The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story
General
The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story
American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories -- 20th century -- Bibliography; Short stories -- 20th century -- Indexes; Short stories, American
#Limbo#, by _Aldous Huxley_ (George H. Doran Company). This collection of
six fantasies in prose and one play has no special principle of unity
except its attempt to apply the art of Laforgue to much less adequate
material. Setting aside "Happy Families" as entirely negligible, and
"Happily Ever After" and "Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers" as
qualified successes, the other four stories do achieve more or less what
they set out to do, although Mr. Huxley only achieves a personal
synthesis of style and substance in "The Death of Lully." The other
three stories are full of promise as yet unrealised because of Mr.
Huxley's inability or unwillingness to conceal the technique of his art.
#Deep Waters#, by _W. W. Jacobs_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). Mr. Jacobs'
formula is not yet outworn, but it is becoming perilously uncertain. His
talent has always been a narrow one, but in his early volumes his
realization of character was quite vivid, and his plot technique superb.
At least two of these stories are entirely mechanical, and the majority
do not rise above mediocrity. "Paying Off," "Sam's Ghost," and "Dirty
Work" faintly recall Mr. Jacobs' early manner.
#Lo, and Behold Ye!#, by _Seumas MacManus_ (Frederick A. Stokes Company).
Many of these chimney-corner stories are older than Homer, but Mr.
MacManus has retold them in the language of the roads, and this pageant
of tinkers and kings, fairies and scholars, lords and fishermen march by
to the sound of the pipes and the ribald comments of little boys along
the road. The quality of this volume is as fresh as that of those first
Donegal fairy stories which Mr. McClure discovered twenty-five years
ago. I think that the best of these stories are "The Mad Man, The Dead
Man, and the Devil," "Dark Patrick's Blood-horse," and "Donal
O'Donnell's Standing Army," but this is only a personal selection.
#The Clintons, and Others#, by _Archibald Marshall_ (Dodd, Mead and
Company). I believe that this is Mr. Marshall's first volume of short
stories, and they have a certain interest as a quiet chronicle of an old
social order which has gone never to return. The comparison of Mr.
Marshall's work with that of Anthony Trollope is as inevitable as it is
to the former's disadvantage. This volume shows honest, sincere
craftsmanship, and never rises nor falls below an average level of
mediocrity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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