Contemporary short stories III. [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONThe view is less frequently encountered today than formerly that a short story is (and, by implication, properly so) a condensed novel, a work that its author has for one cause or another failed to extend to a more imposing length. It is generally recognized, rather, that the short story in its treatment of action is closer to the drama than to the novel, that its brevity, no mere abbreviation, is positive and functional. Action that is complex, thoroughly motivated, and treated at length is the province of the novel; while action that is simple, tending to the "unique or single effect," is that of the short story.That this restriction is not a hampering one to a good writer is made clear by the stories in this as in the preceding volumes of Contemporary Short Stories. None of them exhibits the mechanical, tailor-made quality that is the trademark of work designed to conform to antipathetic editorial standards. None of them is a long story boiled down, a novel on the head of a pin. Nor has any of these writers, in order to achieve the single effect that is the essence of the short story, had to resort to the esoteric experimentation in technique which causes ordinary readers to feel resentful and bored, and which may cause even an adroit reader to feel inadequate. It would be absurd to claim that these stories do not vary somewhat in quality (The reader of a general, noncritical anthology makes his own evaluations on the basis of which stories are more or less significant to him.), but each is characterized, to some degree at least, by imaginative technique and careful craftsmanship. And each of them in which symbology is of some importance ("The Second Tree from the Corner," for