Short Story Masterpieces [antikvár]

EDITORS' NOTE A good story givcs plcasurc and satisfaction to anyone who is curious about, and sympathetic with, his fellow men, anyone whose feelings are fresh and can respond to the funny, the pitiful, the noble, or the terrible, anyone who is concerned with the meaning of his own, or other people's experience, anyone whose imagination is strong and healthy enough to create, from the words put before him by the writer, people, things, and events—the movement and color of life. We have chosen the stories in this book because we think that each one, in its own particular way, in its own scale, tonality, and self-imposed limitation, will give pleasure and satisfaction. It does not matter whether the movement and color of life are exhibited in the preposterous crazy farce of Thurber's "You Could Look It Up," with its hint of a folk-tale of the diamond and dugout, or in the mordant, sad irony of James Joyce's "The Boarding House," in the lyric nostalgia in Elizabeth Parsons's "The Nightingales Sing," or in the sardonic pathos of Ernest Hemingway's "Soldier's Home." What does matter is that the movement and color be delivered to us with force and freshness, and that the writer who delivers these to us make us feel, somehow, a significance in the process. By significance, we don't mean moralizing, about either individuals or society. What we do mean is best indicated indirectly by saying that the pleasure we get from Ring Lardner's acidulous comedies would be much less if behind these comedies there were not an outraged hatred of sham and a love of common decency and honesty, and that the wire-drawn suspense and taut style of Hemingway's dramas have a close relation to his ethic of courage and honor. Behind the good story, no matter how light its tone, how trivial its subject matter, or how cranky its end.