THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1918.
by Various.
INTRODUCTION
In reviewing once more the short stories published in American periodicals during the year, it has been interesting, if partly disappointing, to observe the effect that the war has had upon this literary form. While I believe that this effect is not likely to be permanent, and that the final outcome will be a stiffening of fibre, the fact remains that the short stories published during the past ten months show clearly that the war has numbed most writers" imaginations. This is true, not only of war stories, but of stories in which the war is not directly or indirectly introduced. There has been a marked ebb this year in the quality of the American short story. Life these days is far more imaginative than any fiction can be, and our writers are dazed by its forceful impact. But out of this present confusion a new literature will surely emerge, although the experience we are gaining now will not crystallize into art for at least ten years, and probably not for longer. If this war is to produce American masterpieces, they will be written by men of middle age looking back through the years" perspective upon the personal experience of their youth. Such work, to quote the old formula, must be the product of "emotion remembered in tranquillity."
Not long ago Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, the keenest of the younger critics, was pointing out to us the value of a usable past. Such a usable past has clearly failed us in this emergency, but the war is rapidly creating a new one for us, if we have the vision to make use of it. During the past four years English writers have had such a past to fall back upon, when their minds failed before the stupendous reality of the present, and so they have come off better than we on the whole. It was such a usable past, to point out the most signal instance of it, that inspired Rupert Brooke"s last sonnets, which will always stand as the perfect relation of a n.o.ble past to an unknowable present.
But if we are to make our war experience the beginning of a usable past, we must not sentimentalize it on the one hand, nor denaturalize it objectively on the other. Yet that is precisely what we have been doing for the most part, even in the better war stories of the past year. The superb exception is Wilbur Daniel Steele"s "The Dark Hour," published last May in _The Atlantic Monthly_.
I can do no better than to refer the reader to Henry Seidel Canby"s two admirable articles during the past year, in which he has developed these points far more adequately than I can pretend to do here. In his essay, "On a Certain Condescension Towards Fiction," published in _The Century Magazine_ last January, and in the companion article ent.i.tled "Sentimental America," published last April in _The Atlantic Monthly_, he has diagnosed the disease and suggested the necessary cure. While I am not a realist in my sympathies, and while the poetry of life seems to me of more spiritual value than its prose, I cannot help agreeing with Professor Canby that our literary failure, by reason of its sentimentality, is rooted in a suppressed or misdirected idealism, based on a false pragmatism of commercial prosperity, and insisting on ignoring the facts instead of facing and conquering them.
To repeat what I have said in these pages in previous years, for the benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and principles of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists, may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in formulae, and organized criticism at its best would be nothing more than dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead.
What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh living current which flows through the best of our work, and the psychological and imaginative reality which our writers have conferred upon it.
No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination than we display at present.
The present record covers the period from January to October inclusive, 1918. During the past ten months I have sought to select from the stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life imaginatively in organic substance and artistic 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 attain substantial embodiment when the artist"s power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth.
The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative a.n.a.lysis is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently called the test of substance.
But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist 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, as in previous years, 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 yearbook without comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they 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 yearbook index by a single asterisk prefixed to the t.i.tle.
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 yearbook index by two asterisks prefixed to the t.i.tle.
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 such sincerity that these stories may fairly claim a position in our literature. If all of these stories by American authors were republished, they would not occupy more s.p.a.ce than five novels of average length. My selection of them does not imply the critical belief that they are great stories. It is simply to be taken as meaning that I have found the equivalent of five volumes worthy of republication among all the stories published between January first and October thirty-first, 1918. These stories are indicated in the yearbook index by three asterisks prefixed to the t.i.tle, and are listed in the special "Rolls of Honor." In compiling these lists, I have permitted no personal preference or prejudice to influence my judgment consciously for or against a story. To the t.i.tles of certain stories, however, in the "Rolls of Honor," an asterisk is prefixed, and this asterisk, I must confess, reveals in some measure a personal preference. 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, nor a translation from a foreign author. 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.
The Yearbook for 1918 contains three new features. I have compiled an index of all short stories published in a selected list of volumes issued during the year; another index is devoted to critical articles on the short story, and noteworthy reviews published in English and American magazines and newspapers this year; and I have added exact volume and page references to the index of short stories published in American magazines.
As in past years it has been my pleasure and honor to a.s.sociate this annual with the names of Benjamin Rosenblatt, Richard Matthews Hallet, and Wilbur Daniel Steele, whose stories, "Zelig," "Making Port," and "Ching, Ching, Chinaman," seemed to me respectively the best short stories of 1915, 1916, and 1917, so it is my wish this year to dedicate the best that I have found in the American magazines as the fruit of my labors to Arthur Johnson, whose stories, "The Little Family," "His New Mortal Coil," and "The Visit of the Master" seem to me to be among the finest imaginative contributions to the short story made by an American artist this year.
_Edward J. O"Brien._
_Ba.s.s River, Ma.s.sachusetts_, November 6, 1918.
THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1918
A SIMPLE ACT OF PIETY
_By_ ACHMED ABDULLAH From _The All-Story Weekly_ _Copyright, 1918, by The Frank A. Munsey Co._ _Copyright, 1919, by Achmed Abdullah._
His affair that night was prosy. He was intending the murder of an old Spanish woman around the corner, on the Bowery, whom he had known for years, with whom he had always exchanged courteous greetings, and whom he neither liked nor disliked.
He did kill her; and she knew that he was going to the minute he came into her stuffy, smelly shop, looming tall and bland, and yellow, and unearthly Chinese from behind the shapeless bundles of second-hand goods that cluttered the doorway. He wished her good evening in tones that were silvery, but seemed tainted by something unnatural. She was uncertain what it was, and this very uncertainty increased her horror.
She felt her hair rise as if drawn by a shivery wind.
At the very last she caught a glimmer of the truth in his narrow-lidded, purple-black eyes. But it was too late.
The lean, curved knife was in his hand and across her scraggy throat-there was a choked gurgle, a crimson line broadening to a crimson smear, a thudding fall-and that was the end of the affair as far as she was concerned.
A minute later Nag Hong Fah walked over to the other end of Pell Street and entered a liquor-store which belonged to the Chin Sor Company, and was known as the "Place of Sweet Desire and Heavenly Entertainment." It was the gathering-place for the Chinese-born members of the Nag family, and there he occupied a seat of honor because of his wealth and charity and stout rect.i.tude.
He talked for about half an hour with the other members of his clan, sipping fragrant, sun-dried Formosa tea mixed with jessamine-flowers, until he had made for himself a bullet-proof alibi.
The alibi held.
For he is still at liberty. He is often heard to speak with regret-nor is it hypocritical regret-about the murder of Senora Garcia, the old Spanish woman who kept the shop around the corner. He is a good customer of her nephew, Carlos, who succeeded to her business. Nor does he trade there to atone, in a manner, for the red deed of his hands, but because the goods are cheap.
He regrets nothing. To regret, you must find sin in your heart, while the murder of Senora Garcia meant no sin to him. It was to him a simple action, respectable, even worthy.
For he was a Chinaman, and, although it all happened between the chocolate-brown of the Hudson and the murky, cloudy gray of the North River, the tale is of the Orient. There is about it an atmosphere of age-green bronze; of first-chop chandoo and spicy aloe-wood; of gilt, carved statues brought out of India when Confucius was young; of faded embroideries, musty with the scent of the dead centuries. An atmosphere which is very sweet, very gentle-and very unhuman.
The Elevated roars above. The bluecoat shuffles his flat feet on the greasy asphalt below. But still the tale is of China-and the dramatic climax, in a Chinaman"s story, from a Chinaman"s slightly twisted angle, differs from that of an American.
To Nag Hong Fah this climax came not with the murder of Senora Garcia, but with f.a.n.n.y Mei Hi"s laugh as she saw him with the shimmering bauble in his hands and heard his appraisal thereof.
She was his wife, married to him honorably and truly, with a narrow gold band and a clergyman and a bouquet of wired roses bought cheaply from an itinerant Greek vendor, and handfuls of rice thrown by facetious and drunken members of both the yellow race and the white.
Of course, at the time of his marriage, a good many people around Pell Street whispered and gossiped. They spoke of the curling black smoke and slavery and other gorgeously, romantically wicked things. Miss Edith Rutter, the social settlement investigator, spoke of-and to-the police.
Whereas Nag Hong Fah, who had both dignity and a sense of humor, invited them all to his house: gossipers, whisperers, Miss Edith Rutter, and Detective Bill Devoy of the Second Branch, and bade them look to their hearts" content; and whereas they found no opium, no sliding panels, and hidden cupboards, no dread Mongol mysteries, but a neat little steam-heated flat, furnished by Grand Rapids via Fourteenth Street, German porcelain, a case of blond Milwaukee beer, a five-pound humidor of shredded Kentucky burlap tobacco, a victrola, and a fine, big Bible with bra.s.s clamp and edges and M. Dore"s ill.u.s.trations.
"Call again," he said as they were trooping down the narrow stairs.
"Call again any time you please. Glad to have you-aren"t we, kid?"
chucking his wife under the chin.
"You bet yer life, you fat old yellow sweetness!" agreed f.a.n.n.y; and then-as a special barbed shaft leveled at Miss Rutter"s retreating back: "Say! Any time yer wanta lamp my wedding certificate-it"s hangin"
between the fottygraphs of the President and the Big Boss-all framed up swell!"
He had met her first one evening in a Bowery saloon, where she was introduced to him by Mr. Brian Neill, the owner of the saloon, a gentleman from out the County Armagh, who had spattered and muddied his proverbial Irish chast.i.ty in the slime of the Bowery gutters, and who called himself her uncle.