The Hickman courier. [volume] (Hickman, Ky.) 1859-current, 1881-03-25
Manted-Good Storr Writers.

The lack of good American story
writers is something which must have
impressed every reader OF fiction. As
long as the spirit of romance lives in tho
human beast, stories viii be read more
than any other sort of literature. The
monthly magazines, the innumerablo
weekly papers, furnish a gigantic mill
for the consumption of stories, particu-
larly short ones. Vivid, dramatic tales
of a few columns long, that can be read
at single sitting, are those most IN de
mand.
The editors of the story papers in this
country have infinite trouble to supply
the want. They rack their resources
continually to find lively short stories
Their success is only Indifferent with all
their efforts. 1t is not that they do not
have material enough to choose from,
such as IT Is. Bushelsof manuscript are
sent them daily. More dreary than
listening to a lecture on physiology is
the task of reading them. As the hap
less reader of the pack Of trash sits down
beside his barrel of manuscript, more or
less, he is apt to mournfully ask himself
what sin he has committed that this
should be his punishment Most have
carefully prepared directions accompy-
ing them, telling him, in case he pub
fishes the story. he may leave ont the
word gracefully" in such place, or
omit line thirty-four on page 502, etc.
He knows beforehand what the result
viii be From all the chaff hewill rarely
be able to sift bat one golden grain.
Our American stories lack an indie
pendent basis and standing OF their own.
There seems 10 be nothing, somehow,
about which they can build MP n sub
stantial being. Whether tho fault Is IN
the country or in the writers, one can
not say. Such stories as Americans essay
usually are stiff and artificial, with no
easy and natural movement about them.
Two-thirds of them are limitations of
Charles Dickens. They come III floods,
especially about Christmas time. BOZ"
never dreamed of the mischief he was
working when he wrote, Marley was
dead to begin with-dead as a door
nail
The worst faults of the American at
tempts at story-writing are two-first
they are artificial, next they are crude.
Those that do not pattern after Dickens
go still further back. The favorite blood
and thunder tales of certain well known.
weeklies are the exceedingly degenerate
descendants Of the tragedy and fiction of
half a century ago. All are alike repro
ductions of something the writer has
read before, feebly strained through a
Yankee sieve. The fiction dabblers in
this country who have made most money
out of the business are those who have
carried imagination beyond sea, and
written about the loves and rOmanoes of
high life in Europe, slung in lords and
countesses by the omnibus load, when
neither they nor their readers had ever
seen a real Lord in their lives. Their
literary style at times goes on stills and
at times falls intothe vulgarest common
place.
Advanced thinkers we have by the
hundred thousand in the United States,
enough to blow up the country. 4 gun
could not be fired off at random without
hitting one. But of men or women who
can write simple, unaffected, entertain
ing story three columns long, we have
scarcely half dozen. That, too, when
our country is so big that, as we are fond
of saying, the whole Empire of Austria
could be lifted mp and set down in a sin
gle State, Texas, and have room around
the edges for potatoe patch for the
whole Nation.
1t is certain we are enormous readers
of novels. Why can we not write them?
We never have had a story-writer of
the first-class in this country, scarcely
indeed clever writer of fiction of any
sort Cincinnati Commercial.