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# The best short stories of 1922, and the yearbook of the American short story ### By Unknown

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Transcriber’s Note:

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Additional notes are at the end of the book.

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1922

AND THE

YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY

EDITED BY EDWARD J. O’BRIEN

EDITOR OF “THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915” “THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1916” “THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1917” “THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1918” “THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1919” “THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1920” “THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1921” “THE GREAT MODERN ENGLISH STORIES,” ETC.

[Illustration]

BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1921, by Broom, The Curtis Publishing Company, Brief Stories Publishing Company and The Pagan Publishing Company.

Copyright, 1922, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc., The Pictorial Review Company, The Junior League Bulletin, George H. Doran Company, The Century Company, The Metropolitan Magazine Company, Smart Set Company, Inc., Margaret C. Anderson, The International Magazine Company (Cosmopolitan), and Waldo Frank.

Copyright, 1923, by Conrad Aiken, Sherwood Anderson, Konrad Bercovici, Susan M. Boogher, Frederick Booth, Edna Bryner, Rose Gollup Cohen, Charles J. Finger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, David Freedman, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Ben Hecht, Joseph Hergesheimer, William C. G. Jitro, Ring W. Lardner, James Oppenheim, Benjamin Rosenblatt, Wilbur Daniel Steele, and Clement Wood.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PRESS OF THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY KENDALL SQUARE, CAMBRIDGE

Forest Hill, Oxon, England, October 10, 1922.

_My dear Mr. Herford_:

I had just finished star-stamping for the year, and I felt a bit exhausted when one of those kind friends every one has, sent me a copy of “Say It with Asterisks,” beautifully bound. Picture my delight when I discovered that a baffling problem which had haunted me for weeks was solved. To whom should I dedicate “The Best Short Stories of 1922”? I could not inscribe it to our Mr. Anderson always, and yet he insisted upon writing the best stories year after year. At last I knew. _Palmam qui meruit ferat._ No curate’s egg this time! The dedication should read:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * TO * * * * OLIVER HERFORD * * * * “SUCH IS LIFE” * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For we both deserve it.

Cordially yours,

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN.

BY WAY OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Grateful acknowledgment for permission to include the stories and other material in this volume is made to the following authors, editors and publishers:

To the Editor of _Broom_, the Curtis Publishing Company, the Editor of _Brief Stories_, the Editor of _The Pagan_, the Editor of _The Dial_, the Editor of _The Pictorial Review_, the Editor of _The

## Bookman_ (New York), the Editor of _The Century_, the Editor of

_The Metropolitan_, the Editors of _The Smart Set_, Miss Margaret C. Anderson, the Editor of _The Cosmopolitan_, Mr. Conrad Aiken, Mr. Sherwood Anderson, Mr. Konrad Bercovici, Miss Susan M. Boogher, Mr. Frederick Booth, Miss Edna Bryner, Miss Rose Gollup Cohen, Mr. Charles J. Finger, Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mr. David Freedman, Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Mr. Ben Hecht, Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer, Mr. William C. G. Jitro, Mr. Ring W. Lardner, Mr. James Oppenheim, Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt, Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele, and Mr. Clement Wood.

Acknowledgments are specially due to _The Boston Evening Transcript_ for permission to reprint the large body of material previously published in its pages.

I shall be grateful to my readers for corrections, and particularly for suggestions leading to the wider usefulness of this annual volume. In particular, I shall welcome the receipt, from authors, editors, publishers, of stories printed during the period between October, 1922 and September, 1923 inclusive, which have qualities of distinction and yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my regular notice. Such communications may be addressed to me at _Forest Hill, Oxfordshire, England_.

E. J. O.

CONTENTS[1]

PAGE INTRODUCTION. By the Editor xv

THE DARK CITY. By Conrad Aiken 3 (From _The Dial_)

I’M A FOOL. By Sherwood Anderson 13 (From _The Dial_)

THE DEATH OF MURDO. By Konrad Bercovici 25 (From _The Pictorial Review_)

AN UNKNOWN WARRIOR. By Susan M. Boogher 42 (From _The Junior League Bulletin_)

THE HELPLESS ONES. By Frederick Booth 49 (From _Broom_)

FOREST COVER. By Edna Bryner 70 (From _The Bookman, N. Y._)

NATALKA’S PORTION. By Rose Gollup Cohen 83 (From _The Pictorial Review_)

THE SHAME OF GOLD. By Charles J. Finger 100 (From _The Century_)

TWO FOR A CENT. By F. Scott Fitzgerald 115 (From _The Metropolitan_)

JOHN THE BAPTIST. By Waldo Frank 132 (From _The Dial_)

MENDEL MARANTZ--HOUSEWIFE. By David Freedman 151 (From _The Pictorial Review_)

BELSHAZZAR’S LETTER. By Katharine Fullerton Gerould 171 (From _The Metropolitan_)

WINKELBURG. By Ben Hecht 195 (From _The Smart Set_)

THE TOKEN. By Joseph Hergesheimer 203 (From _The Saturday Evening Post_)

THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. By William Jitro 232 (From _The Little Review_)

THE GOLDEN HONEYMOON. By Ring W. Lardner 242 (From _The Cosmopolitan_)

HE LAUGHED AT THE GODS. By James Oppenheim 260 (From _Broom_)

IN THE METROPOLIS. By Benjamin Rosenblatt 270 (From _Brief Stories_)

FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SOUTH. By Wilbur Daniel Steele 273 (From _The Pictorial Review_)

THE COFFIN. By Clement Wood 293 (From _The Pagan_)

THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY, OCTOBER, 1921, TO SEPTEMBER, 1922 303

Addresses of American Magazines Publishing Short Stories 305

The Biographical Roll of Honor of American Short Stories 307

The Roll of Honor of Foreign Short Stories in American Magazines 316

The Best Books of Short Stories 319

Volumes of Short Stories Published in the United States: An Index 320

Articles on the Short Story: An Index 324

Index of Short Stories in Books 337

I. American Authors 338

II. English and Irish Authors 341

III. Translations 344

Magazine Averages 346

Index of Short Stories Published in American Magazines 349

I. American Authors 352

II. English and Irish Authors 382

III. Translations 386

[1] The order in which the stories in this volume are printed is not intended to indicate their comparative excellence; the arrangement is alphabetical by authors.

INTRODUCTION

During the past year I have had occasion to think often and seriously of disintegration in American literature as a force which can no longer be ignored. There are times in the history of a people when disintegration is a form of creation, and when the cry goes up on all sides: “Écrasez l’Infame,” it is not generally recognized that this cry is a passionate prayer. Such a cry is heard in all countries of Europe today, though it is not yet general, and the question arises whether it is historically the moment for that cry or prayer to be uttered by American writers. Well, I do not think so at all, and yet the cry is usually synchronous with disintegration.

I do not think so because the disintegration which I see in American life and literature is the effect of weakness rather than of strong relentless force. It takes two forms in the work of our story writers. First of all, we have the disintegration of laziness and spiritual compromise which is manifest in the commercial short story’s surrender to the machine and to business. That is a present fact which can never be sufficiently taken into account. It follows the line of least resistance, and utters no cry of passionate conviction.

The second form of disintegration is often thought to be more subtle, but it is really equally obvious and weak. Those who manifest it are sitting home quietly observing the spiritual disintegration of Europe as a fascinating spectacle, and finding in it only æsthetic values which they long to imitate. They do not see, or perhaps they do not choose to see, that the pattern which they admire is the result of a conflict which they have shirked, and that any attempt to copy it without undergoing the experience which justifies it as expression will result only in pastiche, and in bad pastiche at that. Joyce and Lawrence and other Europeans are not accidents, but their American imitators may prove to be serious accidents. Joyce, who will serve very well to illustrate my point, is subduing the show of things to the desires of the mind, because he is a possessive European male who has suffered. Any one of many American writers whom I refrain from naming perceives the patterned result of this suffering, but is unable or unwilling to pay the price.

We are told in the Old Testament that Dada followed Babel as a penalty, and the European Dadaists have only sought, as critics of a civilization which has become a spiritual failure, to make this clear by symbols. The American Dadaists, who seem likely to spring up like mushrooms from now on, say “Dada” for its own sake, and so revert to infancy at the moment when men are most needed to interpret our obscure desires. I find their assumed superiority to other mortals snobbish, and their æsthetic attitude is only one present manifestation of the intellectualist sterility and anæmia from which we have begun to escape at last. They are taking “Art” entirely too seriously, and forgetting that every great artist is only great in so far as he can laugh at his own pretensions a little sadly.

We are also in some danger of seeking romantic escape from the machine by creating a mysticism of the machine, and by regarding the machine as something transcendental. This is sincere enough, because it is the result of action on the part of those who have suffered from the machine. We know how deeply rooted is the instinct to lay propitiatory offerings before something powerful of which we are afraid. But the artist should not imitate Caliban, even if he does so beautifully, and so while I recognize the truth underlying the work of Stieglitz, for example, I cannot accept this new transcendentalism in American art and literature as a liberating force. It is clear to me that it is really an ostrichlike way of accepting slavery.

These remarks are perhaps less irrelevant to the general reader than he is likely to believe. If our more promising artists are driven into a cul-de-sac, it is because they perceive the banality of Main Street, and are seeking a way out into the country. It is perhaps necessary to continue trying cul-de-sacs until the right road has been found, and it may even be probable that when that road is found, many artists will not be disinterested enough to bring back the news. The romantic escape of many is perhaps necessary for the realistic return of one, and all I am seeking to do is to point out if I can what ways appear to me to be cul-de-sacs, and what artists seem to have stumbled on the way out. If these artists run away, something is lost, but more is lost if they are all driven into narrow cul-de-sacs. Meanwhile, Sherwood Anderson seems to me the man who is nearest to finding freedom, and I believe he is also the man who is most anxious to return to Main Street and report what he has found.

To repeat what I have said in these pages in previous years, for the benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and principles of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists, may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in formulæ, and organized criticism at its best would be nothing more than dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead. What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh, living current which flows through the best American work, and the psychological and imaginative reality which American writers have conferred upon it.

No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination than we display at present.

The present record covers the period from October, 1921, to September, 1922, inclusive. During this period I have sought to select from the stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. Substance is something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather than something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist’s power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth. The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently called the test of substance.

But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skillful selection and arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.

The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first consists of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the yearbook without comment or qualifying asterisk. The second group consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they survive either the test of substance or the test of form. Each of these stories may claim to possess either distinction of technique alone, or more frequently, I am glad to say, a persuasive sense of life in them to which a reader responds with some part of his own experience. Stories included in this group are indicated in the yearbook index by a single asterisk prefixed to the title.

The third group, which is composed of stories of still greater distinction, includes such narratives as may lay convincing claim to a second reading, because each of them has survived both tests, the test of substance and the test of form. Stories included in this group are indicated in the yearbook index by two asterisks prefixed to the title.

Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories which possess, I believe, the even finer distinction of uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven pattern with such sincerity that these stories may fairly claim a position in American literature. If all of these stories by American authors were republished, they would not occupy more space than six or seven novels of average length. My selection of them does not imply the critical belief that they are great stories. A year which produced one great story would be an exceptional one. It is simply to be taken as meaning that I have found the equivalent of six or seven volumes worthy of republication among all the stories published during the period under consideration. These stories are indicated in the yearbook index by three asterisks prefixed to the title, and are listed in the special “Roll of Honor.” In compiling these lists I have permitted no personal preference or prejudice consciously to influence my judgment. It has been a point of honor with me not to republish a story by an English author or by any foreign author. I have also made it a rule not to include more than one story by an individual author in the volume. The general and particular results of my study will be found explained and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of the volume.

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN.

Forest Hill, Oxon, England, November 23, 1922.

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1922

Note.--The order in which the stories in this volume are printed is not intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the arrangement is alphabetical by authors.

THE DARK CITY[2]

By CONRAD AIKEN

(From _The Dial_)

His greatest pleasure in life came always at dusk. Its prelude was the reading of the evening paper in the train that took him out of the city. By long association the very unfolding of the grimy ink-smelling sheets was part of the ritual: his dark eyes dilated, he felt himself begin to “grin,” the staggering load of business detail, under which he had struggled all day in the office, was instantly forgotten. He read rapidly, devoured with rapacious eyes column after column--New York, London, Paris, Lisbon--wars, revolutions, bargains in umbrellas, exhibitions of water colors. This consumed three-quarters of the journey. After that he watched the procession of houses, walls, trees, reeling past in the mellow slant light, and began already to feel his garden about him. He observed the flight of the train unconsciously, and it was almost automatically, at the unrealized sight of a certain group of trees, oddly leaning away from each other, like a group of ballet dancers expressing an extravagance of horror, that he rose and approached the door.

The sense of escape was instant. Sky and earth generously took him, the train fled shrieking into the vague bright infinity of afternoon. The last faint wail of it, as it plunged into a tunnel, always seemed to him to curl about his head like a white tentacle, too weak to be taken seriously. Then, in the abrupt silence, he began climbing the long hill that led to his house. He walked swiftly, blowing tattered blue clouds of smoke over his shoulders, revolving in his mind the items of news amusing enough to be reported to Hilda; such as that Miss Green, the stenographer, who had for some time been manifesting a disposition to flirt with him, today, just after closing, when everybody else had gone out, had come to him, blushing, and asked him to fasten the sleeve of her dress. A delicious scene! He smiled about the stem of his pipe, but exchanged his smile for a laugh when, looking in through a gap in his neighbor’s hedge, he found himself staring into the depraved eyes of a goat. This would add itself to the episode of Miss Green, for these eyes were precisely hers. He turned the corner and saw his house before him, riding on the hill like a small ship on a long green wave. The three children were playing a wild game of croquet, shrieking. Louder sounds arose at his appearance, and as he strode across the lawn they danced about him chattering and quarreling.

“Daddy, Martha won’t play in her turn, and I say--”

“Marjorie takes the heavy mallet--”

The chorus rose shrill about him, but he laughed and went into the house, shouting only, “Out of the way! I’m in a hurry! The beans are dying, the tomatoes are clamoring for me, the peas are holding out their hands!”

“Daddy says the beans are dying. Isn’t he silly?”

“Let’s get to the garden before daddy does.”

As he closed the door he heard the shrieks trailing off round the corner of the house, diminuendo. He hung up coat and hat with a rapid gesture and hurried to the kitchen. Hilda, stirring the cocoa with a long spoon, looked round at him laconically.

“Chocolate!” he shouted, and pulled a cake of chocolate out of his pocket. He was astonished, he rolled his eyes, for it appeared to have been sat upon--“in the train.” Hilda shrieked with laughter. He thrust it into her apron pocket and fled up the stairs to change.

He could not find his old flannel trousers. Not in the cupboard--not in the bureau. He surrendered to an impulse to comic rage. “Not under the bed!” he cried. He thrust his head out of the window that overlooked the garden and addressed his children.

“Martha! Bring my trousers here this instant!”

He drew in his head again from the shower of replies that flew up at him like missiles and going to the door roared down to his wife.

“I’ve lost my trousers!”

Then he found them in the closet behind the door and, laughing, put them on.

He ran out of the side door, under the wistaria-covered trellis, and down the slippery stone steps to the vegetable garden.

“Here comes daddy, now,” shrilled to him from Martha.

He lighted his pipe, shutting his left eye, and stood in profound meditation before the orderly, dignified, and extraordinarily vigorous rows of beans. They were in blossom--bees were tumbling the delicate lilac-pink little hoods. Clouds of fragrance came up from them. The crickets were beginning to tune up for the evening. The sun was poised above the black water tower on the far hill.

Martha and Marjorie began giggling mysteriously behind the lilacs.

“My hoe!” he wailed.

The hoe was thrust out from behind the lilacs.

“If anybody should drive up in a scarlet taxi,” he said to Martha, accepting the hoe, “and inform you that your soul is free, don’t believe him. Tell him he’s a liar. Point me out to him as a symbol of the abject slavery that all life is. Say that I’m a miserable thrall to wife, children, and beans--particularly beans. I spend my days on my knees before my beans.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Martha.

He held his hoe under his arm and walked solemnly among the beans. The two girls followed him.

“Here’s a caterpillar, daddy!”

“Kill him!”

“Here’s another--a funny green one with red sparkles on his back. Oh, look at him!”

“Don’t look at him! Kill him!”

“He squirts out like green tooth-paste.”

“Don’t, Martha!” he cried, pained. “Don’t say such things! Spare your neurotic father.”