Literature in the Making, by Some of Its Makers

by Unknown

"Poe and Ambrose Bierce are at least to be linked in this: that they are the two greatest and the two coldest of all American short-story writers. Any living American fictionist will perhaps bear testimony to the fact that he has never met any other writer who has been influenced by the stories of Poe."

"Mr. Allen," I said, "you believe that the American short story has not been influenced by Poe; has the American short story, however, improved since his time?"

"The renascence of the American short story," said Mr. Allen, thoughtfully, "its real efflorescence as a natural literary art form, took place after the close of the Civil War. The historians of our literature have, perhaps, as is customary with them, held to the strict continuity of tradition as explaining this renascence. If so, they have omitted one of the instinctive forces of human nature, which invariably act in nations that have literatures and act ungovernably at the termination of all wars.

"After any war spontaneity in story-telling is one of the ungovernable impulses of human nature. This can be traced from modern literature back to primitive man returning from his feuds. When he had no literature, he carved his story on the walls of his cave or on a bone to tell the glory of the fight. Before he could even carve a bone he hung up a row of the heads of the defeated. Perhaps the original form of the war short story was a good, thick volume of heads. Within our own civilization the American Indian told his short stories in this way—with American heads or tufts of scalps—a sad way of telling them for our forefathers.

"At the close of the American Civil War the atmosphere, both North and South, was charged with stories. The amazing fact is not that short stories should have begun at that time, but that they should have begun with such perfection. This perfection expressed itself more richly during the period, say, from 1870 to 1895—twenty-five years—than it has ever done since.

"The evidence is at hand that the best of the American short stories written during that period outweigh in value those that have been written later—with the exception of those of one man. And this evidence takes this form—that these stories were collected into volumes, had an enormous sale, had the highest critical appreciation, have passed into the histories of literature written since, have gone into the courses of English literature now being taught in the universities, and are still steadily being sold.

"Is this true of the best short stories being written now? Are any of the short stories written since that period being bound into volumes and extensively sold? Do the professors of English literature recommend them to their classes? That is the practical test.

"The one exception is O. Henry. He alone stands out in the later period as a world within himself; as much apart from any one else as are Hawthorne and Poe."

Mr. Allen did not express an opinion as to the probable effects on literature of the war. He said:

"Now, the North and the South in the renascence of the short story after the Civil War divide honors about equally. But it is impossible to speak of the Southern short story, or indeed of Southern literature at all, without being brought to the brink of a subject which lies back of the whole philosophy of Southern literature."