O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 | Page 3

empires.
The American short-story is "simple, economical, and brilliantly
effective," H.L. Mencken admits.[6] "Yet the same hollowness that
marks the American novel," he continues, "also marks the short story."
And of "many current makers of magazine short stories," he asseverates,
"such stuff has no imaginable relation to life as men live it in the
world." He further comments, "the native author of any genuine force
and originality is almost invariably found to be under strong foreign
influences, either English or Continental."
With due regard for the justice of this slant--that of a student of Shaw,
Ibsen, and Nietzsche--we believe that the best stories written in
America to-day reflect life, even life that is sordid and dreary or only
commonplace. In the New York _Evening Post_[7] the present writer
observed:
"A backward glance over the short stories of the preceding twelve
months discovers two facts. There are many of them, approximately
between fifteen hundred and two thousand; there are, comparatively,
few of merit."
[Footnote 6: The National Letters, in _Prejudices_, second series,
Knopf, N.Y., 1920.]
[Footnote 7: April 24, 1920.]
"You have looked from the rear platform of the limited, across the

widening distance, at a town passed a moment ago. A flourishing city,
according to the prospectus; a commonplace aggregation of
architecture, you say; respectable middle-class homes; time-serving
cottages built on the same plan; a heaven-seeking spire; perhaps a work
of art in library or townhall. You are rather glad that you have left it
behind; rather certain that soon you will have rolled through another, its
counterpart.
"But there may be hope, here, of sorts. For a typical American town
represents twentieth century life and development, just as current short
stories reflect conditions. If the writer failed to represent his age, to
reflect its peculiar images, he would not serve it truly."
It is significant that these words preceded by only a few months the
publication of Sinclair Lewis's "Main Street," which illustrates in a big
and popular way the point in question. Work of satire that it is, it
cannot but hold out a solution of the problem presented: in the sweep of
the land to the Rockies lies a "dominion which will rise to unexampled
greatness when other empires have grown senile."
America is young; its writers are young. But they are reflecting the
many-coloured, multiform life of America, in journalism and in art.
Quite naturally, they profit by all that has preceded them in other
literatures. Since their work stands rooted in romanticism it may
legitimately heighten the effects and lights of everyday life.
A glance at the stories republished by the O. Henry Memorial Award
Committee for 1920 will reveal their varied nature. The genus
Africanus is represented by "Black Art and Ambrose," which has a
close second in another on the list, "The Metamorphosis of High
Yaller," and a third in "The Ten-Share Horse" of E.K. Means. The
tabulation reveals a number of cosmic types--Jewish, Chinese, English,
French, Irish, Italian, American. The Chinese character is even more
ubiquitous than in 1919, but the tales wherein he figures appear to the
Committee to be the last drops in the bucket. Two exceptions occur:
"Young China," by Charles Caldwell Dobie, and "Widows and
Orphans," by Ellen La Motte. The former knows San Francisco
Chinatown, the latter is acquainted with the Oriental at home. One of
the Committee regards "The Daughter of the Bernsteins" as the best
story of Jewish character. Another sees in it a certain crudeness. Its
companions in the year were the tales of Bruno Lessing, Montague

Glass, and--in particular--a story by Leon Kelley entitled "Speeches
Ain't Business" (_Pictorial Review_, July).
But this note on the list is a digression. With regard to the stories
reprinted, "The Last Room of All" illustrates old-world influence,
surely, in its recountal of events in an age long past, the time of the
Second Emperor Frederick of Swabia. In its revival of old forms, old
customs, it is a masquerade. But behold that it is a gorgeous
blood-coloured masquerade and that Cercamorte is a distinct portrait of
the swash-buckler hero of those times.
The young Americans in "The Camel's Back" support a critical thesis
made for their author that he is evolving an idiom. It is the idiom of
young America. If you are over thirty, read one of this prodigy's
ten-thousand word narratives and discover for the first time that you are
separated by a hopeless chasm from the infant world.
"Professor Todd's Used Car" and "Alma Mater" are two of the
numerous stories published in 1920 which take up the cudgels for the
undertrodden college professor. Incidentally, it is interesting to read
from a letter of Mr. Lewis: "The brevity--and the twist in the plot at the
end--were consciously patterned on O. Henry's methods."
Without further enumeration of