Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Best Short Stories of 1918: And the Yearbook of the American Short Story
To repeat what I have said in these pages in previous years, for the benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and principles Of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists, may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in formulae, and organized criticism at its best would be nothing more than dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead. What has interested me, to the exclusion Of other things, is the fresh living current which ?ows through the best Of our work, and the psychological and imaginative reality which our writers have conferred upon it.
NO substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse Of life is beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination than we display at present.
The present record covers the period from January to October inclusive, 1918. During the past ten months I have sought to select from the stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. Substance is something achieved by the artist in every act Of creation, rather than something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist's power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth. The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or inci dents. This test may be conveniently called the test of substance.
But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and arrangement Of his material, and by the most direct and appealing presentation Of it in portrayal and characterization.
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