A SHORT STORY VOGUE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19240, 2 August 1924, Page 7

A SHORT STORY VOGUE.

(By Gerald Gould, in the Daily Chronicle.) What a portent is the railway bookstall ! There, heaped up i > pile upon pile, and flaunting wrapn<.:s M.a thousand colours, is the food of the people’s mind ; lures for the ambitious, consolation for the unhappy, distraction for the weary, in the magazine story. Monthly, weekly, the mass of popular fiction is bolted. Monthly, weekly, the public returns for more. And yet some say there are only 39 plots in the world! (Some, indeed, say only seven.) I can remember the time when publishers used to shako gloomy heads over the short story. It would not sell, they said —at anyrate, in volume form. Now they go out into the magazines to get stuff for their volumes together. An excellent example of this sort of .compilation is “Georgian Stories, 1924“ (Chapman and Hall; 7s 6d net). It contains not only good pames, but good reading. • * * * * I once began a sales catalogue of those Seven (or thirty-mine) plots, as thus:— 1. The no’er-do-well has a soft spot in a heart of gold; ho loves cither (a) his mother, (b) a little child, or (c) a dog. This is a very cheap and profitable line; we can do it for you in hardened criminals or reckless but honourable adventurers who are no one’s enemy but their creditors’. 2. The rich successful and lonely man has a heart of gold with a soft spot in it. He loves either (a) a dog, (b) a little child, t or (c) his mother. 3. The husband really loves his wife, bl}t foolishly plays with fire. He discovers the true state of his affections either (a) before, or (b) after, it is too late. Or the wife’ really loves her husband, but, etc. 4. The apparently ineffectual young man reveals himself in a moment of crisis, as a romantic hero. 5. Fidelity and grit are rewarded. 6. The proud young girl, having long spurned /ier lover, comes, through danger, to realise her dependence on him. Wo are Belling more of this line than, any other. . . But when I realised that (2) was only a variatiant of (1), and (6) of (5), I abandoned the task. « * • It is so easy to see why these themes appeal: they console us with might-have-beens : and I began to wonder whether, on that principal, all plots could not be reduced to one. But “Georgian Stories” would suffice to warn us against such artificial over-simplification. It is true that Mr Aumonier approximates to (1) and Mr Coppard to (4); but they give a new turn, a distinction, to their subjects. A favourite way out from the commonplace is irony: you take tho old theme and gave it the opposite of the expected ending. Mr Ervine reverses (4): his ineffectual man fails. Mr Beresford reverses (5); a futile fidelity is its own reward. JVIr Aldous Huxley shows that the adored~man isn’t adorable, and that the person who gets hanged for a murder didn’s commit it. Then there are Miss Bottomc and Mrs Belloc Lowndes, Mr Algernon Blackwood and Mr St. John Lucas; and the “comics,” Mr Denis Mackail and Mr P. G. Wodehouse. . . . No, tlfc number cannot he seven. It must bo thirty-nine.