In other words, the
conditions of American life, as he saw it, justified a short story, or any
number of them, but not a novel; and the fact that he did afterwards
attempt a novel only served to confirm his original position. I think that
the limitation that he discovered is of much wider application than we are
prone to realize. American life has been, as yet, nothing but a series of
episodes, of experiments. There has been no such thing as a fixed and
settled condition of society, not subject to change itself, and therefore
affording a foundation and contrast to minor or individual vicissitudes.
We cannot write American-grown novels, because a novel is not an episode,
nor an aggregation of episodes; we cannot write romances in the Hawthorne
sense, because, as yet, we do not seem to be clever enough. Several
courses are, however, open to us, and we are pursuing them all. First, we
are writing "short stories," accounts of episodes needing no historical
perspective, and not caring for any; and, so far as one may judge, we
write the best short stories in the world. Secondly, we may spin out our
short stories into long-short stories, just as we may imagine a baby six
feet high; it takes up more room, but is just as much a baby as one of
twelve inches.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99