It is true that the
masses have no taste for literature,--as a steady diet; it is
still more certain that not even the most mediocre of multitudes
can be permanently hoodwinked by formula.
But the magazines can take care of themselves; it is the short
story in which I am chiefly interested. Better criticism and
greater freedom for fiction might vitalize our overabundant,
unoriginal, unreal, unversatile,--everything but unformed short
story. Its artifice might again become art. Even the more careful,
the more artistic work leaves one with the impression that these
stories have sought a "line," and found an acceptable formula. And
when one thinks of the multitudinous situations, impressions,
incidents in this fascinating whirl of modern life, incapable
perhaps of presentation in a novel because of their very
impermanence, admirably adapted to the short story because of
their vividness and their deep if narrow significance, the voice
of protest must go up against any artificial, arbitrary
limitations upon the art. Freedom to make his appeal to the public
with any subject not morbid or indecent, is all the writer can
ask.
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