The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-12-21
THE UNHAPPY ENDING.
Magazine Editors Responsible for Its
Elimination From Our ''Iiterature.v

1 am firmly convinced that the chief
industry of the country is the produce
! ton of short stories with happy end
ings. AS yet the preparation of these
simple tales is merely a cottage indus
ltry-that is to say, they are produced
lby individual labor, scattered here and
| there throughout the land. Some of
these toilers dwell in mansions, some
| in city flats, and others in farm houses,
and I am quite sure that fully half the
| broad-hatted cowboys who roam the
plains and shoot up" mining towns
are merely short-story writers in dis
guise. So like are these happy ending
tales to one another, however, that the
widespread belief that they are made
in factories is not surprising.
The happy ending owes it's great
vogue to the magazine editor, who al
ways reads the final page of the man
uscript first If he finds in that page
what the trade calls the Optimistic
note" he reads backward to the be-
ginning in the hope of finding some
thing else. But if the manuscript ends
with, And SO Richard Garbraith went
out into the night q broken-hearted,
lonely man, hope dead within his
breast, and the fires of love quenched
forever he knows that the story will
not suit his trade. Indeed, when I
think of the number of simple minded
readers who scuttle rapidly through a
book to see whether Charles Augustus
marries Maude in the last chapter I
am not disposed to caviI with him.
1t seems strange, however. when we
consider that Edgar Allan Poe, the
originator of the American short story,
dealt chiefly in unhappy endings, and
succeeded in impressing the whole
world with his genius, that the market
should have undergone such a radical
change. Fortunately enough, his tales
were not subjected to the scrutiny of
the modern magazine editor. I can
fancy such parsonage turning to the
last page of the Black Cat and finding
the entombed feline monster squatting
on the head of the CORY corpseI / can
imagine him beginning to read 1.-THE
Facts in the Case of NJ. VaIdemar,"
at the point where the hypnotic subject
falls back in his bed, a mass of loath-
some putrescence. In either case, a
great story would have been lost to the
world.
And yet the magazine editor, whom
we all love to abuse, is merely doing
his best to interpret the tastes and
feelings to his readers, and the ma
Jorlty OF these unQuestionab1y favor
the nice, smoothly running tale that
ends in the perfect love and bliss that
they themselves are always hoping for.
1t is by careful adherence to these |
simple preferences that magazine
genius, has become a trade, that ranks
with printing and binding, and has
made possible the existence of scores
Of cheap publications, consisting almost
entirely of short and serial fiction
And the making of this fiction. at the |
lowest imaginable rate a word, keeps |
alive the great cottage industry of the |
happy ending.
Sometimes I think that there is a |
field for magazine that will recognize |
the beauty of ugliness and devote it
self largely to the exploitation Of truth /
and bitterne ness. It will at least ap1eal /
to those who have learned that NOT an |
things in life have a happy ending.-I
James L. Ford, in the New York |
Herald