BEST SHORT STORIES
30 FROM 25,000 CHOSEN.
EVANSTON, 111., March 15.
A man whose name has come, to be synonymous with “the Best Short Stories of 19—” told a group of Northwestern University students here this week how he judges stories.
Edward J. O’Brien, who arrives at his choice of 30 stories mill of a sea of 25,000 yarns printed in English, prefers to find, his own way through, this jungles of tales without a guide. But. first he eliminates a. large group of magazines which he thinks are practically certain never to print a literary short story.
Mr O’Brien says lie doesn’t need to read them all through; he sniffs them first.
“I’ve trained my sense of smell,” he confided to the class. “It’s no more necessary to read a poor short story to the end than it is to eat all of a doubtful egg.” After he has sifted his stories for the most promising, he asks- himself three questions abouit those that survive.
“What does the writer set out to do? Is what he sets out to do. worth trying? How far has he succeeded in what he set out to do?” One question he doesn’t ask himself is, “Do I dislike, or approve of, the subject matter?” That, he thinks, is a. personal matter and shouildn’t enter into the selection of the best short stories. One type of story that has no chance at. all of creeping into Mr O’Brien’s collection, he made clear, is the most popular American variety, mechanically plotted, technically correct but without warmth and life. Plot must spring from- character, he contends. Characters In a tale, should dictate itsi form, and this, he commented, “is the thing least often done in American short stories.” A good short story, as 1 he sees it, must present “fully realised individual characters in a significant arrested moment of their lives.” About 150 stories out of. the 2500 he examines annually survive, under iPpcp tests. Bui. this is still too many to print. The editor confessed that his final selection is made on, somewhat. personal considerations. Not more than one story to an author. Unknown writers' in preference to authors already famous. This- finally gets him down to 20 stories, for publication.
What, about, trends? Out of his experience of reviewing 55,000 short .stories in the. last 20 years or so, Mr O’Brien can speak with authority. “Writers are getting more, and more away from the stories of romantic escape," he said. “People are writing more about things they know intimately. There’s a hit of bravado in this writing: writers go a little more over the line of naturalism than they need to, but. on the whole it’s a healthy trend.” There’s danger of the. highbrow short story winning too much favour in the collegiate literary magazines. Mr O’Brien thinks. Young literary editors are so afraid of being caught with hayseed in their hair, he says, that they get “arty.” Mr O'Brien deplores this. “It’s the hayseed that matters in American life,” he said. “The more hayseed the better.” Mr O’Brien, Boston horn, lives in Oxford, England, getting the necessary perspective for his work from that, vantage point.
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Bibliographic details
Greymouth Evening Star, 29 April 1937, Page 2
Word Count
532BEST SHORT STORIES Greymouth Evening Star, 29 April 1937, Page 2
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