The Best American Humorous Short Stories | Page 3

apparent serious
delineations of the frolics and foibles of their time take on a highly
humorous aspect.
George Pope Morris (1802-1864) was one of the founders of The New
York Mirror, and for a time its editor. He is best known as the author of
the poem, Woodman, Spare That Tree, and other poems and songs. The
Little Frenchman and His Water Lots (1839), the first story in the
present volume, is selected not because Morris was especially

prominent in the field of the short story or humorous prose but because
of this single story's representative character. Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1849) follows with The Angel of the Odd (October, 1844,
Columbian Magazine), perhaps the best of his humorous stories. The
System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether (November, 1845, Graham's
Magazine) may be rated higher, but it is not essentially a humorous
story. Rather it is incisive satire, with too biting an undercurrent to pass
muster in the company of the genial in literature. Poe's humorous
stories as a whole have tended to belittle rather than increase his fame,
many of them verging on the inane. There are some, however, which
are at least excellent fooling; few more than that.
Probably this is hardly the place for an extended discussion of Poe,
since the present volume covers neither American literature as a whole
nor the American short story in general, and Poe is not a humorist in
his more notable productions. Let it be said that Poe invented or
perfected--more exactly, perfected his own invention of--the modern
short story; that is his general and supreme achievement. He also stands
superlative for the quality of three varieties of short stories, those of
terror, beauty and ratiocination. In the first class belong A Descent into
the Maelstrom (1841), The Pit and the Pendulum (1842), The Black
Cat (1843), and The Cask of Amontillado (1846). In the realm of beauty
his notable productions are The Assignation (1834), Shadow: a Parable
(1835), Ligeia (1838), The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), Eleonora
(1841), and The Masque of the Red Death (1842). The tales of
ratiocination--what are now generally termed detective stories--include
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and its sequel, The Mystery of
Marie Rogêt (1842-1843), The Gold-Bug (1843), The Oblong Box
(1844), "Thou Art the Man" (1844), and The Purloined Letter (1844).
Then, too, Poe was a master of style, one of the greatest in English
prose, possibly the greatest since De Quincey, and quite the most
remarkable among American authors. Poe's influence on the short story
form has been tremendous. Although the effects of structure may be
astounding in their power or unexpectedness, yet the means by which
these effects are brought about are purely mechanical. Any student of
fiction can comprehend them, almost any practitioner of fiction with a

bent toward form can fairly master them. The merit of any short story
production depends on many other elements as well--the value of the
structural element to the production as a whole depends first on the
selection of the particular sort of structural scheme best suited to the
story in hand, and secondly, on the way in which this is combined with
the piece of writing to form a well-balanced whole. Style is more
difficult to imitate than structure, but on the other hand the origin of
structural influence is more difficult to trace than that of style. So while,
in a general way, we feel that Poe's influence on structure in the short
story has been great, it is difficult rather than obvious to trace particular
instances. It is felt in the advance of the general level of short story art.
There is nothing personal about structure--there is everything personal
about style. Poe's style is both too much his own and too superlatively
good to be successfully imitated--whom have we had who, even if he
were a master of structural effects, could be a second Poe? Looking at
the matter in another way, Poe's style is not his own at all. There is
nothing "personal" about it in the petty sense of that term. Rather we
feel that, in the case of this author, universality has been attained. It
was Poe's good fortune to be himself in style, as often in content, on a
plane of universal appeal. But in some general characteristics of his
style his work can be, not perhaps imitated, but emulated. Greater
vividness, deft impressionism, brevity that strikes instantly to a telling
effect--all these an author may have without imitating any one's style
but rather imitating excellence. Poe's "imitators" who have amounted to
anything have not tried to imitate him but to vie with him. They are
striving after perfectionism. Of course the sort of good style in which
Poe indulged is not the kind of style--or