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Updated: June 2, 2025
Hence, in spite of the technical difficulties which beset the author of short-stories, his work is, on human grounds, more easy than that of the novelist, who must be sane and consistent, and must be able to sustain a prolonged effort of interpretive imagination.
In such contes as "The Necklace" of de Maupassant and "The Last Class" of Daudet, in such short-stories as "Ligeia," "The Ambitious Guest," "Markheim," and "Without Benefit of Clergy," the aim of the author is quite distinct from that of the writer of novels and of novelettes. In material and in method, as well as in extent, these stories represent a type that is noticeably different.
Now the beast-fable, as handled by Aesop, falls short of being high art by reason of its overwhelming fantasy, which annihilates all chance of its possibility. The best short-stories represent a struggle between fantasy and fact.
=Brief Tales That Are Not Short-Stories.= There can be no doubt that the short-story, thus rigidly defined, exists as a distinct form of fiction, a definite literary species obeying laws of its own. Now and again before the nineteenth century, it appeared unconsciously.
It is as though in an art museum there should be a man at the door selling would-be masterly short-stories about the paintings, and a man with a violin playing the catalogue. But for further discourse on the orchestra read the fourteenth chapter. I left Cabiria with mixed emotions. And I had to forget the distressful eye-strain. Few eyes submit without destruction to three hours of film.
Though the Short-stories of the beginner may not be good, yet in the writing of Short-stories he shall learn how to tell a story, he shall discover by experience the elements of the art of fiction more readily and, above all, more quickly than if he had begun on a long and exhausting novel. The physical strain of writing a full-sized novel is far greater than the reader can well imagine.
Hugh Conway's "Called Back" are Short-stories in conception, although they are without the compression which the Short-story requires. In the acute and learned essay on vers de société which Mr.
Furthermore, he conveyed in his very first sentence a subtle sense of the emotional tone of the entire narrative. In opening his short-stories, Hawthorne showed himself far inferior to his great contemporary. Only unawares did he occasionally hit upon the inevitable first sentence.
In dramatic composition, the equivalent of the Short-story is the one-act play, be it drama or comedy or comedietta or farce. As the novelists have learned their trade by the writing of Short-stories, so the dramatists might learn their trade, far more difficult as it is and more complicated, by the writing of one-act plays.
But the Short-story, being brief, does not need a love-interest to hold its parts together, and the writer of Short-stories has thus a greater freedom: he may do as he pleases; from him a love-tale is not expected. But other things are required of a writer of Short-stories which are not required of a writer of Novels. The novelist may take his time: he has abundant room to turn about.
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