The Best Short Stories of 1915 | Page 4

quiet places, usually far from great cities, artists are laboring quietly for
a literary ideal, and the leaven of their achievement is becoming more
and more impressive every day. It is my faith and hope that this annual

volume of mine may do something toward disengaging the honest good
from the meretricious mass of writing with which it is mingled. I find
that editors are beginning to react from the commercialized fiction that
prevails to-day. They are beginning to learn that they are killing the
goose which lays the golden eggs. The commercialized short story
writer has less enthusiasm in writing for editors nowadays. The
"movies" have captured him. Why write stories when scenarios are not
only much less exhausting, but actually more remunerative? The
literary tradesman is peddling his wares in other and wider markets,
and the artistic craftsman is welcomed by the magazines more and
more in his place. As Mr. Colcord points out, we have come at last to
the parting of the ways.
I have undertaken to examine the short stories published in American
magazines during 1914 and 1915 and to report upon my findings. As
the most adequate means to this end, 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 interpretation of it in terms of life, 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 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 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 are also listed in a special "Roll of Honor." Ninety-three
stories published during 1915 are included in this list, and in compiling
it 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