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Show Is the Short Story to Be Standardized or Is It to Be a Work of Art? By EDWARD O'BRIEN, in Boston Transcript. I would give a great deal for a more relaxed humanism. I am tired of our sense of strain, and, I doubt its value. It seems to me to be chiefly machinery for machinery's sake, a card catalog of the human mind after the mental vultures have picked it. Why can we not cultivate the loafabilities a bit more, to use Jay Gould's excellent phrase, and stop striking noble attitudes? The American short-story writer is so self-conscious self-conscious about structure, and so stiff in his mental attitude toward his gospel, that his reader can seldom relax. The writers drug us ; the others tire us. Meanwhile, I dare say, Chekhov and Maupassant are selling shoestrings on Broadway. If the short story is to be standardized, I suggest that New York business men might well erect an assembling plant upon University Heights, or any suitable location which they may choose, and offer prizes for the inventor of the cheapest and most durable model. If cheapness is what is most desired, let us put a greater. premium upon it. If durability dura-bility is merely a matter of structure, let us offer a great reward to our short-story engineers. Once the modei is whittled into shape, endless reproduction without toil will then ensue. But if the short story is to be a work of art, we shall proceed in a very different manner. |