INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

During the past year I have had occasion to think often and seriously of disintegration in American literature as a force which can no longer be ignored. There are times in the history of a people when disintegration is a form of creation, and when the cry goes up on all sides: “Écrasez l’Infame,” it is not generally recognized that this cry is a passionate prayer. Such a cry is heard in all countries of Europe today, though it is not yet general, and the question arises whether it is historically the moment for that cry or prayer to be uttered by American writers. Well, I do not think so at all, and yet the cry is usually synchronous with disintegration.

I do not think so because the disintegration which I see in American life and literature is the effect of weakness rather than of strong relentless force. It takes two forms in the work of our story writers. First of all, we have the disintegration of laziness and spiritual compromise which is manifest in the commercial short story’s surrender to the machine and to business. That is a present fact which can never be sufficiently taken into account. It follows the line of least resistance, and utters no cry of passionate conviction.

The second form of disintegration is often thought to be more subtle, but it is really equally obvious and weak. Those who manifest it are sitting home quietly observing the spiritual disintegration of Europe as a fascinating spectacle, and finding in it only æsthetic values which they long to imitate. They do not see, or perhaps they do not choose to see, that the pattern which they admire is the result of a conflict which they have shirked, and that any attempt to copy it without undergoing the experience which justifies it as expression will result only in pastiche, and in bad pastiche at that. Joyce and Lawrence and other Europeans are not accidents, but their American imitators may prove to be serious accidents. Joyce, who will serve very well to illustrate my point, is subduing the show of things to the desires of the mind, because he is a possessive European male who has suffered. Any one of many American writers whom I refrain from naming perceives the patterned result of this suffering, but is unable or unwilling to pay the price.

We are told in the Old Testament that Dada followed Babel as a penalty, and the European Dadaists have only sought, as critics of a civilization which has become a spiritual failure, to make this clear by symbols. The American Dadaists, who seem likely to spring up like mushrooms from now on, say “Dada” for its own sake, and so revert to infancy at the moment when men are most needed to interpret our obscure desires. I find their assumed superiority to other mortals snobbish, and their æsthetic attitude is only one present manifestation of the intellectualist sterility and anæmia from which we have begun to escape at last. They are taking “Art” entirely too seriously, and forgetting that every great artist is only great in so far as he can laugh at his own pretensions a little sadly.

We are also in some danger of seeking romantic escape from the machine by creating a mysticism of the machine, and by regarding the machine as something transcendental. This is sincere enough, because it is the result of action on the part of those who have suffered from the machine. We know how deeply rooted is the instinct to lay propitiatory offerings before something powerful of which we are afraid. But the artist should not imitate Caliban, even if he does so beautifully, and so while I recognize the truth underlying the work of Stieglitz, for example, I cannot accept this new transcendentalism in American art and literature as a liberating force. It is clear to me that it is really an ostrichlike way of accepting slavery.

These remarks are perhaps less irrelevant to the general reader than he is likely to believe. If our more promising artists are driven into a cul-de-sac, it is because they perceive the banality of Main Street, and are seeking a way out into the country. It is perhaps necessary to continue trying cul-de-sacs until the right road has been found, and it may even be probable that when that road is found, many artists will not be disinterested enough to bring back the news. The romantic escape of many is perhaps necessary for the realistic return of one, and all I am seeking to do is to point out if I can what ways appear to me to be cul-de-sacs, and what artists seem to have stumbled on the way out. If these artists run away, something is lost, but more is lost if they are all driven into narrow cul-de-sacs. Meanwhile, Sherwood Anderson seems to me the man who is nearest to finding freedom, and I believe he is also the man who is most anxious to return to Main Street and report what he has found.

To repeat what I have said in these pages in previous years, for the benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and principles of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists, may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in formulæ, and organized criticism at its best would be nothing more than dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead. What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh, living current which flows through the best American work, and the psychological and imaginative reality which American writers have conferred upon it.

No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination than we display at present.

The present record covers the period from October, 1921, to September, 1922, inclusive. During this period I have sought to select from the stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. Substance is something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather than something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist’s power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth. The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently called the test of substance.

But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skillful selection and arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.

The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first consists of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the yearbook without comment or qualifying asterisk. The second group consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they survive either the test of substance or the test of form. Each of these stories may claim to possess either distinction of technique alone, or more frequently, I am glad to say, a persuasive sense of life in them to which a reader responds with some part of his own experience. Stories included in this group are indicated in the yearbook index by a single asterisk prefixed to the title.

The third group, which is composed of stories of still greater distinction, includes such narratives as may lay convincing claim to a second reading, because each of them has survived both tests, the test of substance and the test of form. Stories included in this group are indicated in the yearbook index by two asterisks prefixed to the title.

Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories which possess, I believe, the even finer distinction of uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven pattern with such sincerity that these stories may fairly claim a position in American literature. If all of these stories by American authors were republished, they would not occupy more space than six or seven novels of average length. My selection of them does not imply the critical belief that they are great stories. A year which produced one great story would be an exceptional one. It is simply to be taken as meaning that I have found the equivalent of six or seven volumes worthy of republication among all the stories published during the period under consideration. These stories are indicated in the yearbook index by three asterisks prefixed to the title, and are listed in the special “Roll of Honor.” In compiling these lists I have permitted no personal preference or prejudice consciously to influence my judgment. It has been a point of honor with me not to republish a story by an English author or by any foreign author. I have also made it a rule not to include more than one story by an individual author in the volume. The general and particular results of my study will be found explained and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of the volume.

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN.

Forest Hill, Oxon, England, November 23, 1922.