The Little Girl sketched this impression of an Indian Summer Dusk: ... Just now the great blue dusk, after an Indian summer day. It deepens and seems to laugh, then all is night. Huge black clouds roll up, promising a storm. Against them, tall, selfish, unafraid, stand the poplar trees. The great Mother of the dusk is singing, the God in Nature is singing, and Nature's belongings, all of them, sing in this magical moment. One feels it all in one's self, feels the glory, the romance, the very core-life of the Universe. The matings too, taking place in the grass and air; the matings of the two streams, the two grains of sand; the matings of butterflies, birds and bees. It all flows through one's body like music and honey and sunshine.... Nothing but space is around me. I feel all hollow inside. Power and beauty and all things This was done two years ago. There was a kind of dream story which she recently finished, gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way that ruined it for the general reader. It was all new to her that there could possibly be two ways to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or six story-writers were present for the reading, and out of the fruits of that evening, we surely saw the lesser beauty give way before a greater. We forecasted the readers of the future, who would prefer the more spiritual, more challenging story texture and dÉnouement. There has always been The Few—glad to discover the real, answering to interior order and clarity, "straight grain,"—but the fact for enthusiasm now is that the world is being peopled with the awakened. These young moderns are recognising each other from day to day, pulling Short story writing in America is less a trade and more of an art since Edward J. O'Brien, the poet, took his chair in the flow of the output and began to say which was which. There are a number of people in America who know a good short story when they see one; this is true among those who buy short stories, but editors cannot always buy what they want. A deal of mechanism in a magazine has to be oiled and energised by different kinds of minds from those who paint the pictures and write the tales. O'Brien knew both ends—also he knew that big, unobtrusive part of the market that looks long and pointedly for the real tale. He is a queer boy—from the bleak fishing grounds north of Boston. He is in no hurry. You couldn't tell if he really wants anything. He doesn't seem to want much—for O'Brien.... After he had his main line and most of the ramifications of his idea laid, he told the editors to send on the stories. Most of them did. O'Brien did a lot of work in a few weeks, did it startlingly well. He started something.... As a matter of fact, this is a bit of self-placation, since no work is lost; no one gets the value of a big thing to anything like the degree of the man who does it; no big thing is lost from the world, not even if dropped in a sewer, if it is really important for the world to have it. We are all a bit too heavily handicapped with our own idea of what the world should have from our own shops—at the same time, when we are young, we pant for the quicker return, the answering hail within reason—at least, within time and space. Now O'Brien has come, strangely arrived, his proper phylacteries in place, the touch of tinted haze about his head, the right man. Back of all, however, is the workman's own spine. That's the best thing to lean on; and when the going is heavy, to learn to do without. We often remind each other in Chapel of the modern artist Cezanne, who moved about his painting for many years, painting the thing, satisfying his soul, and leaving his canvasses around in the fields for the peasants to laugh at or mull over. Meanwhile much is still to do in the story world. The big smash of the moving pictures hasn't cleared from our game yet. It will be the cause of greater tales before the end is seen, for you can't portray the realities of romance upon a flat screen. For a time the many thought it was no longer necessary to learn to read, because there was such a torrent of pictures everywhere, but it was only through the pictures that the few has finally managed to realize how marvelously pictorial mere words are, and how few words are required when they are imaginatively driven. One day in Stonestudy we discussed these story and screen affairs, looking ahead somewhat to better times than these. One of our young men, whose story is told in a later chapter, put down the things we talked about. This is Shuk's writing: A fresh and different vitality is manifest to-day in American literature. At various points around us, dealing with words, colours and the subtler tools, are active young workmen who for The great love story has not been written. The few great love stories of the world have to be pieced out by the imagination. We find that we have been told that certain are great love stories, but they do not stand examination. The classic form will not do for the New Age. There is to be a new language—for literary handling. It may be called American, to distinguish it from English in the accepted form. It is to be brisk, brief, brave and ebullient—to meet the modification all must reckon with—the screen-trained mind. American-mindedness of itself, cannot yet accept a great love-story. It would be called "sentimental" if not lascivious. The average American is an impossible lover, making it incident to business. The real and the sham are equally above him. He would not know when to be exalted or when to be ashamed. He thinks his own The big adventure-story has not been done so far. The day of guns, horses and redskins is over. Photoplays have developed these fiction resources to the limit, proving to those writers born to be modern that their full tales can never be shown on a flat surface. There will be undercurrents, overtones, invisible movements, tensions upon the reader, not only from between the lines, but between words. The story-teller of the New Age may handle his theme in words of one syllable, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to be explained—only responded to by minds which cannot be satisfied by two-plane production—minds which demand more of life than the camera sees. The real war-story of to-day, even for to-morrow, ought to arrive soon. This is an age for an epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will arise—a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist, the poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and statesman, even the iciest aces of the air—and tell the story of War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous greed; vast far-reaching Inclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with the modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday the wreckers and agnostics—to-day the specialists and onesided enthusiasts—to-morrow, the embodiers, the includers. |
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