I do not deny that this supposedly successful short story is easy
to read. It is--fatally easy. And here precisely is the trouble.
To borrow a term from dramatic criticism, it is "well made," and
that is what makes it so thin, so bloodless, and so unprofitable
to remember, in spite of its easy narrative and its "punch." Its
success as literature, curiously enough for a new literature and a
new race like ours, is limited, not by crudity, or
inexpressiveness, but by form, by the very rigidity of its
carefully perfected form. Like other patent medicines, it is
constructed by formula.
It is not difficult to construct an outline of the "formula" by
which thousands of current narratives are being whipped into
shape. Indeed, by turning to the nearest textbook on "Selling the
Short Story," I could find one ready-made. (There could be no
clearer symptom of the disease I wish to diagnose than these many
"practical" textbooks, with their over-emphasis upon technique and
their under-estimate of all else that makes literature.) The story
_must_ begin, it appears, with action or with dialogue. A mother packs
her son's trunk while she gives him unheeded advice mingled with
questions about shirts and socks; a corrupt and infuriated director
pounds on the mahogany table at his board meeting, and curses the
honest fool (hero of the story) who has got in his way; or, "'Where
did Mary Worden get that curious gown?' inquired Mrs.
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