American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, American -- Periodicals
“Not Wanted” exemplifies the age-old struggle of the generations to
understand each other. Of all the fathers who have enjoyed it, either in
the _Post_ or in the little volume published by Charles Scribner’s Sons,
not one but has admired Mr. Williams’s skill in erecting barriers
between father and son, then with equal skill removing them. Over this
story perhaps more enthusiasm has been expressed to the Committee than
over any other selected. If critics who see in it only another instance
of the machine-made story will take a hint from general approval they
will conclude that emotion, though intolerant of formula, yet makes
universal appeal through perfection of form. “Not Wanted” will live in
younger companionship with this author’s famous “The Stolen Story.”
At once a criticism and a half dozen stories rolled up in one parcel,
“Home Brew” doubly succeeds and gives double measure. Grandmother’s
selfishness, Father and Walter’s extraordinary friendship, Mother’s
home-making gift, Aunt Jude’s quiet struggle--quiet as volcanic fires
beneath the crust--Eddie’s love for the sea, and Mildred’s fluttering
toward the flame: in all these lies potential drama. Three themes
actually achieve the outline of drama and reach climax on the evening
Alyse spends with her mother. Alyse, blind to all these potentialities,
becomes the target for Miss Mason’s arrow-thrusts which, in piercing
her, pierce the average would-be writer. The dilettante sees neither the
humour nor the tragedy of real life, whose repressions mean to her only
absence of thought and emotion. No other country owns to so many
thousands of those who, mistaking desire for ability, and possessing the
minimum requirements of the fictionist, waste themselves in “trying to
write.” Miss Mason’s Alyse should be set before these thousands, and the
Committee are grateful for the opportunity of passing her along.
If “Home Brew” is a criticism, no less is “Phantom Adventure” a
revelation. Like Kipling’s “The Brushwood Boy” and “They,” it evokes
from the realm of fancy a beautiful dream. Floyd Dell has educed an
ectopolasm which, emerging from the material banker, magically forms an
exquisite spirit picture. Plangently sombre the rhythmic cadences of
this verbal harmony fall on the ear, drowning alien sounds, luring into
unexplored recesses of the mystic and the subconscious. Restraint and
reserve potently influence the reader to guess at tracts of the spirit
still to be explored. The art of suggestion is here at its height; for
though the expressed story is clear and whole, that which is unexpressed
permits individual interpretation and so intensifies the clarity and
unity for different minds in different ways.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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