The Development of The American Short Story | Dartmouth Alumni Magazine | December, 1923

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.