During the Depression, southern writing, often dark and agrarian, came to the fore. In 1931 O’Brien wrote, “The old pretentiousness is gone. The false sentiment is gone. The ‘hard-boiled mask’ is gone. The reader is now confronted with two or three people and a situation.” He went on: “The American scene is dusty and colorless. Its beauty and meaning depend on line and mass rather than on colour and decorative detail. The beauty of American life is not exterior. It is a hidden beauty which requires patient search to reward the finder.”
Also during this time, stories became more political and socially conscious. Writers like Theodore Dreiser, Erskine Caldwell, Meridel LeSueur, and John Steinbeck explored injustices associated with class, gender, and race. O’Brien did not hide his political preferences, at least when it came to short fiction. In 1935 he admitted, “During the past four or five years, it is on the left rather than on the right that I have found the most fruitful interpretation of American life by the short story writer.”
Some critics continued to clamor for O’Brien to choose stories with more intrigue and plot. In 1936 he responded: “What I do object to is the short story that exists for the sake of the plot. The plot, after all, is merely a skeleton which the story clothes. The story which exists for the sake of the plot is merely a grinning and repulsive skeleton without flesh and blood.”
One “small” magazine that was started during this time made a significant impact on the publishing world: Story. Martha Foley and her husband, Whit Burnett, founded the magazine while they were serving as foreign correspondents in Vienna. Foley wrote, “We did not plan to spend our lives at ephemeral day-to-day reporting. We wanted to produce literature.” Foley and Burnett’s first idea was to present Story as a catalogue of potential new writers for fiction editors. The first publication, sixty-seven mimeographed copies, opened with their statement of purpose: “[Story will] present short narratives of significance by no matter whom and coming from no matter where… [it will be] a sort of proof-book of hitherto unpublished manuscripts.” Foley and Burnett were soon flooded with submissions, and Story became a bona fide bimonthly magazine.
O’Brien was a fan of Whit Burnett’s own fiction and was enthusiastic about Story right away. His support bolstered the magazine’s reputation and visibility. Random House contacted Foley and Burnett and offered to publish Story when the two returned to the United States. The new publishing house, primarily a reprint house at the time, drew a flood of new talent with the publication of Story. Foley and Burnett were the first to publish a number of writers who went on to achieve major success: Charles Bukowski, Erskine Caldwell, Tennessee Williams, J. D. Salinger, William Saroyan, and John Cheever, among others.
In 1936 Story announced its plan to begin publishing longer stories, coining the English word novella: “We have gone somewhat far afield, and are bringing back the ancient and traditional Italian word novella for this neglected but highly important and eminently readable literary form.” There was and still is much disagreement over the “official” length of a novella. Stephen King once called the genre “an ill-defined and disreputable literary banana republic.”
O’Brien visited Hollywood, where he met Edwin Knopf, the brother of Alfred Knopf, Romer’s American publisher. Edwin Knopf headed a major department at MGM, and after a luncheon party with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Luise Rainer, Greta Garbo, and two producers—“I think it was a psychological test to see how I would act”—Knopf offered O’Brien work as MGM’s “European Scenario Editor.” The job would mean instant affluence and an even higher profile. O’Brien took the job but continued his work with the story anthology and his many other editorial projects. His grueling schedule became even worse. He allowed himself only weekday evenings, Saturdays, and Sunday mornings for nonfilm work.
1931 F. SCOTT FITZGERALD. Babylon Revisited from The Saturday Evening Post
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896–1940) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University. While training in army boot camp, he wrote a draft of his first novel, This Side of Paradise. His next two books were collections of short stories: Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald became renowned as a fictional chronicler of the Jazz Age as well as a keen social critic.
Series editor Edward O’Brien did not select many of Fitzgerald’s short stories for The Best American Short Stories, which angered Fitzgerald, who called O’Brien “the world’s greatest admirer of mediocre short stories.”
In the midst of his career, Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, had struggles with mental illness. Fitzgerald himself soon became ill, and he suffered financially. He tried unsuccessfully to make a living by becoming a screenwriter in Hollywood.
Fitzgerald’s most influential later books were The Great Gatsby and The Last Tycoon, left incomplete when he died at the age of forty-four. The Great Gatsby earned tepid reviews and its sales were meager at first. At his funeral, Dorothy Parker looked down at him in his coffin and, taking a line from The Great Gatsby, said, “You poor son of a bitch!” Only after his death did the book garner greater admiration and more positive reviews. Its republication made it one of the most popular American novels of the century.
★
“AND WHERE’S MR. Campbell?” Charlie asked.
“Gone to Switzerland. Mr. Campbell’s a pretty sick man, Mr. Wales.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. And George Hardt?” Charlie inquired.
“Back in America, gone to work.”
“And where is the snow bird?”
“He was in here last week. Anyway, his friend, Mr. Schaeffer, is in Paris.”
Two familiar names from the long list of a year and a half ago. Charlie scribbled an address in his notebook and tore out the page.
“If you see Mr. Schaeffer, give him this,” he said. “It’s my brother-in-law’s address. I haven’t settled on a hotel yet.”
He was not really disappointed to find Paris was so empty. But the stillness in the bar was strange, almost portentous.
It was not an American bar any more — he felt polite in it, and not as if he owned it. It had gone back into France. He felt the stillness from the moment he got out of the taxi and saw the doorman, usually in a frenzy of activity at this hour, gossiping with a chasseur by the servants’ entrance.
Passing through the corridor, he heard only a single, bored voice in the once-clamorous women’s room. When he turned into the bar he traveled the twenty feet of green carpet with his eyes fixed straight ahead by old habit; and then, with his foot firmly on the rail, he turned and surveyed the room, encountering only a single pair of eyes that fluttered up from a newspaper in the corner. Charlie asked for the head barman, Paul, who in the latter days of the bull market had come to work in his own custom-built car — disembarking, however, with due nicety at the nearest corner. But Paul was at his country house to-day and Alix was giving him his information.