The Development of The American Short Story

by Fred Lewis, Pattee '88, New York, Harper and Brothers. 1923.

"The Development of the American Short Story" is a record of the rise to opulence in this country of the "one literary form that America has evolved and presented to the world." The book is frankly an historical survey rather than a book of criticism; it traces the passage of the short story from the days of its pioneer, Washington Irving, and the codifier of its laws, Edgar Allan Poe, through many periods, some of strangeness, not to say suffocation, down to the great culminating time of the nineties and the twentieth century era of "O. Henry and the Handbooks" which rejoices over its apparent discovery that the short story has "all the elements of an exact science, with laws as arbitrary and as multitudinous as those governing bridge whist"; which has adopted as its slogan "Why not be an O. Henry yourself and make money?" and which, Mr. Pattee might well go on to say, tells you, all on one advertising page, of correspondence schools that will teach you how to write correct short stories, how to draw pictures to illustrate them, and how to develop a true salesman's personality so that you can hypnotize any magazine editor into buying your stories whether he really wants to or not.

Mr. Pattee sees his subject steadily and sees it whole. He has made a very real place for himself as a student of American literature and we have come to expect certain definite things of him. He rarely touches a subject of American literature without managing to impart a vivid consciousness of the social forces at work behind the literature; in his attitudes he steers a tolerant middle course between the conscious rectitude of Stuart P. Sherman and the perverse indulgences (to Stuart P. Sherman) of such a critic as, well, let us be conservative and say Mr. John Macy. Mr. Pattee has his enthusiasms and his taboos (O. Henry is not one of the enthusiasms and he attacks O. Henry on almost precisely the same grounds that Mencken does) but he is very much of a humanitarian at heart and he is a sound investigator. Furthermore his sympathies are never chained to the Atlantic seaboard and his writing is never heavy or pedantic, being rather, if you can apply such a term to the technique of writing, contemporary-minded.

In "The Development of the Short Story" Mr. Pattee is true to expectations at almost every point. He gives careful treatment to the few great names that must stand out in any investigation of the subject: Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Bret Harte, Henry James, the various local colorists. He uncovers sources and establishes sound relationships. He is everywhere conscious of the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) give and take of literary influence. It is all good history and Mr. Pattee makes it readable history. But more than anything else he gives a kind of epic view of the tumultuous minor literary life that is always going on around and behind and between the larger figures, life contributed to by vague and drooping writers for the Annuals, those rococo sublimities of the time of N.P. Willis, Tokens and Corals and Gifts of Affection, Snowftakes, Magnolias, and AtlanticSouvenirs, warbling bulbuls in a sugared forest; by. willowy contributors to Godey's and Graham's, among whom one glimpses the entirely astonished figure of Poe; by halfforgotten "one story" writers of the period of dialect and local color, writers who flared but did not burn. All this Mr. Pattee gives us unforgettably. Herein lies the principal achievement of "The Development of the American Short Story;" herein Mr. Pattee does what has not been done before. And his method is never that of the cataloguer, the maker of lists, but always that of the interpreter in the large.

On the subject of the relative value of the short story form Mr. Pattee is reluctant to commit himself. "Has our America evolved an inferior form of expression," he asks, "because of our restlessness and our lack of time as readers to devote to the longer and more elaborate forms of art? Has our climate rendered us scant of breath and capable only of short dashes? And he replies "these questions it is not the province of the literary historian to discuss or even to venture an opinion." Why not? In any event the age is answering part of the question for us. Sherwood Anderson, Joseph Hergesheimer, Willa Cather, Thyra Samter Winslow, Ring Lardner, Theodore Dreiser are some of those who are helping with the answer. The reaction against the era of O. Henry and the cut-to-pattern story has long since set in, more strongly than Mr. Pattee perceives. The machinemade story, the story which emphasizes the "short-cut" both in material and method, the story which can be mathematically demonstrated, which can be taught (to use the word in its principal pernicious sense) is dying rapidly of its own superdevelopment. Everywhere it is disappearing from the magazines. It was, to begin with, merely the ultimate expression in art of the era of commercial efficiency through which we as a nation have passed and against which protest is actively under way. It ,is not unreasonable to interpret the signs as meaning that in the coming years emphasis in the American short story will be placed less and less on organic plot, less and less on situations manipulated from the outside, less and less on form that can be perfectly diagrammed and demonstrated like an algebraic formula, at this point a complication striking in and at that point a definite and authentic climax rearing its head. Emphasis will rather be placed more and more on character and on character not necessarily involved in a conspicuous or "tricky" situation, but going through everyday processes of mind; in other words, being aware. Thus the functions of the short story writer and the novelist will draw closer and closer together. Whether or not in the American short story we have evolved "an inferior form of expression," we have at least evolved a form that in its prsent condition we are dissatisfied with and are getting rid of.

Mr. Edgar S. Winters '16, is the author of "Ma Cheuk" also called "Mah Jong." "Pung Chow" or "Ma Jung" (as played by the Chinese)." This book is published by the E.P. Dutton Company. It is described as "A simple, clear and complete handbook of the great Chinese game serving as a manual for the beginner, and a reference book for the expert." This book is said to differ essentially from other handbooks of the game, in that the author gives the rules and principles of the game as actually played by the Chinese. The book bears a strong endorsement from the Secretary of the Canton (China) Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Winters has lived in China; several years since graduating from. College, and learned the game in Chinese Clubs and from Chinese teachers. Before returning to this country, he issued a small pamphlet on the game which was published in Hongkong. This book published by Dutton is an enlargement of his earlier effort.

The Astro-physical journal for July, 1923, contains an article on Edward Emerson Barnard by Edwin B. Frost '86.

The October issue of the Christian Union Quarterly contains "Preaching Christian Union" by President Ozora S. Davis '89.

The issues of The National Provisioner for September 8th and September 15, 1923, contain articles by Dr. Arthur D. Holmes '06, on "Vitamines and food value in fats."

"Modern Short Speeches," ninety-eight complete examples compiled by James Milton O'Neill '07, has been published by the Century Company.