The Best Short Stories of 1919 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

I should like to take the text for my remarks this year on the American Short Story from that notable volume of criticism, "Our America" by Waldo Frank. For the past year, it has been a source of much questioning to me to determine why American fiction, as well as the other arts, fails so conspicuously in presenting a national soul, why it fails to measure sincerely the heights and depths of our aspirations and failures as a nation, and why it lacks the vital élan which is so characteristic of other literatures. We know, of course, that we are present at the birth of a new national consciousness in our people, but why is it that this national consciousness seems so tangled in evasion of reality and in deep inhibitions that stultify it? Mr. Frank suggests for the first time the root of the cancer, and like a skilful surgeon points out how it may be healed. His book is the first courageous diagnosis of our weakness, and I think that the attentive and honest reader will not feel that he is unduly harsh or spiritually alienated from us. Briefly put, he finds that our failure lies in not distinguishing between idealism in itself and idealization of ourselves. We regard a man who challenges our self righteousness and self admiration as an enemy of the people. What we call our idealism is rooted in materialism and the goal we set ourselves virtuously is a goal of material comfort for ourselves, and, that once attained, perhaps also for others.

"No American can hope to run a journal, win public office, successfully advertise a soap or write a popular novel who does not insist upon the idealistic basis of his country. A peculiar sort of ethical rapture has earned the term American.... And the reason is probably at least in part the fact that no land has ever sprung so nakedly as ours from a direct and consciously material impulse...."

Mr. Frank goes on to point out that because our dreams are founded on a material earth, they none the less have a hope of heaven, and that the American story is really a debased form of wish fulfilment. "While the American was active in the external world—mature and conscious there—his starved inner life stunted his spiritual powers to infantile dimensions.... What would satisfy him must be a picture of the contents of real life, simplified and stunted to the dream-dimensions of the infant. And with just this sort of thing, our army of commercialised writers and dramatists and editors has kept him constantly supplied.

"There is nothing more horrible than a physically mature body moved by a childish mind. And if the average American production repels the sensitive American reader the reason is that he is witnessing just this condition.... The American is aware of the individual and social problems which inspire the current literatures of Europe. He is conscious of the conflicts of family and sex, of the contrasts of poverty and wealth. Of such stuff, also, are his books. Their body is mature: but their mental and spiritual motivation remains infantile. At once, it is reduced to an abortive simplification whereby the reality is maimed, the reader's wish fulfilled as it could only be in fairyland. But the fairyland is missing: the sweet moods of fairyland have withered in the arid sophistications of American life.... And yet the authors of this sort of book are hailed as realists, their work is acclaimed as social criticism and American interpretation. And when at times a solitary voice emerges with the truth, its message is attacked as morbid and a lie.

"It is easy to understand how optimism should become of the tissue of American life. The pioneer must hope. Else, how can he press on? The American editor or writer who fails to strike the optimistic note is set upon with a ferocity which becomes clear if we bear in mind that hope is the pioneer's preserving arm. I do not mean to discredit the validity of hope and optimism. I can honestly lay claim to both. America was builded on a dream of fair lands: a dream that has come true. In the infinitely harder problems of social and psychic health, the dream persists. We believe in our Star. And we do not believe in our experience. America is filled with poverty, with social disease, with oppression and with physical degeneration. But we do not wish to believe that this is so. We bask in the benign delusion of our perfect freedom.... Yet spiritual growth without the facing of the world is an impossible conception."

Mr. Frank instances the case of Jack London as an example of how inhibition may crush an artist, while rewarding him with material success. "The background of this gifted man was the background of America. He had gone back to primal stratum: stolen and labored and adventured. Finally, he had learned to write. Criticism grew in him. He pierced the American myths. He no longer believed in the Puritan God.......