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The writer of Short-stories must be concise, and compression, a vigorous compression, is essential. For him, more than for any one else, the half is more than the whole.
=The Novelist and the Writer of Short-Stories.= These points have been so fully covered and so admirably illustrated by Professor Perry that they do not call for any further discussion in this place. But perhaps something may be added concerning the different equipments that are required by authors of novels and authors of short-stories.
In like manner we may recognize the striking similarity but only in so far as the external form is concerned discoverable in those short-stories which are as abundant as they are important in every modern literature; and yet much of our delight in these brief studies from life is due to the pungency of their local flavor, whether they were written by Kjelland or by Sacher-Masoch, by Auerbach or by Daudet, by Barrie or by Bret Harte.
Bunner's "Love in Old Clothes;" but more of them are not love-stories at all. If we were to pick out the ten best Short-stories, I think we should find that fewer than half of them made any mention at all of love.
On the other hand, most of the mature men who have been wise enough to do the latter, have shown themselves incapable of focusing their minds steadily upon a single point of experience. Wholeness and steadiness of vision few are the men who, like Sophocles, have possessed them both. The same author, therefore, has almost never been able to write great short-stories and great novels.
In such stories as Björnson's The Father and Maupassant's The Piece of String this simplicity is equal to that of the anecdote, but in no case can an anecdote possess the dramatic possibilities of these simple short-stories; for a short-story must always have that tensity of emotion that comes only in the crucial tests of life.
Let us therefore analyze one of Poe's short-stories, following in the main the method which he himself pursued in his analysis of "The Raven," in order to learn the successive steps by which any excellent short-story may be developed from its theme.
Immediately after the publication of his first story Maupassant was hailed as a finished master artist. From 1880 to 1890 he published six novels, sixteen volumes of short-stories, three volumes of travels, and many newspaper articles. This gigantic task was performed only because of his regular habits and splendid physique.
Henry James has never gathered into a book from the back-numbers of magazines the half of his earlier efforts. In these references to the American magazine I believe I have suggested the real reason of the superiority of the American Short-stories over the English.
A well-constructed plot, like any other sort of well-articulated pattern, is interesting in itself; and certain novels and short-stories, like Wilkie Collins' "Moonstone" and Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue," maintain their interest almost through the element of plot alone.
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