The short-story, its principles and structure

Preface

The aim of this book is not to trace the origin or the development of the short- story, but to set forth some standards of appreciation of what is good in story-writing, illustrating by the practice of the masters as contrasted with amateurish failures : this with the view of rousing the student to a more lively interest in his reading, and of awakening such a wholesome spirit of self-criticism as shall enable him to improve his own workmanship, should he feel called to write.

It is expected that one who undertakes to study or to write short-stories will become acquainted at first hand with the masterpieces of this art. With this in view, a reading-list has been appended, roughly classified in parallel arrangement with the topics studied in the text. The list includes, besides a number of stories generally recognized as great, a fairly representative selection from recent magazines. It is the author's belief that not only the masterpiece but the story which is moderately good can be made a profitable study in construction for the beginner. But it has been the aim to viii PREFACE

lay due stress, within the text, on those elements of greatness which distinguish the masterpiece from the average short-story.

The books which I have found most useful are referred to in the footnotes, and listed in the bibliographical note at the close. Special acknowledgment is due Professor William E. Smyser for helpful criticism. But my heaviest debt is to Mr. James Weber Linn and Mr. Nott Flint for their suggestive courses in the short-story given

at the University of Chicago.

E. M. A.

Delaware, Ohio, Sept. i, 1906.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introductory i

II. Gathering Material .... 14

Chapter I

From the dawn of intellect some form of story-telling has held the foremost place in human interest. A mere glance over the history of literatures reveals their narrative foundations. The place of the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," of the songs of the troubadours in France and the minnesingers in Germany, and of the chronicles and ballads of old England, is too well recognized to need special comment. What is perhaps more significant is the fact that, amid the multiplication of literary themes and literary forms, story-telling has continued to hold its own even to our day, and promises to take a yet higher place in the literature of the coming age. Narration in its varied form and matter claims the interest of every thinking man. The story holds this vast audience because it is so wholly human and furnishes a concrete, practical, personal, and infinitely sympathetic medium of expression.

b i

Out of this commonest and most popular form of expression special forms have gradually shaped themselves: history, biography, epic poetry, drama, and prose fiction. And prose fiction, possibly the largest, loosest form of narrative, has separated at length into two great branches representative of two main moods and tendencies; namely, the realistic novel and the romance.

Until very recently the term novel has been taken loosely as covering almost all varieties of fiction, including the long, loose picaresque novel or tale of adventure characteristic of one branch of early eighteenth- century fiction, the bold and powerful pictures of contemporary life sketched by Richardson and Fielding and Smollett and culminating in the splendid realism of William Thackeray ; and the perennial romance, with its glamour of far away, tracing its small beginnings back even farther than Sidney's "Arcadia," suffering suppression through the realistic genius of the eighteenth century, springing out again in Horace Walpole and Anne Radcliffe, and finding its true blossoming time in the age of Walter Scott. The history of these larger pieces of fiction has been that of successive waves of realism and romance. But to-day we are at a standstill, seeing for the first time an approach to equality in the products of these opposing schools.

There are novels and novels, — for the novel-mill is working overtime, — but there is no one preeminently great novel of the day.

It is very probable that the lack of one predominant type of novel may have had something to do with the increased interest in a hitherto neglected form of fiction. For the short-story has only recently been seen to have definite characteristics and become recognized as a distinctive work of art. It has been hinted that the short- story, when it shall have enlisted the best efforts of our greatest writers, may become more popular than the novel — that it may even displace the novel altogether. But this fear is not well grounded, inasmuch as the short- story aspires more and more definitely to the fulfilling of a distinct mission of its own, and is therefore becoming more and more sharply differentiated from the novel. The good novel never can suffer displacement by the good short-story, because their fields are different. So that it is hardly worth while to discuss the relative merits of novel and short-story as food for the emotions. One might as profitably compare the abstract values of lean meats and vegetables. Both have their special uses. And there is little danger that the growing interest in the short-story will take away the interest of the thoughtful reader in the novel. Giving, as it does, but the condensed essence of life, the short-story as an exclusive diet would be likely to produce a sort of "emotional dyspepsia" in the interested reader.

The short- story is not, as many think it, a new kind of composition. It is old — quite as old as the form of fiction which we call the novel. Indeed, I am inclined to think, with Canby,1 that it is very much older than the novel. The Book of Ruth, written about 450 B.C., is essentially a short-story. Some twenty-three hundred years have affected the technique of story-writing, bringing about in some directions such a remarkable development as to make plausible the assertion that the short-story is a nineteenth-century product. But twenty- three hundred years have not sufficed to rob this simple narrative of story interest for readers of to-day. The facts of the case are, that the short-story appeared in occasional excellence even before the time of the first novel worthy of the name; but the short-story waited almost a century longer than the novel for its period of development as a special form of art. The historical point worth noting is, that the short-story is not in its origin an outgrowth or an offshoot from the novel, although it is frequently spoken of as if it were a mere by-product of the novelist's art.

1 The student should read the excellent introduction to Jessup and Canby's "The Book of the Short-Story," printed separately in the Yale Studies in English.

The short-story has, however, so much in com- ■ mon with the novel that it is worth while to try to mark off a boundary line. The novel aims to represent „ a large period or the whole of some particular life or lives ; the short-story is a fragment. The novelist, endeavoring to render life in all its fulness, portrays exhaustively details which an artistic story-teller instinctively avoids. Where the realistic novel / is complete, the short-story is suggestive. In the handling of material, then, the most striking difference between the novel and the short-story is that the problem of selection, or of suggestive omission and compression, is for the short-story writer of supreme importance. For the short-story can never, like the novel, give us the whole of life. It can only aim to present, in a vigorous, compressed, suggestive way, a simplification and idealization of a particular part or phase of life. In following out this more limited and specific aim, the short-story has necessarily a simpler and more clever plot: action more continuous, more coherent, more significant for characterization ; time and place and point of view generally the same throughout; characters fewer and more striking, and presented under more unusual circumstances. In a word, the short-story has a unity that can be distinctly felt. The novel may or may not have one fundamental idea as its basis:

/ a fundamental idea of some sort is for the short - story, in the modern sense of the term, an absolute prerequisite. For the short-story of to-day aims not merely to recount a series of interesting, events in chronological or logical order, but to create a vivid picture of a bit of life in such a way as to render a preconceived idea or impression. It has for its material not merely people and events, but people in their relations to one another and to their environment. In a word, the short-story material is a single situation.1 The modern short-story differs

, in this respect from the novel, and also from the simple narrative or tale from which it sprang. The novel is concerned with life histories ; and the simple narrative or tale, with an interesting sequence of events. The short-story, on the other hand, only suggests life histories by retrospect or hint of future or by presenting determining crises in the lives of characters ; and it uses its series of events in accordance with a dominating motive, to render the impression of a situation.

*r Brander Matthews, in his "Philosophy of the Short-Story," lays great stress on this unity of impression — what Poe calls the "effect of totality" — as the mark of distinction between the short-

1 For fuller development of this idea, see Canby's "The Modern Short-Story," Dial, Sept. i, 1904.

story and the novel. And Canby, carrying the distinction still further, says that it is the deliberate and conscious use 0) impressionistic methods, together with* the increasing emphasis on situation, that distinguishes the short-story of to-day from the tale or simple narrative and makes it seem a new work of art.

Limitation of range of material to a single situation in the lives of the main characters furnishes a fundamental unity of design. The typical short-story embodies a theme so simple as to demand no subdivisions. Very rarely will there be major and minor characters in groups, as in the novel; and almost never will there be anything like an underplot or secondary line of interest. It is only by such strict limitation of aim and subject-matter that the short-story can attain that complete and rounded unity which makes it, in the hands of a master artist, capable of a perfection of form that is almost lyric.

But the tremendous variety of motives possible to the short-story, and the wide range of material from which themes may be drawn, render it impossible to crystallize the story in any definite shape. Capable of very fine effects in miniature, the short-story is still the "most flexible literary form," and therefore the least amenable to rules. Partly because of this lack of definite form, and partly because it is miniature work, the short-story has been altogether neglected by many masters of the larger form of fiction. But the fact that very few writers besides Stevenson and Kipling have had anything like equal success in the novel and the short-story, leads one to think that the two are distinct forms of art, demanding, if not different kinds of genius, at least very different habitual focussing of the imagination. It is true that many great novelists have trained their wings through these shorter flights. But it is equally true that the short-story, requiring, as it does, no sustained flight of the imagination, but rather concentration on a single issue, has somehow come to be regarded as work most suitable for novices. The variety of motives and perhaps the very lack of anything like uniformity in style and structure have made the short-story a perennially tempting field for amateurs. These are some of the reasons why short-story literature, though almost as old as time, contains so many specimens that are good, but so few that stand out as preeminently great. And the fact that the short-story has only recently emerged from the shadow of its sister arts and come into the field of criticism as a distinct artistic form is sufficient to account for the widespread lack of even such fundamental standards of appreciation as are necessary to enable one to distinguish between the story which is readable, enjoyable, — even profitable, perhaps, — and that which deserves perpetuation as a masterpiece of fiction.

THE SHORT-STORY AND THE DRAMA

In scope and style, if not in subject-matter, the short-story of to-day is as nearly akin to the drama as to the novel. Indeed, it would seem that the growing emphasis on situation rather than a mere sequence of interesting events, the marked preference for presenting crises in the lives of characters, and the " deliberate and conscious use of impressionistic methods" must have been derived in great measure from a study of the technique of the drama.- The story- writer, like the dramatist, is compelled by lack of space to present his situation effectively in a few strong strokes, and to render his main characters prominent in their true relations to each other and to their whole environment without the aid of many groups of lesser characters and without the background of a long series of minor events which prepare for and emphasize the climax. The artificial isolation of a limited number of people and events, the artistic heightening of dialogue, the concentration on a single issue, the vivid picturing of a scene that is significant, are essentially dramatic. In a word, the drama is largely responsible for the brilliant technique which is one of the distinguishing features of modern story- writing. Strictly dramatic form is a drawback to the story; but the dramatic way of looking at a situation and many dramatic devices for heightening its effectiveness are not only useful but almost essential to the impression story of to-day. So that, in motive, in methods, and in its stimulating effect upon the imagination of the reader, the vivid impressionistic story is more nearly akin to the drama than to the novel. The main difference between the story motive and that of drama is that the story may treat a more commonplace theme and a less striking situation, with a climax less significant and intense. In concentration, the story ranks about midway between the novel and the drama.

RELATION TO SHORTER FORMS OF FICTION

It has been sufficiently emphasized that the short-story is not a cut-down novel and not a variety of prose drama. Neither is it an expanded anecdote, nor a mere narrative tale, nor a development of the informal essays of Addison and Steele. Its motive is more complex than that of the anecdote, more specific than that of the narrative tale, and less di-

INTRODUCTORY n

dactic than that of the character-sketches of the Tatler and Spectator papers.

The anecdote is clearly distinguished from the short-story by Ho wells, when he says:1 "The anecdote is palpably simple and single. It offers an illustration of character, or records a moment of action; the novella (short-story) embodies a drama and develops a type."

The term tale, in its old-fashioned meaning, was almost as broad as narration itself, including loosely not only most forms of the short-story then in vogue, but also much of the larger fiction which we now class under the terms novel, novelette, and romance. The style of the old tale was rambling, discursive; the subject-matter might be almost anything. At the call of a busy age, this loose, scattering sort of narrative gave way to short, sharp, strong, and clever bits of narrative distinguished by their unity, compression, and suggestive power. The term tale gave way to the term short-story as all-inclusive of this new branch of literature ; but the name itself, though greatly changed and restricted, did not die away. It is now applied to a particular form of the short- story.

The tale of to-day is the story of a single incident or episode. The more stirring the incident, and the

1 " Some Anomalies of the Short-Story," North American, September, 1901.

more pungent the style, the better the tale; for the interest of the tale is centred wholly in the action. Essential to the tale is absolute simplicity of plot and singleness of purpose. Suspense, surprise and climax, and careful handling of the action as to speed, intensity, and outcome, are all desirable if the subject-matter permits. But the distinguishing feature of the tale of to-day is its strict unity and its limitation to a single incident.

The short-story in its modern form began in the short, simple narrative which showed more or less conscious selection of significant details, with limitation of time, place, and number of characters, resulting in the unity that is a necessary accompaniment of simplicity of style and omission and compression. During the nineteenth century there came a marked and widespread development of the art of story-writing, resulting in what seemed a distinct nineteenth-century type. America, France, and Germany were the leaders in this movement. France best mastered the impressionistic methods; but the work of Irving and Hawthorne and Poe is of such importance that it gives America even to-day a claim to preeminence in this distinctively modern form of art. The short-story has been essayed in all great literatures; but it has its homes in America and France.

Canby says, in his essay on "The Modern Short- Story," in the Dial (Sept. 15, 1904) : "The change in thought and feeling which has produced a more subtle, more analytic mind, that shifting of interests which has given the nineteenth century a distinctly individual tone, is the result of some mental evolution which has not been thoroughly analyzed. But this new method of story-telling is as dependent upon it, and upon what lies behind it, as nature poetry, or the psychological novel, or any other reflection of man's mind which is more characteristic of an age than of those which have preceded it."

CHAPTER II GATHERING ^ATEJilAL

One can give no more than hints as to possible sources of material for stories. To tabulate these sources would be as absurd as to instruct a painter how to see a picture in the faces and attitudes of the people he meets on the streets, where to see the possibility of a striking model, how to gather a landscape from the massing of clouds and trees and the sweeping slope of a valley-side. For the story- writer's subjects are infinitely diverse.

The natural story-teller finds his motives everywhere. He differs from other people only in his attitude toward his daily experience. He is ever alert to the dramatic situations that are constantly appearing to those who have the appreciative eye, and ever busy reflecting on the essential significance of these dramatic situations. It is his delight to observe and note the fresh, the striking, the unusual or interesting phases of the human life about him, to turn them over in his mind till they have taken definite new form, and send them forth again — his own creation. The trained story-writer leaves off reading even his daily newspaper with his mind teeming with ideas, some of which may eventually suggest a story to him. A poem or an incident from a novel may be rich in imaginative association, suggesting a train of thought related but nevertheless distinct. Better still, every significant though trivial experience of its own has its story value for him. He seems to be lying in wait for happenings. To test a Berlin system, Mark Twain deliberately threw away his street-car ticket fifteen times, and each time was required to pay his fare. He made five hundred dollars from the story which he based upon this simple incident.

We say that a good story- writer must have imagination ; but what do we mean by imagination ? Is it some rare, God-given faculty or talent, completed at the start, or is it a power of the mind common to us all, but in some stronger and finer and more perfectly trained? Rather the latter. For, granted that there are a few people in the world who are essentially dull, practical, commonplace, — or, as we generally say, unimaginative, — the great majority of people have imaginations which are sleeping or starving or actively at work in some unprofitable, perhaps insane, direction. The question is, how to feed and regulate the imagination so that it shall be not only sane and healthy, but productive of something of aesthetic or utilitarian value.

Modern psychology has done much to simplify our ideas of this mysterious power that we call the imagination; and it has rendered education an invaluable service in emphasizing the now familiar fact that imagination, being a process, must have materials to work on. It is not worth while to -set about the work of training the imagination until you have begun to feed it. This means, very simply, appreciating the value of the senses as avenues for getting fresh material. "How few materials," says Emerson, "are yet used by our arts ! The mass of creatures and qualities are still hid and expectant."

The need of careful and accurate observation cannot be too often pointed out. Most of us use our eyes a little now and then, but let the other senses sleep. Burroughs, in one of his outdoor essays, likens the perceptive faculties to a trap, delicately and lightly set. But those of most of us, he says, "are so rusty that only a bear would suffice to spring the trap." It is true that most of us, instead of being alert with all our senses, are habitually preoccupied so that we miss all but the great and startling incidents of the life about us. A study of the beautiful descriptions by the great poets and prose writers will do much to convince the doubter that fine literary effects rest back very often upon fine observation as a basis. Whether it be a realistic sketch of everyday life or purest fantasy or romance, no story will appeal to human beings unless it is grounded on a keen observation of the essential phases of actual human nature in its actual environment. For psychology has told us, once for all, that without fact there can be no play of the imagination. Facts about outer life cannot be evolved wholly from within. In the very beginning of his work, then, the story- writer must lay his senses open to the world about him. He must observe the speech and actions of his fellow-men, study their expressions, reflect upon their characters, sympathetically interpret motives, leaping over the bridge of personality and making common cause with other people's feelings. And eventually he must be able to reproduce on the stage of his own mind something of that wonderful interaction by which we human beings are woven and interwoven into the complex web of humanity.

Important as is the gathering of facts through observation, this in itself is no adequate preparation for writing stories. Mere facts about people and their deeds will make narration, but not short-story. Fiction of the higher sort aims at something greater than mere transcription : it aims at original creation.

To this end, it seeks for its material not mere fact with its cold superficial reality, but the kind of fact that embodies the whole of things — a complete human being, mind and soul and body, manner and motive, circumstance and character — such a live, warm fact as the throbbing, pulsing, human life. To this end it aims, too, at comprehending the spirit of the actual and the real rather than its mere external manifestations. The value of facts for fiction lies mainly in what they represent, in the suggestion or meaning they convey.

It follows from this that there are plenty of actualities which never could acquire a story value. As actualities, they may even have the interest of the unusual, the unique, and yet be unavailable for literary purposes. The mere fact that it " happened to have happened so" is not the slightest guarantee of plot success. Sufficient proof of this is furnished in the thrilling narratives of adventure, of whose truth we are so positively assured. The more thrilling the incident, the greater the strain on the credulity of the reader; and, consequently, the finer the skill of the writer if he achieves verisimilitude. No mere actuality can make an improbable incident seem true in fiction. A student wrote a story of a sensational rescue of a somnambulist by a policeman who rushed up to the fourth story of an apartment house, fitted a skeleton key into a door, jumped from a window to a roof, and captured the somnambulist before she could succeed in walking off into the street below. The main incident is narrated thus : — uO 'Sullivan had crept steadily upon her. He noticed a heavy guy wire extending across the street by her side. As she unconsciously stepped forward to her death, he leaped and grasped her with one arm, seizing the guy wire with the other. The shock awoke the young lady. She shrieked in fright and collapsed. By a sharp command, O 'Sullivan brought her to her senses. And, as the wire swayed and creaked under the unusual strain, the young lady climbed on to the roof. In a moment more O 'Sullivan followed."

This story is based on a news paragraph purporting to be true. Nevertheless, the credulity of the reader suffers a heavier strain even than the guy wire. The amateur, confident in the power of mere facts, is prone to rely on them to work out their own plausibility. It might almost be said, without attempt at paradox, that most of the outlandish and impossible plots furnished by young students turn out to be narratives of fact. Truth is sometimes so very much stranger than fiction that it is dangerous to handle it. Take, for instance, another story of adventure. A hospitable old couple received a stranger who asked for a night's lodging. Toward midnight he descended noiselessly to their bedroom, armed with a large knife and a hatchet. "Raising the hatchet, he struck the old lady full in the face. This awakened her husband, who seized the blade of the knife just as it was about to enter his heart. A short struggle ensued. The old lady quickly recovered from the effects of the blow, slipped from her bed, and escaped to the house of a neighbor." The author goes on to remark, naively, "The escape of the old lady so alarmed the burglar that he turned and fled." This proved to be a narrative of fact, but it was not short-story : it sounded more like common lying. Whether he has or has not facts to fall back upon, the story-writer must proceed as if it were his business to "make the thing that is not as the thing that is." The materials may be striking, but they must not seem improbable.

Another potent reason why the story- writer should \ not depend solely on the uniqueness of his facts for \ *5^- interest is, that such facts leave little or no room for originality of treatment or imaginative elaboration. Originality in the handling of facts is mainly a matter of interpreting from an individual point of view. It requires sometimes the reading of a meaning into a situation and interpreting it to other people. The story- writer's aim is, to render the subjective significance of a striking scene, event, or character and, through interpretation, to give it something like a permanent and universal literary value.

One of the most important parts of the author's work is generally done unconsciously. Narration is very dependent on the process of reminiscence. If one remembers a bit of story material, it is generally because it made one definite impression on him. It was surrounded by numerous other items of experience — perhaps so buried in the mass that its meaning was hidden to less sensitive observers ; but to the author it has appealed in some definite way. He remembers that appeal, that impression, above all the insignificant attending circumstances. These he can, perhaps, recall at will ; but they are of small importance, save as they furnish the actual setting. Memory, then, has accented the original impression by discarding the insignificant and secondary, leaving patent only the heart of the situation. Spontaneously, but in accordance with the necessary methods of literary art, the author has moved from complexity to simplicity of material and purpose. He has conceived the aim of conveying a single impression through the presentation of an interesting story situation.

He must now cast about for the best form. It may be that he has added so much of the subjective and personal that the original form is quite out of the question; he must invent for his idea a larger shape. What that shall be, is a new problem for every story.

One of the most important questions of method is, what amount of detail shall be preserved. The use of significant detail is one of the distinctive marks of the short-story. But of course anything like the full presentation is impossible. Only the striking and suggestive must be chosen — the hint which will imply the whole ; for there is no point in a mere copy of the dull commonplaces of our life. It is a part of the author's work to clear away the meaningless, that the reader may find thrown into relief the dramatic meaning hidden in these common things. For, as Stevenson declares, "A short-story is not a transcript of life, to be judged by its exactitude, but a simplification of some side or point of life, to stand or fall by its significant simplicity."

A story is significant and simple because it is worked over by a person — because it is made his own. It is the individual element that makes it literary, giving it meaning and purpose, and an emotional coloring which shall distinguish it from other works of its kind. The emotional coloring is a more or less accurate reflection of the author's mood or temperament or settled character. Before the story can take on this emotional coloring or tone, so essential to its literary vitality, it must really belong to its author and be a part of him. It is chiefly because a bit of experience is ours that we care to tell it or to write it as a story. Another's experience can never be quite so intimate as our own unless we are blessed with warm sympathy and perfect intuition. Thus it is that one's own experience is better material than all the outward facts which he can gather. He will, of course, see most clearly that which is within his range of vision. And he would do well to start with this, remembering that, except in writing romance, it is unwise to undertake portrayal of that which is hopelessly beyond the bounds of his experience. For he must believe what he writes, for the time. That is, he must seem to have thorough confidence in his material as probable experience. Says Cable,1 "No author, from whatever heaven, earth, or hell of actual environment he may write, can produce a living narrative of motives, passions, and fates without having first felt the most of it and apprehended it all, in his own inner life." It is certainly the individual element that gives the breath of life. This does not mean that the author should be egoistic, in any sense of the word. He should, however, be sufficiently self-conscious