Produced by David Widger
LITERATURE AND LIFE—Some Anomalies of the Short Story
by William Dean Howells
The interesting experiment of one of our great publishing houses inputting out serially several volumes of short stories, with the hope thata courageous persistence may overcome the popular indifference to suchcollections when severally administered, suggests some questions as tothis eldest form of fiction which I should like to ask the reader'spatience with. I do not know that I shall be able to answer them, orthat I shall try to do so; the vitality of a question that is answeredseems to exhale in the event; it palpitates no longer; curiosity fluttersaway from the faded flower, which is fit then only to be folded away inthe 'hortus siccus' of accomplished facts. In view of this I may wishmerely to state the problems and leave them for the reader's solution,or, more amusingly, for his mystification.
One of the most amusing questions concerning the short story is why aform which is singly so attractive that every one likes to read a shortstory when he finds it alone is collectively so repellent as it is saidto be. Before now I have imagined the case to be somewhat the same asthat of a number of pleasant people who are most acceptable as separatehouseholders, but who lose caste and cease to be desirable acquaintanceswhen gathered into a boarding-house.
Yet the case is not the same quite, for we see that the short story whereit is ranged with others of its species within the covers of a magazineis so welcome that the editor thinks his number the more brilliant themore short story writers he can call about his board, or under the roofof his pension. Here the boardinghouse analogy breaks, breaks sosignally that I was lately moved to ask a distinguished editor why a bookof short stories usually failed and a magazine usually succeeded becauseof them. He answered, gayly, that the short stories in most books ofthem were bad; that where they were good, they went; and he allegedseveral well-known instances in which books of prime short stories had agreat vogue. He was so handsomely interested in my inquiry that I couldnot well say I thought some of the short stories which he had boasted inhis last number were indifferent good, and yet, as he allowed, had mainlyhelped sell it. I had in mind many books of short stories of the firstexcellence which had failed as decidedly as those others had succeeded,for no reason that I could see; possibly there is really no reason in anyliterary success or failure that can be predicted, or applied in anotherBase.
I could name these books, if it would serve any purpose, but, in mydoubt, I will leave the reader to think of them, for I believe that hisindolence or intellectual reluctance is largely to blame for the failureof good books of short stories. He is commonly so averse to anyimaginative exertion that he finds it a hardship to respond to thatpeculiar demand which a book of good short stories makes upon him. Hecan read one good short story in a magazine with refreshment, and apleasant sense of excitement, in the sort of spur it gives to his ownconstructive faculty. But, if this is repeated in ten or twenty stories,he becomes fluttered and exhausted by the draft upon his energies;whereas a continuous fiction of the same quantity acts as an agreeablesedative. A condition that the short story tacitly makes with thereader, through its limitations, is that he shall subjectively fill inthe details and carry out the scheme which in its small dimensions thestory can only suggest; an