon his

stroke, went with him in his silent search for the ball. Finally they

found it lying just three or four inches from the edge of the first

hole. A look of exultant astonishment was upon their faces; a look of

keen disappointment upon the face of the old man. "Gee, I missed it," he

muttered in disgust. His stroke had been the traditional stroke of the

ignorant lucky beginner; he had unwittingly accomplished a feat beyond

the dream of the trained expert.

Something similar to this triumphant accomplishment of the golf links

has occasionally happened in the realm of story-telling. An untrained

narrator, with a good tale to tell and with a natural instinct to select

the dramatic incidents and arrange them luckily in effective sequence,

has held his hearers in continuously rapt attention, and won from them,

at the close of his story, round upon round of spontaneous applause.

But as the literary world has grown older and more mature in its

aesthetic judgments, it has naturally grown more exacting. As narrator

after narrator has told his stories, the critical public and the

academic critics have come to impose certain definite technical

demands--demands not so definite or so exacting, however, that the

splendor of success in certain ways has not pardoned even rather glaring

neglects and defects along certain other concurrent ways.

Now it has been my pleasant task during the recent months to read or to

reread scores upon scores of short stories that have been published in

the _Atlantic Monthly_. My object has been to select from the Atlantic

files some of the best and most representative of these narratives for

publication in book form, and thus make these significant stories more

readily available for the college, school, and the reading public. Out

of this study, as it has combined and recombined with all my impressions

of past readings, have come certain convictions that have grown more

persistent as the reading and the selecting have progressed.

The net result of this thinking, I may at the beginning assert, has been

to expand and liberalize my convictions concerning the art and technique

of short-story writing. The choice of theme is multitudinous, the

methods of allowable treatment generously variable, the emphasis upon

character, plot, and setting easily shiftable, and the ultimate effects

as diversified as our human moods and interests. Contrary to a currently

repeated assertion, there is, I am convinced, no strict Atlantic type of

story--at least none so rigorously conceived as not to allow

unquestioned commendation of the narrative art of such varied

personalities as Bret Harte, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Sarah Orne Jewett,

John Galsworthy, Mrs. Comer, Mrs. Gerould, E. Nesbit, Jack London, or

indeed that whole luminous galaxy of skilled story writers--many of them

without fame--who for the past sixty years have been contributing the

best of their literary selves to the _Atlantic_. Yet a study of these

contributions of such varied types convinces one of certain large

demands which each successive editor has, with somewhat latitudinarian

rigor, pretty positively held in mind while he was determining the worth

of the given product. What, we may be interested in asking, are these

larger and more persistent demands?

_The unified impression_

Perhaps the most obvious requirement is that one upon which Edgar Allan

Poe, in his brilliant critical essays on the art of the short story,

laid the strongest stress--the demand that the narrator produce an

unquestioned unified effect or impression. An examination of the

narrative method of the old Metrical Romances and of many of the Arabian

Nights Tales will by contrast illustrate Poe's comment. In those

writings there was often no apparent plan. The hero started out and had

an adventure. This the story-teller narrated as Episode No. 1. The hero

continued and had another adventure, similar or dissimilar to the first.

This we recognize as Episode No. 2. And thus the story continued until

the narrator's powers of invention or endurance were exhausted. We close

the reading with no sense of satisfied unity--no oneness of impression.

At the beginning of the story, the writer of these Romances and Tales

apparently had no definitely preconceived plan, he allowed no

foreshadowing of catastrophe, he was careless alike of both beginning

and end, he made no conscious use of suspense, setting,

character-contrast, reverting narrative, climax, or any of the numerous

devices that make up the technique of modern short-story writing. More

particularly did he ignore the principle of unified impression.

_Unified impression secured by character domination_

While unity of impression is the sovereign demand in the modern short

story, the ways in which this impression may be secured possess

interesting variety. One of the most important of these ways is evident

in the pervading or directing influence of some strongly dominant

character. Events move in accordance with the will of some one

person--or, it may be some group of persons with closely related powers

and aims.

An interesting example of single character domination is seen in Miss

Sherwood's story, _The Clearest Voice_. Alice, the wife, has been dead

five years, yet it is her personality that still pervades and governs

the home. Her spirit of kindly interest, her instinct for the aesthetic,

her household control--all these have persisted through the long months

that have intervened since her death. But it is when the husband is

faced by the temptation to accept an inheritance which legally, though

not justly, belongs to him--it is then that the influence of the wife's

assertive character silently and determinedly dictates the correct

decision. The husband's pressing financial difficulties, the urgings of

the relatives, the unquestioned legality of the bequest--these are all

finally swept aside by the subtle workings of a quietly persisting

ethical force.

Sometimes an author reveals the strength and wisdom of one of his

characters by allowing this character to yield to the wisdom and

domination of another. I am thinking of Mrs. Comer's story, _The Wealth

of Timmy Zimmerman_.[1] As we read the first part of this narrative, we

are interested only in Timmy Zimmerman and the personal character

problems which the huge profits of the tobacco trust suddenly thrust

upon this uncultured but good-souled parvenu. We watch him in his early

struggles so full of energy and bold emprise; we rejoice with him in his

significant financial triumphs, and later we watch him as he tries, by

an expensive building enterprise, by tours through Europe, by the rapid

and careless driving of his ten-thousand dollar red automobile, to win

back the nervous contentment that was the happy companion of those early

years of adventurous poverty. He dominates each separate situation, but

he does not solve his problem. It is only when he meets Molly Betterton

and sees himself as analyzed by her candid native acumen, that he learns

his own weakness and the true potentialities of his wealth. Her

character is strong enough to win dominion over him; it is not strong

enough to dominate the story and lure the reader away from the

controlling interest in the personality whose career the reader has so

intently watched. The unity of impression is firmly and continuously

centered in the portrayal of Timmy Zimmerman's character, and it is that

which tautly holds the reader's attention in leash.

A more recent story that secures its chief interest from character

portrayal is Mr. Arthur Russell Taylor's _Mr. Squem_. Mr. Squem is a

traveling man who sells Mercury rubber tires. He wears clothes that

arrest attention--broad striped affairs that seemed stripes before they

were clothes; his talk is profusely interlarded with vulgar but

picturesque slang; he is far removed from the academy. Brought into

direct contrast with the Reverend Allan Dare and Professor William Emory

Browne, his crudity is the more grossly apparent. It is later enhanced

by the glimpse we get of his room--'extremely dennish, smitingly red as

to walls, oppressive with plush upholstery. A huge deerhead, jutting

from over the mantel, divided honors with a highly-colored September

Morn, affrontingly framed. On a shelf stood a small bottle. It contained

a finger of Mr. Squem, amputated years before, in alcohol.'

But in the midst of a railroad wreck, we lose all thought of these

banalities and crudities; we take Mr. Squem for what he really is--a

genuine, large-hearted, efficient minister unto his fellow men. The

impression he creates dominates the entire situation.

Of the classic stories which admirably illustrate this method of

securing a unity of impression through concentrated character interest,

we like to revert to Bret Harte's _Tennessee's Partner_. It is of small

moment that we do not know this man's name--of small moment indeed that

he seems, throughout his mining career at Sandy Bar, to have been

content to have his personality dimmed by the somewhat more luminous

aura of Tennessee. But when Tennessee's repeated offences bring him to

trial before Judge Lynch, and finally to his doom on the ominous tree at

the top of Morley's Hill, Tennessee's partner comes suddenly upon the

scene and overpoweringly dominates the situation. We close our reading

of the story completely impressed by the devoted loyalty of Tennessee's

partner--the loyalty that creates the unified impression.

And this same unity of impression thus secured in _The Clearest Voice_,

_The Wealth of Timmy Zimmerman_, _Mr. Squem_, and _Tennessee's Partner_

by concentrated interest in character, is easily discernible, in scores

of other stories. The method is artistically employed by Hawthorne in

_The Great Stone Face_, in Maxim Gorky's _Tchelkache_, Turgenef's _A

Lear of the Steppes_, J. M. Barrie's _Cree Queery_ and _Myra Drolby_,

Thomas Nelson Page's _Marse Chan_, Henry James's _The Real Thing_,

Joseph Conrad's _The Informer_, and such well-known Atlantic stories as

Anna Fuller's _The Boy_, Esther Tiffany's _Anna Mareea_, Florence

Gilmore's _Little Brother_, Ellen Mackubin's _Rosita_, Charles Dobie's

_The Failure_, Clarkson Crane's _Snipe_, and Christina Krysto's

_Babanchik_. Indeed the list is well-nigh inexhaustible, and is

constantly being increased by the many gifted writers who, enriching our

current literature, see in personal character the germ of

story-interest.

_Unified impression secured by plot_

Just as in looking at a finished piece of artistic tapestry we get a

sense of harmonious design, so in contemplating the events of a

well-told story, our sense of artistic completeness is satisfied by the

skill displayed in the weaving and interweaving of incident--such

weaving and interweaving as bring the significant events into the

immediate foreground, and group the items of lesser moment in such an

unobtrusive manner as to merge them into harmony with the main design.

Preceding the beginning of any story, we assume the existence of a state

of repose. Either there is nothing happening, or, if events are

happening, they are simply happening in the atmosphere of dull and

inconsequential routine, and are accordingly without the pale of

narratable notice. Then, suddenly, or gradually, something happens to

disturb this repose; and to this initial exciting force are traceable

the succeeding events, with such varied culminations as prosperity, or

poverty, or dejection, tragedy or joy, or restored calm, or any one of

the multitudinous finalities that life brings with her in her equipage.

The whole principle of plot, as here briefly analyzed, is simply and

artistically revealed in Mr. Ernest Starr's _The Clearer Sight_--an

admirable example of a story whose unity is secured largely by the

effective handling of situation and incident. To Noakes, the young

scientist who is the central character in the story, the master chemist,

Henry Maxineff, has given certain general suggestions for a formula

which will give an explosive of great value and of high potential power.

The young man, following these general lines, discovers that, by slight

additions and alterations, he can successfully work out the formula and

immediately sell his secret to a foreign government. The sum he would

thus secure would amply justify him in proposing marriage to Becky

Hallam, the girl of his choice. We watch him in his brisk experiments

and in his conclusive yielding to the temptation. We see him betraying

his employer and at the same time failing to meet the standard of

confidence which is demanded by the girl he loves. Right in the midst of

these scientific successes and these ethical failures comes the terrible

explosion in the laboratory where Noakes was working in secret. He is

blinded by the accident--permanently, he thinks. Harassed by his

sufferings--more particularly by his spiritual sufferings--he makes his

confessions to Mr. Maxineff and Miss Hallam, and looks despairingly

toward the empty future. The story closes with the physician's hope that

the loss of his sight is after all but temporary. As we end our reading

and view the events in retrospect, we are conscious of having seen the

various threads of interest woven into a complete and unified design.

Again, the principles of plot structure are clearly seen quietly

creating their unified impression in _A Sea Change_, one of Alice

Brown's homely stories.[2] Cynthia Miller, a New England housewife, had

lived for years her life of dull routine in an isolated mountain farm

eight miles from the nearest village. Her husband, Timothy, 'was a son

of the soil, made out of the earth, and not many generations removed

from that maternity.' Cynthia gradually comes to despise her life and

her husband's crude carelessness--exemplified by his habitual animal

aura and his newly-greased boots by the open oven door. With little ado,

but with grim determination, she leaves him and goes to the sea-side

home of her sister Frances. Cynthia is taken ill, but is at length cured

by the kindly village doctor and the silent ministrations of the

neighboring sea. Timothy, changed by the sudden departure of his wife

and the opportunity for introspection that his lonely life now brings

him, shakes off a bit of his earthiness and goes, after several weeks,

to find his wife. We listen to the brief reconciliation and see Timothy

begin to breathe in new life of aroused love and appreciation. The

author's skillful manipulation of the action makes us live in the glow

of a clearly perceived oneness of impression.

There are, of course, thousands of stories which secure this singleness

of effect by a similar skill in the handling of situations and

incidents. Among these many we need mention only a few whose unity is

largely secured by plot-interest--Thomas Bailey Aldrich's _Marjorie

Daw_, Maupassant's _The Necklace_, Poe's _Murders in the Rue Morgue_,

Stockton's _A Tale of Negative Gravity_ and _The Lady or the Tiger_,

Kipling's _Without Benefit of Clergy_, Pushkin's _The Shot_, A. Conan

Doyle's _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_, and Jack London's _A Day's

Lodging_.

_Unified impression secured by setting_

Perhaps the most significant critical comment on setting--the third

important element in the story-weaving process that secures oneness of

impression--is that frequently quoted conversation of Stevenson with

Graham Balfour: 'You may,' said Stevenson, 'take a certain atmosphere

and get action and persons to express it. I'll give you an

example--_The Merry Men_. There I began with the feeling of one of those

islands on the west coast of Scotland, and I gradually developed the

story to express the sentiment with which the coast affected me.'

There is no sensitive reader who will not sympathize with this feeling

and immediately understand how the atmosphere of a particular place will

act upon inventive genius and become the exciting force for the

production of a story. The squalid surroundings in the city slums, the

gay glamour of a garishly-lighted casino, the unending stretch of desert

waste, the dim twilight or the shrouded darkness of the pine forest, the

bleakness of the beaches in midwinter, the sounding cataracts, haunting

one like a passion--how rich in storied suggestiveness may be each of

these to him who already has within him the instinct of story or

romance.

How the mood of place may effect its influence is well expressed in the

opening passages of John Galsworthy's _Buttercup-Night_, which

sensitively analyzes the feelings for an unnamed bit of land in the

'West country' as the author experienced them one Sunday night of a

by-gone early June.

'Why is it that in some places there is such a feeling of life

being all one; not merely a long picture-show for human eyes, but a

single breathing, glowing, growing thing, of which we are no more

important a part than the swallows and magpies, the foals and sheep

in the meadows, the sycamores and ash trees and flowers in the

fields, the rocks and little bright streams, or even the long

fleecy clouds and their soft-shouting drivers, the winds?

'True, we register these parts of being, and they--so far as we

know--do not register us; yet it is impossible to feel, in such

places as I speak of, the busy, dry, complacent sense of being all

that matters, which in general we humans have so strongly.

'In these rare spots, that are always in the remote country,

untouched by the advantages of civilization, one is conscious of an

enwrapping web or mist of spirit, the glamorous and wistful wraith

of all the vanished shapes that once dwelt there in such close

comradeship.'

We can readily see, as we read _Buttercup-Night_, that it is the

atmosphere of the place that subtly dictates the telling of the story,

and at the end leaves the reader breathing this delicious June air and

living within the charmed romance of this accumulated mass of magical

yellow. What happens is interesting, but it is interesting largely

because the incidents are fused and integrated with the hovering spirit

of place and time--here as dominating in their charm as is the weird,

mysterious Usher homestead in its gloom.

While such stories as Stevenson's _Merry Men_ and Galsworthy's

_Buttercup-Night_ and Poe's _The Fall of the House of Usher_ illustrate

in a particularly striking way the dominant influence of setting, we

recall scores upon scores of stories that have an added power because

their authors have shown skill in the creation of a permeating and

directing environment. Among the more famous of these stories are Sarah

Orne Jewett's _The Queen's Twin_,[3] Israel Zangwill's _They that Walk

in Darkness_, Prosper Merimee's _Mateo Falcone_, Hardy's _Wessex Tales_,

Lafcadio Hearn's _Youma_,[4] Jack London's _Children of the Frost_, John

Fox's _Christmas Eve on Lonesome_, Edith Wyatt's _In November_,[5] and

Mrs. Gerould's _The Moth of Peace_.[6]

_Unified impression secured by theme_

Another element of the story which we find interesting to discover and

analyze is the author's dominant theme--what in the older days we might

have unapologetically called the moral of the story. But along with the

development of the technique of the short story, there came a school of

critics and writers that shied terribly at this mention of the word

moral; and such writers as Stevenson often seemed over-conscious of its

lurking danger. In such consciousness, Stevenson wrote wonderful stories

of adventure and mystery, such as _Treasure Island_ and _The Sire de

Maletroit's Door_. Yet the native instinct toward emphasis upon theme

allowed him to write such powerful ethical stories as _Markheim_ and

_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_. But in these, as in most of the modern

thematic stories, the ethical truth pervades rather than intrudes. It is

so firmly woven into incident and character and surroundings and natural

dramaturgy that its identity is not exposed to naked bareness, but

combines with other elements to produce a perfect unity through harmony

of tone and effect.

Among the recent Atlantic story-writers this harmonious linking is seen

happily existent in the deft workmanship of Mrs. C. A. P. Comer and Anne

Douglas Sedgwick. In each number of three notable trilogies which these

gifted writers have contributed, there is an artistic treatment of three

notable themes. In Mrs. Comer's _Preliminaries_, _The Kinzer Portraits_,

and _The Long Inheritance_ we find the author's implied comments on

Engagement, Marriage, and Divorce. In Anne Douglas Sedgwick's

unconnected floral trilogy--_Hepaticas_, _Carnations_, and

_Pansies_--there is in turn reflected Miss Sedgwick's attitude toward

three themes which are less concrete and which demand a longer

phrasing. In the first there is the world-old story of a noble spirited

woman's love and sacrifice and ardent wishings for her self-victimized

son. In _Carnations_ we have the story of a husband, Rupert Wilson,

released from the bondage of an unfortunate infatuation and restored to

the sanity of love. In _Pansies_ we have a generous tribute to quiet

sentiment, developed by a study in character contrasts--the

simple-hearted woman, loving a simple garden, contrasted with the kindly

disposed but worldly-environed Mrs. Lennard, fond of display and Dorothy

Perkins effects, and laying a disproportioned stress upon the expensive

and the modern.

In none of these six stories is there the slightest suggestion that the

narrative has been conceived in the spirit of propaganda. It would be

impossible to say even that it was the underlying theme which gave the

initial conception to the narrative and directed its progress. Any one

of these six stories I can fancy beginning in plot, or in character, or

in setting. Plot, character, setting, and theme--all are here, but all

are so happily combined that I feel no disproportionate emphasis, and

hence no forcing of a technical element. I only know that, personally,

when I think over these stories, I find the theme of each leaving its

strong and lingering impression.

What is true regarding this effective combination of elements in these

stories of Mrs. Comer's and Miss Sedgwick's is of course true of many of

the Atlantic stories which I have been reading. Perhaps in the majority

of the best there is such a thorough merging of all the elements that

the final impression falls upon neither character nor plot nor setting

nor theme. The author has had something worth while to relate, and he

has related it in a simple and natural way,--all unconscious of, or

happily triumphant over, any studied technique in the art of narration.

It has indeed been a conviction in the minds of some of the Atlantic

editors that most persons, even though untrained in manipulating the

story-maker's gear, have at least one experience--real or imagined--that

is abundantly worth telling and worth writing. Unconsciously of course

this artless narrator might throw into bold relief theme, character,

setting, or plot. Or he might unconsciously merge these separate

interests.

_The woman writers_

Aside from the mere contemplation of story-element technique, there are

many other interesting observations which naturally come to one who

reads critically the currently published fiction. He who examines the

recent Atlantic files will be immediately impressed by the dominant

place held by women writers of the short story--Mrs. Wharton, Mrs.

Comer, Mrs. Gerould, Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Brown, Mary Antin, Zephine

Humphrey, Edith Ronald Merrielees, Margaret Prescott Montague, Kathleen

Norris, E. Nesbit, Laura Spencer Portor, Anna Fuller, Edith Wyatt,

Margaret Lynn, Elizabeth Ashe, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Elsie Singmaster,

Margaret Sherwood. Among the Atlantic contributors we should find it

difficult indeed to match this list with an equal number of men equally

gifted in story-telling power. But even if we should succeed in such a

fatuous pairing of talent, we should still be impressed with the high

place attained by the women writers--high in contrast with the place

which they have attained in painting, sculpture, architecture, drama,

and music.

And why this high attainment in the realm of the short story? Perhaps it

is partially due to a lighter-winged fancy native in the feminine

mind--a fancy that roves with more natural ease and grace among the

animals and flowers of earth, among the clouds and stars and spirits of

the sky, among the demon-haunted grottoes of the underworld. From all

these easily-directed journeys perhaps it turns more naturally to the

penetrable secrets of human motive--penetrable, however, only to those

hearts which yield quickly, spontaneously--even wantonly--to the springs

of love, hate, beauty, justice, jealousy, fear, vengeance, and the

silent routine of daily duty. Doing all this of its natural self, the

heart can more readily guide the mind in the deft record of vicarious

action. Leastwise, to make a simple record of a real or an imagined

experience is a task which can be more easily done by girls than by

boys.

As boys and girls grow into maturity and the desire for contact with

life increases, the masculine mind finds its natural outlet in business,

in wrestlings with the soil, in contests of law and--at the present

moment, alas!--in the chaos of relentless war. Woman's sphere, though

continually enlarging, is still relatively narrowed, and she seeks her

freedom in the realm of imagination, thus identifying herself oftentimes

in the work-a-day contests of men. This mental exercise within the wide

gamut of imagined emotions naturally helps her to enter sympathetically

into varied contests. And it is perhaps because of her broadened

understanding that she is fuller and truer in her written record.

The feminine mind, moreover, is more observant of detail and more ready

to perceive a lack of harmony in arrangement; and while mere fullness of

observation might in isolated cases lead to incontinent garrulousness,

the generous flow is usually held in sufficient check by that nicer

feminine perception of an aesthetic effect that dictates shearing and

compression.

Perhaps the widening of the educational field, the world's fuller

acknowledgment of woman's varied ability, her easier mastery of delicate

technique, a more habitual access to a writing-pad--perhaps all these

combine with other facts and circumstances to encourage her in this

prolific output of marketable fiction. At any rate, the fact is easily

apparent.

_The stamp of authenticity_

A further interesting fact revealed in an examination of Atlantic

narratives is the encouragement of that type of story which carries with

it the stamp of an authentic atmosphere. More than a generation ago this

magazine was printing the stories of Bret Harte--stories that revealed

with great accuracy and skill and sympathy the spirit of the California

mining camp. Bret Harte had lived and breathed the grim and romantic

spirit of this environment. Fusing this experience with an imagination

that emotionalized a native instinct for story-telling, Bret Harte was

able to lend to his writing a verisimilitude that easily won the

reader's interest in the charm and novelty of that strenuous and

elemental western life.

While the work of Bret Harte perhaps most strikingly illustrates this

power of authentic portrayal of experience and place, there are scores

of Atlantic stories that employ the same general method. Sarah Orne

Jewett, in such stories as _The Queen's Twin_, _The Life of Nancy_, and

_A Dummet Shepherd_, has admirably re-created the simple life of rural

New England. Lafcadio Hearn has realistically brought to us the spirit

of Japan, Jacob Riis has portrayed for us many pictures of New York

tenement life, Joseph Husband has brought us into the atmosphere of

industrialism, H. G. Dwight and Charles Johnson have allowed us to

breathe the spirit of Orientalism. And scores of other writers, such as

Dallas Lore Sharp, E. Morlae, Margaret Prescott Montague, Abraham

Rihbany, Mary Antin, Mildred Aldrich, Simeon Strunsky, after they have

lived their separate experiences, have shared with us the intimate

memories which those personal experiences have bequeathed.

_Sordidness rejected_

The Atlantic traditions, for the most part, have rejected the harrowing

and the sordid and the meretricious. Contrasted with the tone of tragic

realism so often dominant in Gorky, Dostoevsky, Turgenef, Maupassant,

and Zola, we usually find in the pages of the _Atlantic_ an emphasis

upon themes which suggest a gentler and more humane spirit. The winds of

heaven do, of course, sometimes blow over places that are bleak, barren,

and desolate. They shriek and moan through winter wilds, and sometimes

the human mood that corresponds to this despair has found its reflection

in stories which the _Atlantic_ has printed. But the mission of the

magazine has in general been in the sunlit fields or near the

hearthfire's glow. If it sometimes has witnessed tragedy, it has never

found delight in the disclosure of grimness for grimness' sake. It has

been more watchful of scenes within the commonplaces of human action;

here the writers have found themes of quiet pathos, of homely humor, and

of rich romance. Small wonder, indeed, if since August, 1914, grimmer

scenes than usual should not sometimes shadow the pages! But even so;

the writers have not yet lost their sanity, their hopefulness, or their

quiet sense of humor.

_Possibilities within the future_

After these comments on the more dominant characteristics of the short

story it is natural to inquire into the possible future of the art. It

is apparent that writers are paying careful attention to technique, and

there is real danger to the art if technique is to be too narrowly

interpreted and too slavishly followed. A credulous acceptance of a

guide has always worked havoc in the field of creative literature.

Aristotle, and Horace, and Longinus--to revert to a literary period now

far distant--showed admirable critical acumen, but it may be sincerely

questioned whether they enhanced the worth of Grecian and Roman

literature. We may be quite sure that the critical writings of neither

Boileau nor Pope deepened or improved French or English poetry. Will our

short stories be any better here in America because Brander Matthews,

Bliss Perry, Clayton Hamilton, Henry S. Canby, W. B. Pitkin, Miss

Albright, Miss Ashmun, and a score of others have written so

entertainingly about them? As I have read these criticisms and as I have

seen new writers apparently influenced by these criticisms and by the

methods obvious in Poe, Bret Harte, Kipling, and O. Henry, I have been

reluctantly made to feel that we were perhaps on the verge of yielding

to the technique of the telling rather than to the substance of the

experience.

Where art becomes too self-conscious and too critical, it sacrifices

spontaneity and elemental power, and smothers itself in the wrappings of

its self-woven web. Reliance upon technique and long practice in its use

will help crudeness to rise to mediocrity, but the process will never

lift the mediocre writer to the plane of the supremely excellent or the

austerely great.

Perhaps the present danger lies partly in the attitude of the magazine

editor whose sceptre is his checkbook. Let us not deceive ourselves.

Literature is now a business--or if not wholly commercialized, it is

acutely sensitive to the laws of the trade. The purely commercial

editors, with their eyes riveted to the main chance, have come to

recognize the power of technique, and to it they have been paying

bountiful tribute. The public has in turn learned to expect the sudden

start, the swift pace, the placarded climax, the clever paradox, the

crisp repartee, the pinchbeck style, the bared realism, the concluding

click. It is all very perfect and very regular, and the editor in

accepting the manuscript that adheres to each conventional requirement

encloses his check for two hundred dollars in a letter that contains an

order for a half dozen more of the identical type. One of the deplorable

adjuncts of this procedure is that the editor often realizes the

emptiness of this technically correct story, and his own best literary

judgment spurns it. But trying to objectify what his clientele would

applaud, he pays the price and orders more.

Conversely, a story with genuine substance and sincere feeling comes to

his desk. He reads it and approves. Then he asks that fateful

question--What will my reading public say? He concludes that they will

note the utter lack of climax, of cleverness, of ingenuity, of realistic

contact with unadorned everydayness. He closes the incident by a return

of the manuscript with a printed rejection slip enclosed.

But this procedure is sometimes happily reversed: an editor has had the

fortitude to ignore the fancied judgment of his readers and has relied

upon his own impressions of what constitutes literary worth. He is

conscious that the story he has accepted is written in utter ignorance

or in total disregard of traditional propriety and the laws of modern

technique; yet it carries a message, it reveals character, it shows real

thinking powers. Accepted and published, as was Arthur Russell Taylor's

_Mr. Squem_, it has been enthusiastically received by its readers.

There is one final conviction that emerges from the varied and the

multitudinous impressions that come from the reading of all these

stories. Every individual has an experience worth narrating; and most

individuals have scores upon scores of experiences--real or

imagined--that are worth narrating. To succeed in the attempt one does

not necessarily need to be a conscious master of technique. He must, of

course, have a reasonably firm command of his vernacular--indeed, to

succeed in any large degree, he must attain unquestioned mastery and

fittingly fashion his style to the theme immediately at hand. He should

have a sense of organization that deftly orders the proper sequence of

events and skillfully adjusts both minor and major incidents to secure a

unified impression. There is, I am convinced, no single minor rule that

critics may formulate which will stand a rigid acid test. Genius

abrogates every law; talent may abrogate most laws. A great experience,

a great situation, a great theme, a great character, a great scene, a

great emotion--any one of these may direct even an ordinary writer to

successful narration. The skilled story-teller will win success from

even scanty material--but the scanty material will be enriched by a

sense of humor, an ingenious fancy, a felicitous style, a controlling

imagination, a deft craftsmanship, or a keen perception of the value and

regulation of detail.