The optimist
cannot resist meditating on the way out for our enslaved short
story.
The ultimate responsibility for its present position must fall, I
suppose, upon our American taste, which, when taken by and large,
is unquestionably crude, easily satisfied, and not sensitive to
good things. American taste does not rebel against the "formula."
If interest is pricked it does not inquire too curiously into the
nature of the goad. American taste is partial to sentiment, and
antagonistic to themes that fail to present the American in the
light of optimistic romance. But our defects in taste are slowly
but certainly being remedied. The schools are at work upon them;
journalism, for all its noisy vulgarity, is at work upon them. Our
taste in art, our taste in poetry, our taste in architecture, our
taste in music go up, as our taste in magazine fiction seems to go
down.
But what are the writers of short stories and what are the editors
and publishers doing to help taste improve itself until, as Henry
James says, it acquires a keener relish than ever before?
It profits nothing to attack the American writer. He does, it may
fairly be assumed, what he can, and I do not wish to discuss here
the responsibility of the public for his deficiencies.
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