I. American Authors
Her Country, by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews (Charles Scribner’s Sons). In this short story by Mrs. Andrews there is a fine emotional quality, and the spiritual values, though nowhere overstressed, will remind the reader of “The Perfect Tribute,” which still remains Mrs. Andrews’ best story. Written to assist the last Liberty Bond campaign, its significant interest is independent of its timeliness.
In the Midst of Life and Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce (Boni & Liveright). To an Englishman, the lack of familiarity we show with Ambrose Bierce’s stories is a mystery. If he were asked to mention our foremost short story writers, he would think of Poe, Hawthorne, Harte, O. Henry, and Bierce. Yet the name of Ambrose Bierce is almost unknown in this country. His publishers are to be congratulated on the critical acumen that prompted them to reissue Bierce’s stories in a new popular edition. No writer, with the possible exceptions of Stephen Crane and Henri Barbusse, has written of war with more passionate vividness. Such stories as “The Horseman in the Sky,” “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” and “Chickamauga” are among the best stories ever written by an American, and in the field of the macabre Bierce at his best is very nearly the equal of Poe. I suppose that “In the Midst of Life” is the better volume, but “Can Such Things Be?” almost rivals it in interest.
Helen of Troy, and Rose, by Phyllis Bottome (The Century Company). These two novelettes are studies in national and temperamental contrasts. Their deft characterization, subtle humor, and sense of place entitle them to a place beside the best novels of Ethel Sidgwick. They reveal a disciplined sense of poetry and a tolerance of outlook which spring from an older background than most American work.
The Flying Teuton and Other Stories, by Alice Brown (The Macmillan Company). Last year I had occasion to express my belief that “The Flying Teuton” was the best short story that had been inspired by the war up to that time. It comes to us now in book form with a collection of Miss Brown’s other stories of war and peace, revealing the old qualities of courage, imagination, poetry, and dramatic irony which we have come to associate with the name of Miss Brown. I regard the book as her most satisfying contribution to the short story since “Meadow Sweet.”
John O’May, by Maxwell Struthers Burt (Charles Scribner’s Sons). The wish which I expressed last year that Mr. Burt’s stories should be collected in book form is now gratified by the appearance of this volume. It is one of the few indispensable collections of the year by an American author, and gives Mr. Burt a place among American short story writers beside that of Mrs. Gerould, Wilbur Daniel Steele, H. G. Dwight, and Charles Caldwell Dobie. Few writers have a more thoughtful technique or a more unerring sense of dramatic values.
Home Fires in France, by Dorothy Canfield (Henry Holt & Company). Here is a homely record of the new spirit that the war has developed in the homes of France, and of the human intercourse so rapidly cemented between the French people and ourselves. There is a quiet glow in these stories which idealizes the sufferings of France, and brings home to us poignantly the present realities of her sufferings. If the volume lacks the conscious art of “Hillsboro People,” its substance has been shaped by a personal experience so intense that the book should live as a memorial long after the incidents which it records have passed.
Rush-Light Stories, by Maud Chapin (Duffield & Company). These poetic studies in place, though reminiscent of Gautier, are freshly told in a style that adequately mirrors the backgrounds of which they treat. I find them to be delicately wrought, with a prismatic beauty of phrasing, which errs slightly on the side of preciosity.
The Thunders of Silence, by Irvin S. Cobb (George H. Doran Company). When this short story appeared in the Saturday Evening Post this year, it was discussed widely as a polemic. It is not literature, but it is journalism at its very best, and has fine story values.
Free and Other Stories, by Theodore Dreiser (Boni & Liveright). This collection of stories is uneven, but the best of it is the best of Mr. Dreiser. In “The Lost Phœbe,” which I reprinted as one of the best short stories of 1917, a new legend was added to American letters which had much of the glamor of leisureliness of Hawthorne. Such a story as “McEwen of the Shining Slave Makers” is a fine imaginative projection into a new world, mirroring ironically our human passions in the warfare of two tribes of ants under the blades of a grass forest. Of the social studies in this volume, all show the exact observation and conscientious accumulation of detail for which Mr. Dreiser is noted, and the absence of selective power in many cases which often weakens his best work.