Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism | Page 7

"popular" magazines balance
this merit by their more frequent escape from mere prettiness. In both
kinds, the majority of the stories come from the same mill, even though
the minds that shape them may differ in refinement and in taste. Their
range is narrow, and, what is more damning, their art seems constantly
to verge upon artificiality.
These made-to-order stories (and this is certainly not too strong a term
for the majority of them) are not interesting to a critical reader. He
sticks to the novel, or, more frequently, goes to France, to Russia, or to
England for his fiction, as the sales- list of any progressive publisher
will show. And I do not believe that they are deeply interesting to an
uncritical reader. He reads them to pass the time; and, to judge from the
magazines themselves, gives his more serious attention to the
"write-ups" of politics, current events, new discoveries, and men in the
public eye,--to reality, in other words, written as if it were fiction, and
more interesting than the fiction that accompanies it, because, in spite
of its enlivening garb, it is guaranteed by writer and editor to be true. I
am not impressed by the perfervid letters published by the editor in
praise of somebody's story as a "soul-cure," or the greatest of the
decade. They were written, I suppose, but they are not typical. They do
not insult the intelligence as do the ridiculous puffs which it is now the
fashion to place like a sickly limelight at the head of a story; but they
do not convince me of the story's success with the public. Actually,
men and women, discussing these magazines, seldom speak of the
stories. They have been interested,--in a measure. The "formula," as I
shall show later, is bound to get that result. But they have dismissed the

characters and forgotten the plots.
I do not deny that this supposedly successful short story is easy to read.
It is--fatally easy. And here precisely is the trouble. To borrow a term
from dramatic criticism, it is "well made," and that is what makes it so
thin, so bloodless, and so unprofitable to remember, in spite of its easy
narrative and its "punch." Its success as literature, curiously enough for
a new literature and a new race like ours, is limited, not by crudity, or
inexpressiveness, but by form, by the very rigidity of its carefully
perfected form. Like other patent medicines, it is constructed by
formula.
It is not difficult to construct an outline of the "formula" by which
thousands of current narratives are being whipped into shape. Indeed,
by turning to the nearest textbook on "Selling the Short Story," I could
find one ready-made. (There could be no clearer symptom of the
disease I wish to diagnose than these many "practical" textbooks, with
their over-emphasis upon technique and their under-estimate of all else
that makes literature.) The story must begin, it appears, with action or
with dialogue. A mother packs her son's trunk while she gives him
unheeded advice mingled with questions about shirts and socks; a
corrupt and infuriated director pounds on the mahogany table at his
board meeting, and curses the honest fool (hero of the story) who has
got in his way; or, "'Where did Mary Worden get that curious gown?'
inquired Mrs. Van Deming, glancing across the sparkling glass and
silver of the hotel terrace." Any one of these will serve as instance of
the break-neck beginning which Kipling made obligatory. Once started,
the narrative must move, move, move furiously, each action and every
speech pointing directly toward the unknown climax. A pause is a
confession of weakness. This Poe taught for a special kind of story; and
this a later generation, with a servility which would have amazed that
sturdy fighter, requires of all narrative. Then the climax, which must
neatly, quickly, and definitely end the action for all time, either by a
solution you have been urged to hope for by the wily author in every
preceding paragraph, or in a way which is logically correct but never,
never suspected. O. Henry is responsible for the vogue of the latter of
these two alternatives,--and the strain of living up to his inventiveness
has been frightful. Finally comes a last suspiration, usually in the
advertising pages. Sometimes it is a beautiful descriptive sentence

charged with sentiment, sometimes a smart epigram, according to the
style of story, or the "line" expected of the author. Try this, as the
advertisements say, on your favorite magazine. This formula, with
variations which readers can supply for themselves or draw from
textbooks on the short story, is not a wholly bad method of writing
fiction. It is, I venture to assert, a very good one,--if you desire merely
effective story-telling. It is