The Best Short Stories of 1915, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story. Various
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“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 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 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 a short story whose immediate publication in book form elsewhere 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.
I suppose there can be no doubt that “Zelig” is by all odds the most nobly conceived and finely wrought story of the year. It is a peculiar satisfaction to find again this year, as in 1914, that the best story is the work of an unknown author. Mr. Rosenblatt’s story is in my opinion even more satisfying as a report of life than Mr. Conrad Richter’s “Brothers of No Kin,” which I felt to be the best story published during 1914. The American public is indebted to Professor Albert Frederick Wilson, of the New York University School of Journalism for the discovery and encouragement of Mr. Rosenblatt’s literary genius. Professor Wilson’s service to American literature in this matter should be adequately acknowledged.
The Bellman, in which “Zelig” appeared, is remarkable for the brilliance and power of its fiction. My averages this year show clearly that its percentage of distinctive stories is nearly double that of the American weekly which most nearly approaches it. The quality of the Bellman’s poetry is a matter of national knowledge. It is fully equalled by the Bellman’s fiction, which renders it one of the three or four American periodicals necessary to every student of our spiritual history.
One new periodical and one new short story writer claim unique attention this year for their recent achievement and abundant future promise. A year ago a slender little monthly magazine entitled the Midland was first issued in Iowa City. It attracted very little attention, and in the course of the year published but ten short stories. It has been my pleasure and wonder to find in these ten stories the most vital interpretation in fiction of our national life that many years have been able to show. Since the most brilliant days of the New England men of letters, no such group of writers has defined its position with such assurance and modesty.
One new short story writer has appeared this year whose five published stories open a new field to fiction and have a human richness of feeling and imagination rare in our oversophisticated literature. I refer to the fables of Seumas O’Brien. At first one is struck with their utter absence of form, and then one realizes that this is a conscious art that wanders truant over life and imagination. In Seumas O’Brien I believe that America has found a new humorist of popular sympathies, a rare observer and philosopher whose