The Best Short Stories of 1918 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

FROM THE INTRODUCTION............In reviewing once more the short stories published in American periodicals during the year, it has been interesting, if partly disappointing, to observe the effect that the war has had upon this literary form. While I ... Read more

FROM THE INTRODUCTION............In reviewing once more the short stories published in American periodicals during the year, it has been interesting, if partly disappointing, to observe the effect that the war has had upon this literary form. While I believe that this effect is not likely to be permanent, and that the final outcome will be a stiffening of fibre, the fact remains that the short stories published during the past ten months show clearly that the war has numbed most writers’ imaginations. This is true, not only of war stories, but of stories in which the war is not directly or indirectly introduced. There has been a marked ebb this year in the quality of the American short story. Life these days is far more imaginative than any fiction can be, and our writers are dazed by its forceful impact. But out of this present confusion a new literature will surely emerge, although the experience we are gaining now will not crystallize into art for at least ten years, and probably not for longer. If this war is to produce American masterpieces, they will be written by men of middle age looking back through the years’ perspective upon the personal experience of their youth. Such work, to quote the old formula, must be the product of “emotion remembered in tranquillity.” Less