The Best Short Stories of 1915 | Page 5

results of my study will be found explained and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of the volume. It only remains now to point out certain passing characteristics of the year for the sake of chronological completeness.
I suppose there can be no doubt that "Zelig" is by all odds the most nobly conceived and finely wrought story of the year. It is a peculiar satisfaction to find again this year, as in 1914, that the best story is the work of an unknown author. Mr. Rosenblatt's story is in my opinion even more satisfying as a report of life than Mr. Conrad Richter's "Brothers of No Kin," which I felt to be the best story published during 1914. The American public is indebted to Professor Albert Frederick Wilson, of the New York University School of Journalism for the discovery and encouragement of Mr. Rosenblatt's literary genius. Professor Wilson's service to American literature in this matter should be adequately acknowledged.
The Bellman, in which "Zelig" appeared, is remarkable for the brilliance and power of its fiction. My averages this year show clearly that its percentage of distinctive stories is nearly double that of the American weekly which most nearly approaches it. The quality of the Bellman's poetry is a matter of national knowledge. It is fully equalled by the Bellman's fiction, which renders it one of the three or four American periodicals necessary to every student of our spiritual history.
One new periodical and one new short story writer claim unique attention this year for their recent achievement and abundant future promise. A year ago a slender little monthly magazine entitled the Midland was first issued in Iowa City. It attracted very little attention, and in the course of the year published but ten short stories. It has been my pleasure and wonder to find in these ten stories the most vital interpretation in fiction of our national life that many years have been able to show. Since the most brilliant days of the New England men of letters, no such group of writers has defined its position with such assurance and modesty.
One new short story writer has appeared this year whose five published stories open a new field to fiction and have a human richness of feeling and imagination rare in our oversophisticated literature. I refer to the fables of Seumas O'Brien. At first one is struck with their utter absence of form, and then one realizes that this is a conscious art that wanders truant over life and imagination. In Seumas O'Brien I believe that America has found a new humorist of popular sympathies, a rare observer and philosopher whose very absurdities have a persuasive philosophy of their own.
The two established writers whose sustained excellence this year is most impressive are Katharine Fullerton Gerould and Wilbur Daniel Steele. Lincoln Colcord's two stories show qualities of artistic conscience re?nforcing an imaginative substance so real that another year or two should suffice for him to take his place with the leaders of American fiction. I must affirm once more the genuine literary art of Fannie Hurst. The absolute fidelity of her dialogue to life and its revealing spirit, not despite, but rather because of the vulgarities she accepts, seem to me to assure her permanence in her best work.
A rare literary art, not dissimilar in fundamentals, and quite as marvellously documented, is revealed by Rupert Hughes in his series of stories in the Metropolitan Magazine this year. In "Michaeleen! Michaelawn!" he has succeeded greatly. It is a story which it will be difficult for Americans to forget.
What must have begun as a doubtful experiment and been continued only because it was a triumphantly demonstrated success has been the serial publication for the great average American public of my selection of the best twenty-one stories published in 1914. The Illustrated Sunday Magazine has evidently justified its daring, and the bold pioneering of its editor, Mr. Hiram M. Greene, to judge from the host of letters I have received from readers who have not read the best magazines in the past because, as many of them state, they feared that they were too "high-brow," but who have been convinced, by the introduction to the best contemporary fiction afforded them weekly in the supplement to their Sunday newspaper, that such periodicals as Harper's Magazine and Scribner's Magazine have many qualities to commend them to the untrained reader. All this serves to illustrate my point that the commercial short story is not preferred by that imaginary norm of editors known as "the reading public." If adequate means are employed to allay the average man's suspicions of literature and to introduce him painlessly to the best that our writers are creating, my experience shows absolutely that he will respond heartily and make higher standards possible by his support.