Transcriber’s note
Variable spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Minor punctuation
inconsistencies have been silently repaired. A list of the changes made
can be found at the end of the book. Formatting and special characters
are indicated as follows:
_italic_
SHORT STORY WRITING: _An Art or a Trade?_
SHORT STORY-WRITING
_An Art or a Trade?_
_by_
N. BRYLLION FAGIN
Dean of the School of Literary Arts, Research University, Washington,
D. C., and instructor in Short Story Writing, University of Maryland.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THOMAS SELTZER, INC.
1923
Copyright, 1923, by
THOMAS SELTZER, INC.
_All Rights Reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I OVERTURE 1
II ACTION 12
III “O. HENRYISM” 29
IV THE MOVING PICTURES 48
V VERBOTEN 67
VI THE ARTIFICIAL ENDING 101
VII FORM AND SUBSTANCE 114
VIII FINALE 125
IX EFFECT 132
INDEX 137
SHORT STORY WRITING:
_An Art or a Trade_?
CHAPTER I
OVERTURE
Moods may be uncomfortable, and sad, and painfully disturbing, but, on
the other hand, they make pleasant music occasionally. Here I sit in
the dusk, looking out into the street that is ordinarily so familiar
to me, but has suddenly become blurred and weirdly mysterious in
the gathering murk. A veil is over my eyes, which see the familiar
houses across the street, the young poplars in front of them, the few
passers-by. But my mind does not discern these objects; it sees far
subtler things--floating, flimsy, evanescent. The dusk is in my mind,
evoking thoughts, illusions, pictures--and speaking, questioning,
singing. The dusk is an overture to the things I have set out to say,
playing innumerable variations of my theme, whispering in every note:
“Stories, Stories, Stories!”
There are so many stories afloat in the world! Every door and window and
curtain and shade has a story to tell; every clod and tree and leaf;
and every pebble of a human being washed by the waves of life. And
how many of these stories have I helped to be told? And how many have
I helped to be maimed, mutilated of soul? Yes, and how many have I
helped to kill?
For I have been teaching, for a number of years, the “Technique of
Short Story-Writing,” and my guidance and judgment have meant life and
death to countless stories born in the breasts and minds of trustful
people. I have been the great discourager and encourager of genius and
quasi-genius, and I know my hands are not without stain of literary
blood.
I am not reproaching myself. Among the many hundreds of men and women
who derive their daily bread and clothes and gasoline by directing
the story-fancy of the country’s million or more literary aspirants,
I class myself among the most conscientious and least harmful. The
share of injury I may have contributed has simply been the unavoidable
accompaniment of being engaged in a profession grounded upon the
popular belief that literature is a trade, like plumbing, or tailoring,
or hod-carrying, and requires but an understanding of the stupendous
emoluments involved and a will to learn. That it is in the interests
of the profession to foster and perpetuate this popular belief needs
no elaborate substantiation. But that the belief itself should be
based on a measure of solid truth is a sardonic phenomenon calling for
enlightening discussion.
Professor Arlo Bates in one of his talks on writing English once
said: “Given a reasonable intelligence and sufficient patience, any
man with the smallest gifts may learn to write at least marketable
stuff, and may earn an honest livelihood, if he studies the taste of
the least exacting portion of the public, and accommodates himself
to the whim of the time.” It is the business of my profession to
dedicate its services to the promotion of the production of this
“marketable stuff,” and to elevate its own calling it has blatantly
labeled this product as “literature.” With this end in view numerous
textbooks have been written, thousands of magazine articles have been
published, and millions of copies of pamphlets and other advertising
matter distributed broadcast over the country. The magic slogan is
“Writers are made--not born!” Then follows a “heart-to-heart” talk on
the advantages of a literary career, and the flourishing of some dozen
notable successes, measured in formidable numbers of dollars received,
usually headed by Jack London and ending with Fannie Hurst or some
still more recent “arrival,” and finally concluding with the weighty
query, explicitly propounded or subtly implied: “Why aren’t you a story
writer?”
The young man or young woman just out of the gray portals of some
fresh-water college and not knowing what to turn to next, or the
insipid clerk dreaming over his ledger, or her typewriter, of some
Tyltyl cap thus suddenly comes into possession of a startling idea.
Why not be a story writer? The work does not seem hard; compensation
is said to be good; and one is master of one’s own time and destiny.
The would-be casts his lot on the side of practical reasoning, pays in
a sum of money to a school of fiction-writing or enrolls for a course
with one of our universities, buys a typewriter on the installment
plan, and begins to collect editorial rejection slips. When the course
is completed another one is taken up, perhaps with another school, thus
crediting all lack of achievement to the insufficiency or inefficiency
of the instruction received so far, and the typewriter continues
to click and the periodic comings of the postman are again awaited
eagerly; for hadn’t a major part of the instruction been devoted to the
inculcation of the conviction that the world is exceedingly tardy in
extending its acknowledgment of genius? Why, think of Jack London; read
his “Martin Eden”--biographical, you know. Then, Masefield, dishwashing
in New York, and returning to England to become the foremost poet of
the day; and Maupassant working away at his little masterpieces for
seven long years before even venturing to bring them before the cold
light of the unappreciative world; and Kipling, knocking about the
streets of New York with his wonderful Indian stories in his pockets
and no editor or publisher willing to look at them; and Knut Hamsun,
working as a common farm hand in North Dakota, and later as a common
conductor collecting fares on a Chicago street-car line, finally
returning to his native Norway to fame and fortune and, ultimately, to
a Nobel prize in literature. Then think of our own more recent story
writers--Hergesheimer, writing away in obscurity for fourteen years;
Fannie Hurst, submitting thirty-five stories to one periodical and
succeeding with the thirty-sixth--and now receiving $1800 for every
short story she writes, you know--etc., etc.
Fully ninety per cent. never do succeed and finally become discouraged
and drop out of the ranks. Of the other ten per cent. many live to
see their names in print over a story or poem or article in some
obscure periodical, while a few ultimately become our best sellers and
their names adorn the conspicuous pages in our most popular fiction
periodicals. Among the ninety per cent. are the hopelessly incompetent,
with a sprinkling of artistic idealists who utterly fail to accommodate
themselves to the taste of the public and the whim of the time. Among
the ten per cent. are the keen, shrewd, practical craftsmen who are
able to get at the spirit of the literary mart. To the chosen ones
among these comes the adulation of the populace and the golden shekels
blazing a glittering path across the pages of special feature articles
in our Sunday newspapers. And these are the writers who justify my
profession in spreading the gospel that one needs but a will to learn
to achieve a successful literary career.
If, with some such unpopular fellow as Nietzsche, we should rise to
a sublime pinnacle of contemptuous detachment, we might say that the
ninety per cent. of failures do not deserve our pity. It is best for
a fighting, competitive world that weaklings and incompetents are
failures. We might even say that the few artistic idealists among them
deserve no better. Life is a process of adaptation and compromise and,
among men, a pair of sturdy legs are of greater utility than a pair
of feeble wings. Perhaps there is a stern justice in the fate of a
Chatterton or, say, a François Villon. But is it not equally possible
that by the grim, whimsical jugglings of the gods a mist may sometimes
envelop the battlefield of men, such let us say, as brought confusion
to the last hordes of the noble Arthur, when
“... friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;
... and in the mist
Was many a noble deed, many a base,
And chance and craft...”?
Verily, such a “death-white” mist does envelop our literary
battlefield, and, in the confusion, my profession, supported by the
vast majority of editors and professional critics, is aiding the weak
to conquer the strong. Blinded by the mist, we aid aspirants to rise
to power by craft and cunning, and when they emerge to reign for a
single day we crown them, thus contributing to the future nothing but
the dust of our petty kings. Those who would reign for centuries are
jeered at, discouraged, vanquished.
A dozen names leap to mind--pathetic examples of great talent forced
to decay, of great sincerity diluted and polluted, of noble fires
extinguished. But of all these names the two most pregnant with tragedy
are those of Mark Twain and Jack London. The author of “Huckleberry
Finn” and “Tom Sawyer,” deep, penetrating, cynical, was obliged to
play the amusing clown until the end. The author of “The Call of the
Wild” and “Martin Eden” until his dying breath continued to fill his
lucrative contracts with popular claptrap. If no one in particular can
be blamed, the sickly light shining upon our literary firmament must
take responsibility. There are formative years when a writer’s talent
matures, mellows, is molded. The attitude of the populace and, above
all, of the oracles on the mountains and in the temples is eagerly
watched and heeded. In the case of Jack London the influence of this
attitude as a determining factor in the evolution of his career is a
matter of record. One of the editors of _The Seven Arts_, a monthly
magazine that was too lofty of purpose and too pure of policy to
continue existence, once invited Jack London to submit any stories he
might have that had failed of acceptance with the popular magazines
because of lack of adaptation. London’s reply was that no such stories
existed, and concluded with a statement that explains very ingenuously
the melancholy disillusionment that pervades the best of his work. “I
don’t mind telling you,” he wrote, “that had the United States been as
kindly toward the short story writer as France has always been kindly,
from the beginning of my writing career I would have written many a
score of short stories quite different from the ones I have written.”[1]
It is clear, of course, to what particular brand of kindliness London
had reference. For the United States is kindly toward the short story
writer, very kindly indeed. It was kindly toward Jack London--but not
in the way of helping him to bring forth the best that was in him.
And this was his tragedy--and therein lies the unkindliness of the
United States toward all its short story writers. It wanted none of
the work of Jack London the man with a soul and genuine emotions which
burned for expression; it remunerated lavishly Jack London the writer
chap for his artificial concoctions that he despised. It made Joseph
Hergesheimer wait fourteen years for the most moderate recognition
while giving such a writer as H. C. Witwer almost instantaneous
acclaim. It calls Ellis Parker Butler a great humorist and George Ade
a mere fable writer. It proclaims O. Henry a prince of story writers
and doesn’t even know that the unfortunate Ambrose Bierce once lived
among us. And the vast majority of priests and oracles in my profession
persist in justifying and perpetuating this kind unkindliness and in
instructing the new generation according to its tenets. Example par
excellence: Speaks an instructor in story writing in one of our leading
universities, in a critical and biographical survey of our short story
writers, of “Robert W. Chambers, imaginative artist,” and of Jack
London, “at best a third-rate writer.”[2]
The sum and substance of all we preach may be summarized in the one
commandment we zealously enforce above all others: “Thou shalt not
write anything an editor won’t buy.” Then we analyze what editors do
buy, arriving, by the process of induction, at rules and regulations,
which we promptly proceed to incorporate into textbooks for the
unlettered. Some of our rules are flexible, others are not, depending
solely upon the attitude of their compiler. An editor of a prominent
periodical once outlined the qualifications that recommended a literary
offering to him. He had set up before him an ideal reader, an imaginary
lady with a family of daughters up in Vermont, and any manuscript
submitted to him had to answer satisfactorily this mighty query:
“Would the old lady want her daughters to read this?” If this editor
happened to write a textbook for the instruction of the would-be story
writer, the old-lady-and-daughters question would undoubtedly figure
quite prominently therein. I am not aware of any textbook on the
subject by this gentleman, but other writers have had this question, or
similar ones, in mind in evolving laws for the would-be successful.
I admit that I have taught people to answer these mighty queries,
before permitting them to entrust their precious wares to the Post
Office. For most editors have a question of some sort-- Will it please
some imaginary old man, or country girl, or young parson, or the
editor’s own blue-eyed little girl, or, especially, his advertisers;
and when a man or a woman pays hard-earned dollars for the information
of how to “get by” the unfriendly editor, my professional ethics demand
that I supply this information to the limits of my knowledge. Moreover,
when a man or a woman hands in a story which has no earthly chance
of being accepted by any magazine because it is burdened with a soul
which violates every tradition and rule and policy by which magazines
are governed, it becomes my duty to enlighten this student that his
is not the way to “get by.” For even such a student--an exception,
to be sure--has read our advertising literature, has studied the
popular psychology of success, and often, like the other plodders,
sincerely believes that a published story is a masterpiece, a rejected
one worthless. If a story brings five dollars it is a poor one; if it
brings fifty it is a good one; if it brings five hundred it is a work
of art. Getting-by, then, becomes the supreme problem, and getting-by
means having in mind the old lady with her daughters or the old man
with the gout. And who can answer what becomes of poor Lafcadio Hearn’s
queer idea that
“Literary success of any enduring kind is made only by refusing to
do what publishers want, by refusing to write what the public want,
by refusing to accept any popular standard, by refusing to write
anything to order”?
Poor, poor indeed!