The Best Short Stories of 1915 | Page 3

and its
technique becomes more and more assured and competent.
Accordingly it seems advisable to undertake a study of the American
short story from year to year as it is represented in the American

periodicals which care most to develop its art and its audiences, and to
appraise so far as may be the relative achievement of author and
magazine in the successful fulfilment of this aim.
We have listened to much wailing during the past year about the
absence of all literary qualities in our fiction. We have been judged by
Englishmen and Irishmen who do not know our work and by
Americans who do know it. We have been appraised at our real worth
by Mr. Edward Garnett, who is probably the only English critic
competent through sufficient acquaintance to discuss us. Mr. Owen
Wister and Mr. Henry Sydnor Harrison have discussed us with each
other, and bandied names to and fro rather uncritically. And Mr. Robert
Herrick has endeavored to reassure us kindly and a little wistfully. Mr.
Stephens has scolded us, and Mr. Howells and Mr. Alden have
counselled us wisely. And many others have ventured opinions and
offered judgment. The general verdict against American literature is
Guilty! Is this wise? Is this just?
Twelve years ago, if the public had been sufficiently interested, such a
dispute might have arisen about American poetry. If it had arisen, the
jury would probably have shouted "Guilty!" with one voice. We had no
faith in our poetry, and we were afraid of enthusiasm. It was not good
form. One or two poets refused to despair of the situation. They
affirmed their faith in our spiritual and imaginative substance
persistently and in the face of apathy and discouragement. They made
us believe in ourselves, and now American poetry is at the threshold of
a new era. It is more vital than contemporary English poetry.
Has the time not come at last to cease lamenting the pitiful gray
shabbiness of American fiction? We say that we have no faith in it, and
we judge it by the books and stories that we casually read. If we are
writers of fiction ourselves, perhaps we judge it by personal and
temperamental methods and preferences, just as certain groups of
American poets of widely different sympathies judge the poetry of their
contemporaries to-day. Let us affirm our faith anyhow in our own
spiritual substance. Let us believe in our materials and shape them
passionately to a creative purpose. Let us be enthusiastic about life

around us and the work that is being done, and in much less than
twelve years from now a jury of novelists and critics will pronounce a
very different verdict on American fiction from their verdict of to-day.
During the past year I have read over twenty-two hundred short stories
in a critical spirit, and they have made me lastingly hopeful of our
literary future. A spirit of change is acting on our literature. There is a
fresh living current in the air. The new American spirit in fiction is
typically voiced by such a man as Mr. Lincoln Colcord in a letter from
which I have his permission to quote.
"There are many signs," he writes, "that literature in America stands at
a parting of ways. The technical-commercial method has been fully
exploited, and, I think, found wanting in essential results, although it is
a step toward higher things. The machinery for a great literature stands
ready. The public taste is now being created. Add to this, the period in
our national life: we are coming to our artistic maturity. Add the
profound social transition that was upon us before the war. And add
any factor you may choose for what may come after the war; for I think
that momentous events stand on the threshold of the world.
"The main trouble with the fellows who are writing in America to-day
is that they write too much--or rather, publish too much. A writer
should be very glad to accept a small income for many years; he should
deliberately keep his fortunes within bounds; and take his time. All this
would have been a truism fifty years ago; the machinery for the other
thing didn't exist, and something in the way of a natural condition kept
him in the simple path. But I don't find fault with the machinery; the
wider field and the larger figures are a direct boon to us. They do,
however, impose an added strain upon our sincerity."
I like to believe that the American writer is stiffening himself more and
more to meet this strain. Commercialization has never affected any
literature more than it has affected the American short story in the past.
It is affecting our writing more than ever to-day. But here and there in