Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1892-02-16
THE CONDENSED NOVEL.

Recent Progress in the DirectIon of
Shortening Works of Fiction.
In view of the fact that there are now
published monthly in New York two mag
azines, Short Stories and Romance. de
voted exclusively to stories that are told
in few hundred words the Philadelphia
Press prints the following editorial, under
the caption. THE Tapering Of of the
Novel;"
The "Shortstory," us Mr.. Brander Mat
thews, whose humor dwells somewhat in
CT" neits, loves to call it, is made the sub
lee, of review to itself in The Atlantic.
The reviewer groups fifteen newly harvest
ed sheaves in this field, and by no means
exhausts the yearly crop at that At least
two dozen volumes of short stories have
been issued in the last twelvemonth and
the weary reviewer is nowadays but too
we'll aware that every fortnight sees him
confronted with the waking and walking
ghost of his past magazine reading in Il
new collection of short stories by some ia
miliar hand
Ten, even five, years ago, such volumes
fell fiat and were published chiefly to fill
out an authors work. Hawthornes
told" because he could persuade no one to
read them even once Beyond saying that
we do the short story better than any other
nation which is true, and has been said
before-The Atlantic reviewer casts little
light on the cause and origin of this new
phenomenon in literature. The short story
teller is, as The Atlantic points out, apt to
be free of local color-seven of the fifteen
FOL lnin I.,, md
the four southerners speaking a speech
which bewrays them. The short story tel
Ter has no bent ethical or otherwise, and the
entire legion of them simply reverse Can
ning's knife grinder-"Story, God bless
you, Pve none to tell, SIR" and have naught
else.
Yet the appetite for the short story IL
quite as remarkable as its existence. BE
sides the fortnightly volume which sells,
and sometimes as in the case of Miss viii
kins wins an international reputation over
night, thanks to an International critic
Mr.. Lowell, there is Il magazine like Ro
nance which devotes itself every month to
cluster of short stories, new and old, by
land and sea, from many lands, of many
tongues.
The store of short stories is of course a
ITCH Oue. All countries nave bllelr SnOTt
stories. They exist even in Chinese and
Arabic and are just appearing in the Re
Nuisance of Hindoo fiction centerng at
Lucknow. A magazine which publishes
200 year must travel far a-feld. Its mere
presence, however is proof of demand
whose existence keen literary observers
were but recently doubling.
The Atlantic asks and does not answer
the question why Americans excel in the
art. The answer must be in the demand
we have noted, and th&, in its turn, we
fear springs from the newspaper habit
which renders reading more than three or
four columns-the length of short story
irksome. How many of the most intelli
gent newspaper readers have really read
the twenty columns or so of message and
diplomatic correspondence on the CHILEAN
situation, critically important as they
were? Short as it is, the short story has
shortened in twenty years.
Trowbridge's Coupon Bonds and Other
Stories" one of the earliest issues of the
new order, are each longer than the cur
rent average. For four centuries, from the
medieval romance as long as n Chinese
novel or n Chicago tax supplement, the
novel has been shortening 1t is tapering
off in the short story Much shorter 1t
venture to say, in the light of much now
seen and read, the rhythmic and metrical
narrative. The short story looks like the
end of the prose novel in its best NANTES
ton as work of art.