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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3384.txt b/3384.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7599a78 --- /dev/null +++ b/3384.txt @@ -0,0 +1,827 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Anomalies of the Short Story +by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Some Anomalies of the Short Story + From "Literature and Life" + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #3384] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +LITERATURE AND LIFE--Some Anomalies of the Short Story + +by William Dean Howells + + + +SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY + + +The interesting experiment of one of our great publishing houses in +putting out serially several volumes of short stories, with the hope that +a courageous persistence may overcome the popular indifference to such +collections when severally administered, suggests some questions as to +this eldest form of fiction which I should like to ask the reader's +patience with. I do not know that I shall be able to answer them, or +that I shall try to do so; the vitality of a question that is answered +seems to exhale in the event; it palpitates no longer; curiosity flutters +away from the faded flower, which is fit then only to be folded away in +the 'hortus siccus' of accomplished facts. In view of this I may wish +merely to state the problems and leave them for the reader's solution, +or, more amusingly, for his mystification. + + + + +I. + +One of the most amusing questions concerning the short story is why a +form which is singly so attractive that every one likes to read a short +story when he finds it alone is collectively so repellent as it is said +to be. Before now I have imagined the case to be somewhat the same as +that of a number of pleasant people who are most acceptable as separate +householders, but who lose caste and cease to be desirable acquaintances +when gathered into a boarding-house. + +Yet the case is not the same quite, for we see that the short story where +it is ranged with others of its species within the covers of a magazine +is so welcome that the editor thinks his number the more brilliant the +more short story writers he can call about his board, or under the roof +of his pension. Here the boardinghouse analogy breaks, breaks so +signally that I was lately moved to ask a distinguished editor why a book +of short stories usually failed and a magazine usually succeeded because +of them. He answered, gayly, that the short stories in most books of +them were bad; that where they were good, they went; and he alleged +several well-known instances in which books of prime short stories had a +great vogue. He was so handsomely interested in my inquiry that I could +not well say I thought some of the short stories which he had boasted in +his last number were indifferent good, and yet, as he allowed, had mainly +helped sell it. I had in mind many books of short stories of the first +excellence which had failed as decidedly as those others had succeeded, +for no reason that I could see; possibly there is really no reason in any +literary success or failure that can be predicted, or applied in another +Base. + +I could name these books, if it would serve any purpose, but, in my +doubt, I will leave the reader to think of them, for I believe that his +indolence or intellectual reluctance is largely to blame for the failure +of good books of short stories. He is commonly so averse to any +imaginative exertion that he finds it a hardship to respond to that +peculiar demand which a book of good short stories makes upon him. He +can read one good short story in a magazine with refreshment, and a +pleasant sense of excitement, in the sort of spur it gives to his own +constructive 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 agreeable +sedative. A condition that the short story tacitly makes with the +reader, through its limitations, is that he shall subjectively fill in +the details and carry out the scheme which in its small dimensions the +story can only suggest; and the greater number of readers find this too +much for their feeble powers, while they cannot resist the incitement to +attempt it. + +My theory does not wholly account for the fact (no theory wholly accounts +for any fact), and I own that the same objections would lie from the +reader against a number of short stories in a magazine. But it may be +that the effect is not the same in the magazine because of the variety in +the authorship, and because it would be impossibly jolting to read all +the short stories in a magazine 'seriatim'. On the other hand, the +identity of authorship gives a continuity of attraction to the short +stories in a book which forms that exhausting strain upon the imagination +of the involuntary co-partner. + + + + +II. + +Then, what is the solution as to the form of publication for short +stories, since people do not object to them singly but collectively, and +not in variety, but in identity of authorship? Are they to be printed +only in the magazines, or are they to be collected in volumes combining a +variety of authorship? Rather, I could wish, it might be found feasible +to purvey them in some pretty shape where each would appeal singly to the +reader and would not exhaust him in the subjective after-work required of +him. In this event many short stories now cramped into undue limits by +the editorial exigencies of the magazines might expand to greater length +and breadth, and without ceasing to be each a short story might not make +so heavy a demand upon the subliminal forces of the reader. + +If any one were to say that all this was a little fantastic, I should not +contradict him; but I hope there is some reason in it, if reason can help +the short story to greater favor, for it is a form which I have great +pleasure in as a reader, and pride in as an American. If we have not +excelled all other moderns in it, we have certainly excelled in it; +possibly because we are in the period of our literary development which +corresponds to that of other peoples when the short story pre-eminently +flourished among them. But when one has said a thing like this, it +immediately accuses one of loose and inaccurate statement, and requires +one to refine upon it, either for one's own peace of conscience or for +one's safety from the thoughtful reader. I am not much afraid of that +sort of reader, for he is very rare, but I do like to know myself what I +mean, if I mean anything in particular. + +In this instance I am obliged to ask myself whether our literary +development can be recognized separately from that of the whole English- +speaking world. I think it can, though, as I am always saying American +literature is merely a condition of English literature. In some sense +every European literature is a condition of some other European +literature, yet the impulse in each eventuates, if it does not originate +indigenously. A younger literature will choose, by a sort of natural +selection, some things for assimilation from an elder literature, for no +more apparent reason than it will reject other things, and it will +transform them in the process so that it will give them the effect of +indigeneity. The short story among the Italians, who called it the +novella, and supplied us with the name devoted solely among us to fiction +of epical magnitude, refined indefinitely upon the Greek romance, if it +derived from that; it retrenched itself in scope, and enlarged itself in +the variety of its types. But still these remained types, and they +remained types with the French imitators of the Italian novella. It was +not till the Spaniards borrowed the form of the novella and transplanted +it to their racier soil that it began to bear character, and to fruit in +the richness of their picaresque fiction. When the English borrowed it +they adapted it, in the metrical tales of Chaucer, to the genius of their +nation, which was then both poetical and humorous. Here it was full of +character, too, and more and more personality began to enlarge the bounds +of the conventional types and to imbue fresh ones. But in so far as the +novella was studied in the Italian sources, the French, Spanish, and +English literatures were conditions of Italian literature as distinctly, +though, of course, not so thoroughly, as American literature is a +condition of English literature. Each borrower gave a national cast to +the thing borrowed, and that is what has happened with us, in the full +measure that our nationality has differenced itself from the English. + +Whatever truth there is in all this, and I will confess that a good deal +of it seems to me hardy conjecture, rather favors my position that we are +in some such period of our literary development as those other peoples +when the short story flourished among them. Or, if I restrict our claim, +I may safely claim that they abundantly had the novella when they had not +the novel at all, and we now abundantly have the novella, while we have +the novel only subordinately and of at least no such quantitative +importance as the English, French, Spanish, Norwegians, Russians, and +some others of our esteemed contemporaries, not to name the Italians. We +surpass the Germans, who, like ourselves, have as distinctly excelled in +the modern novella as they have fallen short in the novel. Or, if I may +not quite say this, I will make bold to say that I can think of many +German novelle that I should like to read again, but scarcely one German +novel; and I could honestly say the same of American novelle, though not +of American novels. + + + + +III. + +The abeyance, not to say the desuetude, that the novella fell into for +several centuries is very curious, and fully as remarkable as the modern +rise of the short story. It began to prevail in the dramatic form, for a +play is a short story put on the stage; it may have satisfied in that +form the early love of it, and it has continued to please in that form; +but in its original shape it quite vanished, unless we consider the +little studies and sketches and allegories of the Spectator and Tatler +and Idler and Rambler and their imitations on the Continent as guises of +the novella. The germ of the modern short story may have survived in +these, or in the metrical form of the novella which appeared in Chaucer +and never wholly disappeared. With Crabbe the novella became as +distinctly the short story as it has become in the hands of Miss Wilkins. +But it was not till our time that its great merit as a form was felt, for +until our time so great work was never done with it. I remind myself of +Boccaccio, and of the Arabian Nights, without the wish to hedge from my +bold stand. They are all elemental; compared with some finer modern work +which deepens inward immeasurably, they are all of their superficial +limits. They amuse, but they do not hold, the mind and stamp it with +large and profound impressions. + +An Occidental cannot judge the literary quality of the Eastern tales; but +I will own my suspicion that the perfection of the Italian work is +philological rather than artistic, while the web woven by Mr. James or +Miss Jewett, by Kielland or Bjornson, by Maupassant, by Palacio Valdes, +by Giovanni Verga, by Tourguenief, in one of those little frames seems to +me of an exquisite color and texture and of an entire literary +preciousness, not only as regards the diction, but as regards those more +intangible graces of form, those virtues of truth and reality, and those +lasting significances which distinguish the masterpiece. + +The novella has in fact been carried so far in the short story that it +might be asked whether it had not left the novel behind, as to perfection +of form; though one might not like to affirm this. Yet there have been +but few modern fictions of the novel's dimensions which have the beauty +of form many a novella embodies. Is this because it is easier to give +form in the small than in the large, or only because it is easier to hide +formlessness? It is easier to give form in the novella than in the +novel, because the design of less scope can be more definite, and because +the persons and facts are fewer, and each can be more carefully treated. +But, on the other hand, the slightest error in execution shows more in +the small than in the large, and a fault of conception is more evident. +The novella must be clearly imagined, above all things, for there is no +room in it for those felicities of characterization or comment by which +the artist of faltering design saves himself in the novel. + + + + +IV. + +The question as to where the short story distinguishes itself from the +anecdote is of the same nature as that which concerns the bound set +between it and the novel. In both cases the difference of the novella is +in the motive, or the origination. The anecdote is too palpably simple +and single to be regarded as a novella, though there is now and then a +novella like The Father, by Bjornson, which is of the actual brevity of +the anecdote, but which, when released in the reader's consciousness, +expands to dramatic dimensions impossible to the anecdote. Many +anecdotes have come down from antiquity, but not, I believe, one short +story, at least in prose; and the Italians, if they did not invent the +story, gave us something most sensibly distinguishable from the classic +anecdote in the novella. The anecdote offers an illustration of +character, or records a moment of action; the novella embodies a drama +and develops a type. + +It is not quite so clear as to when and where a piece of fiction ceases +to be a novella and becomes a novel. The frontiers are so vague that one +is obliged to recognize a middle species, or rather a middle magnitude, +which paradoxically, but necessarily enough, we call the novelette. +First we have the short story, or novella, then we have the long story, +or novel, and between these we have the novelette, which is in name a +smaller than the short story, though it is in point of fact two or three +times longer than a short story. We may realize them physically if we +will adopt the magazine parlance and speak of the novella as a one-number +story, of the novel as a serial, and of the novelette as a two-number or +a three-number story; if it passes the three-number limit it seems to +become a novel. As a two-number or three-number story it is the despair +of editors and publishers. The interest of so brief a serial will not +mount sufficiently to carry strongly over from month to month; when the +tale is completed it will not make a book which the Trade (inexorable +force!) cares to handle. It is therefore still awaiting its +authoritative avatar, which it will be some one's prosperity and glory to +imagine; for in the novelette are possibilities for fiction as yet +scarcely divined. + +The novelette can have almost as perfect form as the novella. In fact, +the novel has form in the measure that it approaches the novelette; and +some of the most symmetrical modern novels are scarcely more than +novelettes, like Tourguenief's Dmitri Rudine, or his Smoke, or Spring +Floods. The Vicar of Wakefield, the father of the modern novel, is +scarcely more than a novelette, and I have sometimes fancied, but no +doubt vainly, that the ultimated novel might be of the dimensions of +Hamlet. If any one should say there was not room in Hamlet for the +character and incident requisite in a novel, I should be ready to answer +that there seemed a good deal of both in Hamlet. + +But no doubt there are other reasons why the novel should not finally be +of the length of Hamlet, and I must not let my enthusiasm for the +novelette carry me too far, or, rather, bring me up too short. I am +disposed to dwell upon it, I suppose, because it has not yet shared the +favor which the novella and the novel have enjoyed, and because until +somebody invents a way for it to the public it cannot prosper like the +one-number story or the serial. I should like to say as my last word for +it here that I believe there are many novels which, if stripped of their +padding, would turn out to have been all along merely novelettes in +disguise. + +It does not follow, however, that there are many novelle which, if they +were duly padded, would be found novelettes. In that dim, subjective +region where the aesthetic origins present themselves almost with the +authority of inspirations there is nothing clearer than the difference +between the short-story motive and the long-story motive. One, if one is +in that line of work, feels instinctively just the size and carrying +power of the given motive. Or, if the reader prefers a different figure, +the mind which the seed has been dropped into from Somewhere is +mystically aware whether the seed is going to grow up a bush or is going +to grow up a tree, if left to itself. Of course, the mind to which the +seed is intrusted may play it false, and wilfully dwarf the growth, or +force it to unnatural dimensions; but the critical observer will easily +detect the fact of such treasons. Almost in the first germinal impulse +the inventive mind forefeels the ultimate difference and recognizes the +essential simplicity or complexity of the motive. There will be a +prophetic subdivision into a variety of motives and a multiplication of +characters and incidents and situations; or the original motive will be +divined indivisible, and there will be a small group of people +immediately interested and controlled by a single, or predominant, fact. +The uninspired may contend that this is bosh, and I own that something +might be said for their contention, but upon the whole I think it is +gospel. + +The right novel is never a congeries of novelle, as might appear to the +uninspired. If it indulges even in episodes, it loses in reality and +vitality. It is one stock from which its various branches put out, and +form it a living growth identical throughout. The right novella is never +a novel cropped back from the size of a tree to a bush, or the branch of +a tree stuck into the ground and made to serve for a bush. It is another +species, destined by the agencies at work in the realm of unconsciousness +to be brought into being of its own kind, and not of another. + + + + +V. + +This was always its case, but in the process of time the short story, +while keeping the natural limits of the primal novella (if ever there was +one), has shown almost limitless possibilities within them. It has shown +itself capable of imparting the effect of every sort of intention, +whether of humor or pathos, of tragedy or comedy or broad farce or +delicate irony, of character or action. The thing that first made itself +known as a little tale, usually salacious, dealing with conventionalized +types and conventionalized incidents, has proved itself possibly the most +flexible of all the literary forms in its adaptation to the needs of the +mind that wishes to utter itself, inventively or constructively, upon +some fresh occasion, or wishes briefly to criticise or represent some +phase or fact of life. + +The riches in this shape of fiction are effectively inestimable, if we +consider what has been done in the short story, and is still doing +everywhere. The good novels may be easily counted, but the good novelle, +since Boccaccio began (if it was he that first began) to make them, +cannot be computed. In quantity they are inexhaustible, and in quality +they are wonderfully satisfying. Then, why is it that so very, very few +of the most satisfactory of that innumerable multitude stay by you, as +the country people say, in characterization or action? How hard it is to +recall a person or a fact out of any of them, out of the most signally +good! We seem to be delightfully nourished as we read, but is it, after +all, a full meal? We become of a perfect intimacy and a devoted +friendship with the men and women in the short stories, but not +apparently of a lasting acquaintance. It is a single meeting we have +with them, and though we instantly love or hate them dearly, recurrence +and repetition seem necessary to that familiar knowledge in which we hold +the personages in a novel. + +It is here that the novella, so much more perfect in form, shows its +irremediable inferiority to the novel, and somehow to the play, to the +very farce, which it may quantitatively excel. We can all recall by name +many characters out of comedies and farces; but how many characters out +of short stories can we recall? Most persons of the drama give +themselves away by name for types, mere figments of allegory, and perhaps +oblivion is the penalty that the novella pays for the fineness of its +characterizations; but perhaps, also, the dramatic form has greater +facilities for repetition, and so can stamp its persons more indelibly on +the imagination than the narrative form in the same small space. The +narrative must give to description what the drama trusts to +representation; but this cannot account for the superior permanency of +the dramatic types in so great measure as we might at first imagine, for +they remain as much in mind from reading as from seeing the plays. It is +possible that as the novella becomes more conscious, its persons will +become more memorable; but as it is, though we now vividly and with +lasting delight remember certain short stories, we scarcely remember by +name any of the people in them. I may be risking too much in offering an +instance, but who, in even such signal instances as The Revolt of Mother, +by Miss Wilkins, or The Dulham Ladies, by Miss Jewett, can recall by name +the characters that made them delightful? + + + + +VI. + +The defect of the novella which we have been acknowledging seems an +essential limitation; but perhaps it is not insuperable; and we may yet +have short stories which shall supply the delighted imagination with +creations of as much immortality as we can reasonably demand. The +structural change would not be greater than the moral or material change +which has been wrought in it since it began as a yarn, gross and +palpable, which the narrator spun out of the coarsest and often the +filthiest stuff, to snare the thick fancy or amuse the lewd leisure of +listeners willing as children to have the same persons and the same +things over and over again. Now it has not only varied the persons and +things, but it has refined and verified them in the direction of the +natural and the supernatural, until it is above all other literary forms +the vehicle of reality and spirituality. When one thinks of a bit of Mr. +James's psychology in this form, or a bit of Verga's or Kielland's +sociology, or a bit of Miss Jewett's exquisite veracity, one perceives +the immense distance which the short story has come on the way to the +height it has reached. It serves equally the ideal and the real; that +which it is loath to serve is the unreal, so that among the short stories +which have recently made reputations for their authors very few are of +that peculiar cast which we have no name for but romanticistic. The only +distinguished modern writer of romanticistic novelle whom I can think of +is Mr. Bret Harte, and he is of a period when romanticism was so +imperative as to be almost a condition of fiction. I am never so +enamoured of a cause that I will not admit facts that seem to tell +against it, and I will allow that this writer of romanticistic short +stories has more than any other supplied us with memorable types and +characters. We remember Mr. John Oakhurst by name; we remember Kentuck +and Tennessee's Partner, at least by nickname; and we remember their +several qualities. These figures, if we cannot quite consent that they +are persons, exist in our memories by force of their creator's +imagination, and at the moment I cannot think of any others that do, +out of the myriad of American short stories, except Rip Van Winkle out of +Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Marjorie Daw out of Mr. Aldrich's +famous little caprice of that title, and Mr. James's Daisy Miller. + +It appears to be the fact that those writers who have first distinguished +themselves in the novella have seldom written novels of prime order. +Mr. Kipling is an eminent example, but Mr. Kipling has yet a long life +before him in which to upset any theory about him, and one can only +instance him provisionally. On the other hand, one can be much more +confident that the best novelle have been written by the greatest +novelists, conspicuously Maupassant, Verga, Bjornson, Mr. Thomas Hardy, +Mr. James, Mr. Cable, Tourguenief, Tolstoy, Valdes, not to name others. +These have, in fact, all done work so good in this form that one is +tempted to call it their best work. It is really not their best, but it +is work so good that it ought to have equal acceptance with their novels, +if that distinguished editor was right who said that short stories sold +well when they were good short stories. That they ought to do so is so +evident that a devoted reader of them, to whom I was submitting the +anomaly the other day, insisted that they did. I could only allege the +testimony of publishers and authors to the contrary, and this did not +satisfy him. + +It does not satisfy me, and I wish that the general reader, with whom the +fault lies, could be made to say why, if he likes one short story by +itself and four short stories in a magazine, he does not like, or will +not have, a dozen short stories in a book. This was the baffling +question which I began with and which I find myself forced to end with, +after all the light I have thrown upon the subject. I leave it where I +found it, but perhaps that is a good deal for a critic to do. If I had +left it anywhere else the reader might not feel bound to deal with it +practically by reading all the books of short stories he could lay hands +on, and either divining why he did not enjoy them, or else forever +foregoing his prejudice against them because of his pleasure in them. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Anomalies of the Short Story +by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY *** + +***** This file should be named 3384.txt or 3384.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/8/3384/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +LITERATURE AND LIFE--Some Anomalies of the Short Story + +by William Dean Howells + + + + +SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY + + +The interesting experiment of one of our great publishing houses in +putting out serially several volumes of short stories, with the hope that +a courageous persistence may overcome the popular indifference to such +collections when severally administered, suggests some questions as to +this eldest form of fiction which I should like to ask the reader's +patience with. I do not know that I shall be able to answer them, or +that I shall try to do so; the vitality of a question that is answered +seems to exhale in the event; it palpitates no longer; curiosity flutters +away from the faded flower, which is fit then only to be folded away in +the 'hortus siccus' of accomplished facts. In view of this I may wish +merely to state the problems and leave them for the reader's solution, +or, more amusingly, for his mystification. + + + + +I. + +One of the most amusing questions concerning the short story is why a +form which is singly so attractive that every one likes to read a short +story when he finds it alone is collectively so repellent as it is said +to be. Before now I have imagined the case to be somewhat the same as +that of a number of pleasant people who are most acceptable as separate +householders, but who lose caste and cease to be desirable acquaintances +when gathered into a boarding-house. + +Yet the case is not the same quite, for we see that the short story where +it is ranged with others of its species within the covers of a magazine +is so welcome that the editor thinks his number the more brilliant the +more short story writers he can call about his board, or under the roof +of his pension. Here the boardinghouse analogy breaks, breaks so +signally that I was lately moved to ask a distinguished editor why a book +of short stories usually failed and a magazine usually succeeded because +of them. He answered, gayly, that the short stories in most books of +them were bad; that where they were good, they went; and he alleged +several well-known instances in which books of prime short stories had a +great vogue. He was so handsomely interested in my inquiry that I could +not well say I thought some of the short stories which he had boasted in +his last number were indifferent good, and yet, as he allowed, had mainly +helped sell it. I had in mind many books of short stories of the first +excellence which had failed as decidedly as those others had succeeded, +for no reason that I could see; possibly there is really no reason in any +literary success or failure that can be predicted, or applied in another +Base. + +I could name these books, if it would serve any purpose, but, in my +doubt, I will leave the reader to think of them, for I believe that his +indolence or intellectual reluctance is largely to blame for the failure +of good books of short stories. He is commonly so averse to any +imaginative exertion that he finds it a hardship to respond to that +peculiar demand which a book of good short stories makes upon him. He +can read one good short story in a magazine with refreshment, and a +pleasant sense of excitement, in the sort of spur it gives to his own +constructive 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 agreeable +sedative. A condition that the short story tacitly makes with the +reader, through its limitations, is that he shall subjectively fill in +the details and carry out the scheme which in its small dimensions the +story can only suggest; and the greater number of readers find this too +much for their feeble powers, while they cannot resist the incitement to +attempt it. + +My theory does not wholly account for the fact (no theory wholly accounts +for any fact), and I own that the same objections would lie from the +reader against a number of short stories in a magazine. But it may be +that the effect is not the same in the magazine because of the variety in +the authorship, and because it would be impossibly jolting to read all +the short stories in a magazine 'seriatim'. On the other hand, the +identity of authorship gives a continuity of attraction to the short +stories in a book which forms that exhausting strain upon the imagination +of the involuntary co-partner. + + + + +II. + +Then, what is the solution as to the form of publication for short +stories, since people do not object to them singly but collectively, and +not in variety, but in identity of authorship? Are they to be printed +only in the magazines, or are they to be collected in volumes combining a +variety of authorship? Rather, I could wish, it might be found feasible +to purvey them in some pretty shape where each would appeal singly to the +reader and would not exhaust him in the subjective after-work required of +him. In this event many short stories now cramped into undue limits by +the editorial exigencies of the magazines might expand to greater length +and breadth, and without ceasing to be each a short story might not make +so heavy a demand upon the subliminal forces of the reader. + +If any one were to say that all this was a little fantastic, I should not +contradict him; but I hope there is some reason in it, if reason can help +the short story to greater favor, for it is a form which I have great +pleasure in as a reader, and pride in as an American. If we have not +excelled all other moderns in it, we have certainly excelled in it; +possibly because we are in the period of our literary development which +corresponds to that of other peoples when the short story pre-eminently +flourished among them. But when one has said a thing like this, it +immediately accuses one of loose and inaccurate statement, and requires +one to refine upon it, either for one's own peace of conscience or for +one's safety from the thoughtful reader. I am not much afraid of that +sort of reader, for he is very rare, but I do like to know myself what I +mean, if I mean anything in particular. + +In this instance I am obliged to ask myself whether our literary +development can be recognized separately from that of the whole English- +speaking world. I think it can, though, as I am always saying American +literature is merely a condition of English literature. In some sense +every European literature is a condition of some other European +literature, yet the impulse in each eventuates, if it does not originate +indigenously. A younger literature will choose, by a sort of natural +selection, some things for assimilation from an elder literature, for no +more apparent reason than it will reject other things, and it will +transform them in the process so that it will give them the effect of +indigeneity. The short story among the Italians, who called it the +novella, and supplied us with the name devoted solely among us to fiction +of epical magnitude, refined indefinitely upon the Greek romance, if it +derived from that; it retrenched itself in scope, and enlarged itself in +the variety of its types. But still these remained types, and they +remained types with the French imitators of the Italian novella. It was +not till the Spaniards borrowed the form of the novella and transplanted +it to their racier soil that it began to bear character, and to fruit in +the richness of their picaresque fiction. When the English borrowed it +they adapted it, in the metrical tales of Chaucer, to the genius of their +nation, which was then both poetical and humorous. Here it was full of +character, too, and more and more personality began to enlarge the bounds +of the conventional types and to imbue fresh ones. But in so far as the +novella was studied in the Italian sources, the French, Spanish, and +English literatures were conditions of Italian literature as distinctly, +though, of course, not so thoroughly, as American literature is a +condition of English literature. Each borrower gave a national cast to +the thing borrowed, and that is what has happened with us, in the full +measure that our nationality has differenced itself from the English. + +Whatever truth there is in all this, and I will confess that a good deal +of it seems to me hardy conjecture, rather favors my position that we are +in some such period of our literary development as those other peoples +when the short story flourished among them. Or, if I restrict our claim, +I may safely claim that they abundantly had the novella when they had not +the novel at all, and we now abundantly have the novella, while we have +the novel only subordinately and of at least no such quantitative +importance as the English, French, Spanish, Norwegians, Russians, and +some others of our esteemed contemporaries, not to name the Italians. We +surpass the Germans, who, like ourselves, have as distinctly excelled in +the modern novella as they have fallen short in the novel. Or, if I may +not quite say this, I will make bold to say that I can think of many +German novelle that I should like to read again, but scarcely one German +novel; and I could honestly say the same of American novelle, though not +of American novels. + + + + +III. + +The abeyance, not to say the desuetude, that the novella fell into for +several centuries is very curious, and fully as remarkable as the modern +rise of the short story. It began to prevail in the dramatic form, for a +play is a short story put on the stage; it may have satisfied in that +form the early love of it, and it has continued to please in that form; +but in its original shape it quite vanished, unless we consider the +little studies and sketches and allegories of the Spectator and Tatler +and Idler and Rambler and their imitations on the Continent as guises of +the novella. The germ of the modern short story may have survived in +these, or in the metrical form of the novella which appeared in Chaucer +and never wholly disappeared. With Crabbe the novella became as +distinctly the short story as it has become in the hands of Miss Wilkins. +But it was not till our time that its great merit as a form was felt, for +until our time so great work was never done with it. I remind myself of +Boccaccio, and of the Arabian Nights, without the wish to hedge from my +bold stand. They are all elemental; compared with some finer modern work +which deepens inward immeasurably, they are all of their superficial +limits. They amuse, but they do not hold, the mind and stamp it with +large and profound impressions. + +An Occidental cannot judge the literary quality of the Eastern tales; but +I will own my suspicion that the perfection of the Italian work is +philological rather than artistic, while the web woven by Mr. James or +Miss Jewett, by Kielland or Bjornson, by Maupassant, by Palacio Valdes, +by Giovanni Verga, by Tourguenief, in one of those little frames seems to +me of an exquisite color and texture and of an entire literary +preciousness, not only as regards the diction, but as regards those more +intangible graces of form, those virtues of truth and reality, and those +lasting significances which distinguish the masterpiece. + +The novella has in fact been carried so far in the short story that it +might be asked whether it had not left the novel behind, as to perfection +of form; though one might not like to affirm this. Yet there have been +but few modern fictions of the novel's dimensions which have the beauty +of form many a novella embodies. Is this because it is easier to give +form in the small than in the large, or only because it is easier to hide +formlessness? It is easier to give form in the novella than in the +novel, because the design of less scope can be more definite, and because +the persons and facts are fewer, and each can be more carefully treated. +But, on the other hand, the slightest error in execution shows more in +the small than in the large, and a fault of conception is more evident. +The novella must be clearly imagined, above all things, for there is no +room in it for those felicities of characterization or comment by which +the artist of faltering design saves himself in the novel. + + + + +IV. + +The question as to where the short story distinguishes itself from the +anecdote is of the same nature as that which concerns the bound set +between it and the novel. In both cases the difference of the novella is +in the motive, or the origination. The anecdote is too palpably simple +and single to be regarded as a novella, though there is now and then a +novella like The Father, by Bjornson, which is of the actual brevity of +the anecdote, but which, when released in the reader's consciousness, +expands to dramatic dimensions impossible to the anecdote. Many +anecdotes have come down from antiquity, but not, I believe, one short +story, at least in prose; and the Italians, if they did not invent the +story, gave us something most sensibly distinguishable from the classic +anecdote in the novella. The anecdote offers an illustration of +character, or records a moment of action; the novella embodies a drama +and develops a type. + +It is not quite so clear as to when and where a piece of fiction ceases +to be a novella and becomes a novel. The frontiers are so vague that one +is obliged to recognize a middle species, or rather a middle magnitude, +which paradoxically, but necessarily enough, we call the novelette. +First we have the short story, or novella, then we have the long story, +or novel, and between these we have the novelette, which is in name a +smaller than the short story, though it is in point of fact two or three +times longer than a short story. We may realize them physically if we +will adopt the magazine parlance and speak of the novella as a one-number +story, of the novel as a serial, and of the novelette as a two-number or +a three-number story; if it passes the three-number limit it seems to +become a novel. As a two-number or three-number story it is the despair +of editors and publishers. The interest of so brief a serial will not +mount sufficiently to carry strongly over from month to month; when the +tale is completed it will not make a book which the Trade (inexorable +force!) cares to handle. It is therefore still awaiting its +authoritative avatar, which it will be some one's prosperity and glory to +imagine; for in the novelette are possibilities for fiction as yet +scarcely divined. + +The novelette can have almost as perfect form as the novella. In fact, +the novel has form in the measure that it approaches the novelette; and +some of the most symmetrical modern novels are scarcely more than +novelettes, like Tourguenief's Dmitri Rudine, or his Smoke, or Spring +Floods. The Vicar of Wakefield, the father of the modern novel, is +scarcely more than a novelette, and I have sometimes fancied, but no +doubt vainly, that the ultimated novel might be of the dimensions of +Hamlet. If any one should say there was not room in Hamlet for the +character and incident requisite in a novel, I should be ready to answer +that there seemed a good deal of both in Hamlet. + +But no doubt there are other reasons why the novel should not finally be +of the length of Hamlet, and I must not let my enthusiasm for the +novelette carry me too far, or, rather, bring me up too short. I am +disposed to dwell upon it, I suppose, because it has not yet shared the +favor which the novella and the novel have enjoyed, and because until +somebody invents a way for it to the public it cannot prosper like the +one-number story or the serial. I should like to say as my last word for +it here that I believe there are many novels which, if stripped of their +padding, would turn out to have been all along merely novelettes in +disguise. + +It does not follow, however, that there are many novelle which, if they +were duly padded, would be found novelettes. In that dim, subjective +region where the aesthetic origins present themselves almost with the +authority of inspirations there is nothing clearer than the difference +between the short-story motive and the long-story motive. One, if one is +in that line of work, feels instinctively just the size and carrying +power of the given motive. Or, if the reader prefers a different figure, +the mind which the seed has been dropped into from Somewhere is +mystically aware whether the seed is going to grow up a bush or is going +to grow up a tree, if left to itself. Of course, the mind to which the +seed is intrusted may play it false, and wilfully dwarf the growth, or +force it to unnatural dimensions; but the critical observer will easily +detect the fact of such treasons. Almost in the first germinal impulse +the inventive mind forefeels the ultimate difference and recognizes the +essential simplicity or complexity of the motive. There will be a +prophetic subdivision into a variety of motives and a multiplication of +characters and incidents and situations; or the original motive will be +divined indivisible, and there will be a small group of people +immediately interested and controlled by a single, or predominant, fact. +The uninspired may contend that this is bosh, and I own that something +might be said for their contention, but upon the whole I think it is +gospel. + +The right novel is never a congeries of novelle, as might appear to the +uninspired. If it indulges even in episodes, it loses in reality and +vitality. It is one stock from which its various branches put out, and +form it a living growth identical throughout. The right novella is never +a novel cropped back from the size of a tree to a bush, or the branch of +a tree stuck into the ground and made to serve for a bush. It is another +species, destined by the agencies at work in the realm of unconsciousness +to be brought into being of its own kind, and not of another. + + + + +V. + +This was always its case, but in the process of time the short story, +while keeping the natural limits of the primal novella (if ever there was +one), has shown almost limitless possibilities within them. It has shown +itself capable of imparting the effect of every sort of intention, +whether of humor or pathos, of tragedy or comedy or broad farce or +delicate irony, of character or action. The thing that first made itself +known as a little tale, usually salacious, dealing with conventionalized +types and conventionalized incidents, has proved itself possibly the most +flexible of all the literary forms in its adaptation to the needs of the +mind that wishes to utter itself, inventively or constructively, upon +some fresh occasion, or wishes briefly to criticise or represent some +phase or fact of life. + +The riches in this shape of fiction are effectively inestimable, if we +consider what has been done in the short story, and is still doing +everywhere. The good novels may be easily counted, but the good novelle, +since Boccaccio began (if it was he that first began) to make them, +cannot be computed. In quantity they are inexhaustible, and in quality +they are wonderfully satisfying. Then, why is it that so very, very few +of the most satisfactory of that innumerable multitude stay by you, as +the country people say, in characterization or action? How hard it is to +recall a person or a fact out of any of them, out of the most signally +good! We seem to be delightfully nourished as we read, but is it, after +all, a full meal? We become of a perfect intimacy and a devoted +friendship with the men and women in the short stories, but not +apparently of a lasting acquaintance. It is a single meeting we have +with them, and though we instantly love or hate them dearly, recurrence +and repetition seem necessary to that familiar knowledge in which we hold +the personages in a novel. + +It is here that the novella, so much more perfect in form, shows its +irremediable inferiority to the novel, and somehow to the play, to the +very farce, which it may quantitatively excel. We can all recall by name +many characters out of comedies and farces; but how many characters out +of short stories can we recall? Most persons of the drama give +themselves away by name for types, mere figments of allegory, and perhaps +oblivion is the penalty that the novella pays for the fineness of its +characterizations; but perhaps, also, the dramatic form has greater +facilities for repetition, and so can stamp its persons more indelibly on +the imagination than the narrative form in the same small space. The +narrative must give to description what the drama trusts to +representation; but this cannot account for the superior permanency of +the dramatic types in so great measure as we might at first imagine, for +they remain as much in mind from reading as from seeing the plays. It is +possible that as the novella becomes more conscious, its persons will +become more memorable; but as it is, though we now vividly and with +lasting delight remember certain short stories, we scarcely remember by +name any of the people in them. I may be risking too much in offering an +instance, but who, in even such signal instances as The Revolt of Mother, +by Miss Wilkins, or The Dulham Ladies, by Miss Jewett, can recall by name +the characters that made them delightful? + + + + +VI. + +The defect of the novella which we have been acknowledging seems an +essential limitation; but perhaps it is not insuperable; and we may yet +have short stories which shall supply the delighted imagination with +creations of as much immortality as we can reasonably demand. The +structural change would not be greater than the moral or material change +which has been wrought in it since it began as a yarn, gross and +palpable, which the narrator spun out of the coarsest and often the +filthiest stuff, to snare the thick fancy or amuse the lewd leisure of +listeners willing as children to have the same persons and the same +things over and over again. Now it has not only varied the persons and +things, but it has refined and verified them in the direction of the +natural and the supernatural, until it is above all other literary forms +the vehicle of reality and spirituality. When one thinks of a bit of Mr. +James's psychology in this form, or a bit of Verga's or Kielland's +sociology, or a bit of Miss Jewett's exquisite veracity, one perceives +the immense distance which the short story has come on the way to the +height it has reached. It serves equally the ideal and the real; that +which it is loath to serve is the unreal, so that among the short stories +which have recently made reputations for their authors very few are of +that peculiar cast which we have no name for but romanticistic. The only +distinguished modern writer of romanticistic novelle whom I can think of +is Mr. Bret Harte, and he is of a period when romanticism was so +imperative as to be almost a condition of fiction. I am never so +enamoured of a cause that I will not admit facts that seem to tell +against it, and I will allow that this writer of romanticistic short +stories has more than any other supplied us with memorable types and +characters. We remember Mr. John Oakhurst by name; we remember Kentuck +and Tennessee's Partner, at least by nickname; and we remember their +several qualities. These figures, if we cannot quite consent that they +are persons, exist in our memories by force of their creator's +imagination, and at the moment I cannot think of any others that do, +out of the myriad of American short stories, except Rip Van Winkle out of +Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Marjorie Daw out of Mr. Aldrich's +famous little caprice of that title, and Mr. James's Daisy Miller. + +It appears to be the fact that those writers who have first distinguished +themselves in the novella have seldom written novels of prime order. +Mr. Kipling is an eminent example, but Mr. Kipling has yet a long life +before him in which to upset any theory about him, and one can only +instance him provisionally. On the other hand, one can be much more +confident that the best novelle have been written by the greatest +novelists, conspicuously Maupassant, Verga, Bjornson, Mr. Thomas Hardy, +Mr. James, Mr. Cable, Tourguenief, Tolstoy, Valdes, not to name others. +These have, in fact, all done work so good in this form that one is +tempted to call it their best work. It is really not their best, but it +is work so good that it ought to have equal acceptance with their novels, +if that distinguished editor was right who said that short stories sold +well when they were good short stories. That they ought to do so is so +evident that a devoted reader of them, to whom I was submitting the +anomaly the other day, insisted that they did. I could only allege the +testimony of publishers and authors to the contrary, and this did not +satisfy him. + +It does not satisfy me, and I wish that the general reader, with whom the +fault lies, could be made to say why, if he likes one short story by +itself and four short stories in a magazine, he does not like, or will +not have, a dozen short stories in a book. This was the baffling +question which I began with and which I find myself forced to end with, +after all the light I have thrown upon the subject. I leave it where I +found it, but perhaps that is a good deal for a critic to do. If I had +left it anywhere else the reader might not feel bound to deal with it +practically by reading all the books of short stories he could lay hands +on, and either divining why he did not enjoy them, or else forever +foregoing his prejudice against them because of his pleasure in them. + + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Anomalies of the Short Story, +by William Dean Howells + diff --git a/old/whass10.zip b/old/whass10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f6d48e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whass10.zip diff --git a/old/whass11.txt b/old/whass11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e2faaab --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whass11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,814 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Anomalies of the Short Story, by Howells +#31 in our series by William Dean Howells + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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I do not know that I shall be able to answer them, or +that I shall try to do so; the vitality of a question that is answered +seems to exhale in the event; it palpitates no longer; curiosity flutters +away from the faded flower, which is fit then only to be folded away in +the 'hortus siccus' of accomplished facts. In view of this I may wish +merely to state the problems and leave them for the reader's solution, +or, more amusingly, for his mystification. + + + + +I. + +One of the most amusing questions concerning the short story is why a +form which is singly so attractive that every one likes to read a short +story when he finds it alone is collectively so repellent as it is said +to be. Before now I have imagined the case to be somewhat the same as +that of a number of pleasant people who are most acceptable as separate +householders, but who lose caste and cease to be desirable acquaintances +when gathered into a boarding-house. + +Yet the case is not the same quite, for we see that the short story where +it is ranged with others of its species within the covers of a magazine +is so welcome that the editor thinks his number the more brilliant the +more short story writers he can call about his board, or under the roof +of his pension. Here the boardinghouse analogy breaks, breaks so +signally that I was lately moved to ask a distinguished editor why a book +of short stories usually failed and a magazine usually succeeded because +of them. He answered, gayly, that the short stories in most books of +them were bad; that where they were good, they went; and he alleged +several well-known instances in which books of prime short stories had a +great vogue. He was so handsomely interested in my inquiry that I could +not well say I thought some of the short stories which he had boasted in +his last number were indifferent good, and yet, as he allowed, had mainly +helped sell it. I had in mind many books of short stories of the first +excellence which had failed as decidedly as those others had succeeded, +for no reason that I could see; possibly there is really no reason in any +literary success or failure that can be predicted, or applied in another +Base. + +I could name these books, if it would serve any purpose, but, in my +doubt, I will leave the reader to think of them, for I believe that his +indolence or intellectual reluctance is largely to blame for the failure +of good books of short stories. He is commonly so averse to any +imaginative exertion that he finds it a hardship to respond to that +peculiar demand which a book of good short stories makes upon him. He +can read one good short story in a magazine with refreshment, and a +pleasant sense of excitement, in the sort of spur it gives to his own +constructive 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 agreeable +sedative. A condition that the short story tacitly makes with the +reader, through its limitations, is that he shall subjectively fill in +the details and carry out the scheme which in its small dimensions the +story can only suggest; and the greater number of readers find this too +much for their feeble powers, while they cannot resist the incitement to +attempt it. + +My theory does not wholly account for the fact (no theory wholly accounts +for any fact), and I own that the same objections would lie from the +reader against a number of short stories in a magazine. But it may be +that the effect is not the same in the magazine because of the variety in +the authorship, and because it would be impossibly jolting to read all +the short stories in a magazine 'seriatim'. On the other hand, the +identity of authorship gives a continuity of attraction to the short +stories in a book which forms that exhausting strain upon the imagination +of the involuntary co-partner. + + + + +II. + +Then, what is the solution as to the form of publication for short +stories, since people do not object to them singly but collectively, and +not in variety, but in identity of authorship? Are they to be printed +only in the magazines, or are they to be collected in volumes combining a +variety of authorship? Rather, I could wish, it might be found feasible +to purvey them in some pretty shape where each would appeal singly to the +reader and would not exhaust him in the subjective after-work required of +him. In this event many short stories now cramped into undue limits by +the editorial exigencies of the magazines might expand to greater length +and breadth, and without ceasing to be each a short story might not make +so heavy a demand upon the subliminal forces of the reader. + +If any one were to say that all this was a little fantastic, I should not +contradict him; but I hope there is some reason in it, if reason can help +the short story to greater favor, for it is a form which I have great +pleasure in as a reader, and pride in as an American. If we have not +excelled all other moderns in it, we have certainly excelled in it; +possibly because we are in the period of our literary development which +corresponds to that of other peoples when the short story pre-eminently +flourished among them. But when one has said a thing like this, it +immediately accuses one of loose and inaccurate statement, and requires +one to refine upon it, either for one's own peace of conscience or for +one's safety from the thoughtful reader. I am not much afraid of that +sort of reader, for he is very rare, but I do like to know myself what I +mean, if I mean anything in particular. + +In this instance I am obliged to ask myself whether our literary +development can be recognized separately from that of the whole English- +speaking world. I think it can, though, as I am always saying American +literature is merely a condition of English literature. In some sense +every European literature is a condition of some other European +literature, yet the impulse in each eventuates, if it does not originate +indigenously. A younger literature will choose, by a sort of natural +selection, some things for assimilation from an elder literature, for no +more apparent reason than it will reject other things, and it will +transform them in the process so that it will give them the effect of +indigeneity. The short story among the Italians, who called it the +novella, and supplied us with the name devoted solely among us to fiction +of epical magnitude, refined indefinitely upon the Greek romance, if it +derived from that; it retrenched itself in scope, and enlarged itself in +the variety of its types. But still these remained types, and they +remained types with the French imitators of the Italian novella. It was +not till the Spaniards borrowed the form of the novella and transplanted +it to their racier soil that it began to bear character, and to fruit in +the richness of their picaresque fiction. When the English borrowed it +they adapted it, in the metrical tales of Chaucer, to the genius of their +nation, which was then both poetical and humorous. Here it was full of +character, too, and more and more personality began to enlarge the bounds +of the conventional types and to imbue fresh ones. But in so far as the +novella was studied in the Italian sources, the French, Spanish, and +English literatures were conditions of Italian literature as distinctly, +though, of course, not so thoroughly, as American literature is a +condition of English literature. Each borrower gave a national cast to +the thing borrowed, and that is what has happened with us, in the full +measure that our nationality has differenced itself from the English. + +Whatever truth there is in all this, and I will confess that a good deal +of it seems to me hardy conjecture, rather favors my position that we are +in some such period of our literary development as those other peoples +when the short story flourished among them. Or, if I restrict our claim, +I may safely claim that they abundantly had the novella when they had not +the novel at all, and we now abundantly have the novella, while we have +the novel only subordinately and of at least no such quantitative +importance as the English, French, Spanish, Norwegians, Russians, and +some others of our esteemed contemporaries, not to name the Italians. We +surpass the Germans, who, like ourselves, have as distinctly excelled in +the modern novella as they have fallen short in the novel. Or, if I may +not quite say this, I will make bold to say that I can think of many +German novelle that I should like to read again, but scarcely one German +novel; and I could honestly say the same of American novelle, though not +of American novels. + + + + +III. + +The abeyance, not to say the desuetude, that the novella fell into for +several centuries is very curious, and fully as remarkable as the modern +rise of the short story. It began to prevail in the dramatic form, for a +play is a short story put on the stage; it may have satisfied in that +form the early love of it, and it has continued to please in that form; +but in its original shape it quite vanished, unless we consider the +little studies and sketches and allegories of the Spectator and Tatler +and Idler and Rambler and their imitations on the Continent as guises of +the novella. The germ of the modern short story may have survived in +these, or in the metrical form of the novella which appeared in Chaucer +and never wholly disappeared. With Crabbe the novella became as +distinctly the short story as it has become in the hands of Miss Wilkins. +But it was not till our time that its great merit as a form was felt, for +until our time so great work was never done with it. I remind myself of +Boccaccio, and of the Arabian Nights, without the wish to hedge from my +bold stand. They are all elemental; compared with some finer modern work +which deepens inward immeasurably, they are all of their superficial +limits. They amuse, but they do not hold, the mind and stamp it with +large and profound impressions. + +An Occidental cannot judge the literary quality of the Eastern tales; but +I will own my suspicion that the perfection of the Italian work is +philological rather than artistic, while the web woven by Mr. James or +Miss Jewett, by Kielland or Bjornson, by Maupassant, by Palacio Valdes, +by Giovanni Verga, by Tourguenief, in one of those little frames seems to +me of an exquisite color and texture and of an entire literary +preciousness, not only as regards the diction, but as regards those more +intangible graces of form, those virtues of truth and reality, and those +lasting significances which distinguish the masterpiece. + +The novella has in fact been carried so far in the short story that it +might be asked whether it had not left the novel behind, as to perfection +of form; though one might not like to affirm this. Yet there have been +but few modern fictions of the novel's dimensions which have the beauty +of form many a novella embodies. Is this because it is easier to give +form in the small than in the large, or only because it is easier to hide +formlessness? It is easier to give form in the novella than in the +novel, because the design of less scope can be more definite, and because +the persons and facts are fewer, and each can be more carefully treated. +But, on the other hand, the slightest error in execution shows more in +the small than in the large, and a fault of conception is more evident. +The novella must be clearly imagined, above all things, for there is no +room in it for those felicities of characterization or comment by which +the artist of faltering design saves himself in the novel. + + + + +IV. + +The question as to where the short story distinguishes itself from the +anecdote is of the same nature as that which concerns the bound set +between it and the novel. In both cases the difference of the novella is +in the motive, or the origination. The anecdote is too palpably simple +and single to be regarded as a novella, though there is now and then a +novella like The Father, by Bjornson, which is of the actual brevity of +the anecdote, but which, when released in the reader's consciousness, +expands to dramatic dimensions impossible to the anecdote. Many +anecdotes have come down from antiquity, but not, I believe, one short +story, at least in prose; and the Italians, if they did not invent the +story, gave us something most sensibly distinguishable from the classic +anecdote in the novella. The anecdote offers an illustration of +character, or records a moment of action; the novella embodies a drama +and develops a type. + +It is not quite so clear as to when and where a piece of fiction ceases +to be a novella and becomes a novel. The frontiers are so vague that one +is obliged to recognize a middle species, or rather a middle magnitude, +which paradoxically, but necessarily enough, we call the novelette. +First we have the short story, or novella, then we have the long story, +or novel, and between these we have the novelette, which is in name a +smaller than the short story, though it is in point of fact two or three +times longer than a short story. We may realize them physically if we +will adopt the magazine parlance and speak of the novella as a one-number +story, of the novel as a serial, and of the novelette as a two-number or +a three-number story; if it passes the three-number limit it seems to +become a novel. As a two-number or three-number story it is the despair +of editors and publishers. The interest of so brief a serial will not +mount sufficiently to carry strongly over from month to month; when the +tale is completed it will not make a book which the Trade (inexorable +force!) cares to handle. It is therefore still awaiting its +authoritative avatar, which it will be some one's prosperity and glory to +imagine; for in the novelette are possibilities for fiction as yet +scarcely divined. + +The novelette can have almost as perfect form as the novella. In fact, +the novel has form in the measure that it approaches the novelette; and +some of the most symmetrical modern novels are scarcely more than +novelettes, like Tourguenief's Dmitri Rudine, or his Smoke, or Spring +Floods. The Vicar of Wakefield, the father of the modern novel, is +scarcely more than a novelette, and I have sometimes fancied, but no +doubt vainly, that the ultimated novel might be of the dimensions of +Hamlet. If any one should say there was not room in Hamlet for the +character and incident requisite in a novel, I should be ready to answer +that there seemed a good deal of both in Hamlet. + +But no doubt there are other reasons why the novel should not finally be +of the length of Hamlet, and I must not let my enthusiasm for the +novelette carry me too far, or, rather, bring me up too short. I am +disposed to dwell upon it, I suppose, because it has not yet shared the +favor which the novella and the novel have enjoyed, and because until +somebody invents a way for it to the public it cannot prosper like the +one-number story or the serial. I should like to say as my last word for +it here that I believe there are many novels which, if stripped of their +padding, would turn out to have been all along merely novelettes in +disguise. + +It does not follow, however, that there are many novelle which, if they +were duly padded, would be found novelettes. In that dim, subjective +region where the aesthetic origins present themselves almost with the +authority of inspirations there is nothing clearer than the difference +between the short-story motive and the long-story motive. One, if one is +in that line of work, feels instinctively just the size and carrying +power of the given motive. Or, if the reader prefers a different figure, +the mind which the seed has been dropped into from Somewhere is +mystically aware whether the seed is going to grow up a bush or is going +to grow up a tree, if left to itself. Of course, the mind to which the +seed is intrusted may play it false, and wilfully dwarf the growth, or +force it to unnatural dimensions; but the critical observer will easily +detect the fact of such treasons. Almost in the first germinal impulse +the inventive mind forefeels the ultimate difference and recognizes the +essential simplicity or complexity of the motive. There will be a +prophetic subdivision into a variety of motives and a multiplication of +characters and incidents and situations; or the original motive will be +divined indivisible, and there will be a small group of people +immediately interested and controlled by a single, or predominant, fact. +The uninspired may contend that this is bosh, and I own that something +might be said for their contention, but upon the whole I think it is +gospel. + +The right novel is never a congeries of novelle, as might appear to the +uninspired. If it indulges even in episodes, it loses in reality and +vitality. It is one stock from which its various branches put out, and +form it a living growth identical throughout. The right novella is never +a novel cropped back from the size of a tree to a bush, or the branch of +a tree stuck into the ground and made to serve for a bush. It is another +species, destined by the agencies at work in the realm of unconsciousness +to be brought into being of its own kind, and not of another. + + + + +V. + +This was always its case, but in the process of time the short story, +while keeping the natural limits of the primal novella (if ever there was +one), has shown almost limitless possibilities within them. It has shown +itself capable of imparting the effect of every sort of intention, +whether of humor or pathos, of tragedy or comedy or broad farce or +delicate irony, of character or action. The thing that first made itself +known as a little tale, usually salacious, dealing with conventionalized +types and conventionalized incidents, has proved itself possibly the most +flexible of all the literary forms in its adaptation to the needs of the +mind that wishes to utter itself, inventively or constructively, upon +some fresh occasion, or wishes briefly to criticise or represent some +phase or fact of life. + +The riches in this shape of fiction are effectively inestimable, if we +consider what has been done in the short story, and is still doing +everywhere. The good novels may be easily counted, but the good novelle, +since Boccaccio began (if it was he that first began) to make them, +cannot be computed. In quantity they are inexhaustible, and in quality +they are wonderfully satisfying. Then, why is it that so very, very few +of the most satisfactory of that innumerable multitude stay by you, as +the country people say, in characterization or action? How hard it is to +recall a person or a fact out of any of them, out of the most signally +good! We seem to be delightfully nourished as we read, but is it, after +all, a full meal? We become of a perfect intimacy and a devoted +friendship with the men and women in the short stories, but not +apparently of a lasting acquaintance. It is a single meeting we have +with them, and though we instantly love or hate them dearly, recurrence +and repetition seem necessary to that familiar knowledge in which we hold +the personages in a novel. + +It is here that the novella, so much more perfect in form, shows its +irremediable inferiority to the novel, and somehow to the play, to the +very farce, which it may quantitatively excel. We can all recall by name +many characters out of comedies and farces; but how many characters out +of short stories can we recall? Most persons of the drama give +themselves away by name for types, mere figments of allegory, and perhaps +oblivion is the penalty that the novella pays for the fineness of its +characterizations; but perhaps, also, the dramatic form has greater +facilities for repetition, and so can stamp its persons more indelibly on +the imagination than the narrative form in the same small space. The +narrative must give to description what the drama trusts to +representation; but this cannot account for the superior permanency of +the dramatic types in so great measure as we might at first imagine, for +they remain as much in mind from reading as from seeing the plays. It is +possible that as the novella becomes more conscious, its persons will +become more memorable; but as it is, though we now vividly and with +lasting delight remember certain short stories, we scarcely remember by +name any of the people in them. I may be risking too much in offering an +instance, but who, in even such signal instances as The Revolt of Mother, +by Miss Wilkins, or The Dulham Ladies, by Miss Jewett, can recall by name +the characters that made them delightful? + + + + +VI. + +The defect of the novella which we have been acknowledging seems an +essential limitation; but perhaps it is not insuperable; and we may yet +have short stories which shall supply the delighted imagination with +creations of as much immortality as we can reasonably demand. The +structural change would not be greater than the moral or material change +which has been wrought in it since it began as a yarn, gross and +palpable, which the narrator spun out of the coarsest and often the +filthiest stuff, to snare the thick fancy or amuse the lewd leisure of +listeners willing as children to have the same persons and the same +things over and over again. Now it has not only varied the persons and +things, but it has refined and verified them in the direction of the +natural and the supernatural, until it is above all other literary forms +the vehicle of reality and spirituality. When one thinks of a bit of Mr. +James's psychology in this form, or a bit of Verga's or Kielland's +sociology, or a bit of Miss Jewett's exquisite veracity, one perceives +the immense distance which the short story has come on the way to the +height it has reached. It serves equally the ideal and the real; that +which it is loath to serve is the unreal, so that among the short stories +which have recently made reputations for their authors very few are of +that peculiar cast which we have no name for but romanticistic. The only +distinguished modern writer of romanticistic novelle whom I can think of +is Mr. Bret Harte, and he is of a period when romanticism was so +imperative as to be almost a condition of fiction. I am never so +enamoured of a cause that I will not admit facts that seem to tell +against it, and I will allow that this writer of romanticistic short +stories has more than any other supplied us with memorable types and +characters. We remember Mr. John Oakhurst by name; we remember Kentuck +and Tennessee's Partner, at least by nickname; and we remember their +several qualities. These figures, if we cannot quite consent that they +are persons, exist in our memories by force of their creator's +imagination, and at the moment I cannot think of any others that do, +out of the myriad of American short stories, except Rip Van Winkle out of +Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Marjorie Daw out of Mr. Aldrich's +famous little caprice of that title, and Mr. James's Daisy Miller. + +It appears to be the fact that those writers who have first distinguished +themselves in the novella have seldom written novels of prime order. +Mr. Kipling is an eminent example, but Mr. Kipling has yet a long life +before him in which to upset any theory about him, and one can only +instance him provisionally. On the other hand, one can be much more +confident that the best novelle have been written by the greatest +novelists, conspicuously Maupassant, Verga, Bjornson, Mr. Thomas Hardy, +Mr. James, Mr. Cable, Tourguenief, Tolstoy, Valdes, not to name others. +These have, in fact, all done work so good in this form that one is +tempted to call it their best work. It is really not their best, but it +is work so good that it ought to have equal acceptance with their novels, +if that distinguished editor was right who said that short stories sold +well when they were good short stories. That they ought to do so is so +evident that a devoted reader of them, to whom I was submitting the +anomaly the other day, insisted that they did. I could only allege the +testimony of publishers and authors to the contrary, and this did not +satisfy him. + +It does not satisfy me, and I wish that the general reader, with whom the +fault lies, could be made to say why, if he likes one short story by +itself and four short stories in a magazine, he does not like, or will +not have, a dozen short stories in a book. This was the baffling +question which I began with and which I find myself forced to end with, +after all the light I have thrown upon the subject. I leave it where I +found it, but perhaps that is a good deal for a critic to do. If I had +left it anywhere else the reader might not feel bound to deal with it +practically by reading all the books of short stories he could lay hands +on, and either divining why he did not enjoy them, or else forever +foregoing his prejudice against them because of his pleasure in them. + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Anomalies of the Short Story, +by William Dean Howells + diff --git a/old/whass11.zip b/old/whass11.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a0b4842 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whass11.zip |