Read
a hundred examples, and you will see how infallibly the authors--
always excepting our few masters--limit themselves to conventional
aspects of even these conventional themes. Reflect, and you will
see how the first--the theme of sentiment--has overflowed its
banks and washed over all the rest, so that, whatever else a story
may be, it must somewhere, somehow, make the honest American heart
beat more softly.
There is an obvious cause for this in the taste of the American
public, which I do not propose to neglect. But here too we are in
the grip of the "formula," of the idea that there is only one way
to construct a short story--a swift succession of climaxes rising
precipitously to a giddy eminence. For the formula is rigid, not
plastic as life is plastic. It fails to grasp innumerable stories
which break the surface of American life day by day and disappear
uncaught. Stories of quiet homely life, events significant for
themselves that never reach a burning climax, situations that end
in irony, or doubt, or aspiration, it mars in the telling. The
method which makes story-telling easy, itself limits our variety.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42