It was inevitable that, apropos of Poe, our customary national nonsense
about the "art of the short story" should have recurred in a painful and
acute form. It is a platitude of "Literary Pages" that Anglo-Saxon writers
cannot possess themselves of the "art of the short story." The only reason
advanced has been that Guy du Maupassant wrote very good short stories,
and he was French! God be thanked! Last week we all admitted that Poe had
understood the "art of the short story." (His name had not occurred to us
before.) Henceforward our platitude will be that no Anglo-Saxon writer can
compass the "art of the short story" unless his name happens to be Poe.
Another platitude is that the short story is mysteriously somehow more
difficult than the long story--the novel. Whenever I meet that phrase,
"art of the short story," in the press I feel as if I had drunk mustard
and water. And I would like here to state that there are as good short
stories in English as in any language, and that the whole theory of the
unsuitability of English soil to that trifling plant the short story is
ridiculous. Nearly every novelist of the nineteenth century, from Scott to
Stevenson, wrote first-class short stories. There are now working in
England to-day at least six writers who can write, and have written,
better short stories than any living writer of their age in France.
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