t I feel that at the present stage of our literary
development, discouragement will prove a very easy and fatal thing. The
typical point of view of the European critic, when justified, is
adequately reflected in an article by Mary M. Colum, which was published
in the Dial last spring: "Those of us who take an interest in literary
history will remember how particular literary forms at times seize hold
of a country: in Elizabethan England, it was the verse drama; in the
eighteenth century, it was the essay; in Scandinavia of a generation
ago, it was the drama again. At present America is in the grip of the
short story--so thoroughly in its grip indeed that, in addition to all
the important writers, nearly all the literate population who are not
writing movie scenarios are writing or are about to write short stories.
One reason for this is the general belief that this highly sophisticated
and subtle art is a means for making money in spare time, and so one
finds everybody, from the man who solicits insurance to the barber who
sells hair-tonics, engaged in writing, or in taking courses in the
writing, of short stories. Judging from what appears in the magazines,
one imagines that they get their efforts accepted. There is no doubt
that the butcher, the baker, and the candle-stick maker are easily
capable of producing the current short stories with the aids now
afforded."

Now this is the heart of the matter with which criticism has to deal. It
is regrettable that the American magazine editor is not more mindful of
his high calling, but the tremendous advertising development of the
American magazine has bound American literature in the chains of
commercialism, and before a permanent literary criticism of the American
short story can be established, we must fight to break these bonds. I
conceive it to be my essential function to begin at the bottom and
record the first signs of grace, rather than to limit myself to the top
and write critically about work which will endure with or without
criticism. If American critics would devote their attention for ten
years to this spade work, they might not win so much honor, but we
should find the atmosphere clearer at the end of that period for the
true exercise of literary criticism.

Nevertheless I contend that there is much fine work being accomplished
at present, which is buried in the ruck of the interminable commonplace.
I regard it as my duty to chronicle this work, and thus rend