It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to do and the conditions under which we were trying to do them—the raw commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as I saw it then, have to argue over at all. We were in new rooms, in a new building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion of partitions which, as some one remarked, “would divide us up.” Our publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul, all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of “push,” ambition, “closeness to life,” “punch,” and what not else, American to the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were, demanding the “hows” and the “whyfors” of the dream which the little group I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real.
It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here was a youth who seemed able to help me do it. He was so vigorous, so avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this magazine was now seeking to portray. I felt stronger, better for having him around. The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune, event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order in which it must be presented. A few brief technical explanations from me, and he had the art of writing a “special” at his fingertips, and thereafter gave me no real difficulty.
But what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping my theory of “special” writing was his own character, as it was revealed to me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no namby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of the Continent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. He had a style as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; and if a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one could forgive him for they were rather well-based. Already used to dealing with literary and artistic aspirants of different kinds in connection with the publications of which I had been a part, this one appealed to me as being the best of them all and a very refreshing change.
One day, only a few weeks after I had met him, seeing that I was alert for fiction, poetry and short essays or prose phantasies, all illustrative of the spirit of New York, he brought me a little poem entitled “Neuvain,” which interested me greatly. It was so brief and forceful and yet so delicate, a double triolet of the old French order, but with the modernity and flavor of the streets outside, the conduit cars, hand-organs and dancing children of the pavements. The title seemed affected, seeing that the English word “Spring” would have done as well, but it was typical of his mood at the time, his literary adorations. He was in leash to the French school of which de Maupassant was the outstanding luminary, only I did not know it at the time.
“Charming,” I exclaimed quite enthusiastically. “I like this. Let me see anything else you have. Do you write short stories?”
For answer he merely stared at me for a little while in the most examining and arrogant and contemptuous way, as much as to say, “Let me see if you are really worth my time and trouble in this matter,” or “This sad specimen of alleged mentality is just beginning to suspect that I might write a short story.” Seeing that I merely smiled most genially in return, he finally deigned to say, “Sure, I write short stories. What do you think I’m in the writing game for?”
“But you might be interested in novels only or plays, or poetry.”
“No,” he returned after a pause and with that same air of unrelieved condescension, “the short story is what I want to specialize in.”
“Well,” I said to myself, “here is a young cub who certainly has talent, is crowded with it, and yet owing to the kind of thing he is starting out to do and the fact that life will give him slaps and to spare before he is many years older, he needs to be encouraged. I was like that myself not so long ago. And besides, if I do not encourage this type of work financially (which is the best way of all), who will?”
About a week later I was given another and still more gratifying surprise, for one day, in his usual condescending manner, he brought to me two short pieces of fiction and laid them most gingerly on my desk with scarcely a word—“Here was something I might read if I chose,” I believe. The reading of these two stories gave me as much of a start as though I had discovered a fully developed genius. They were so truly new or different in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief, with so much point in them (The Second Motive; The Right Man). For by then having been struggling with the short-story problem in other magazine offices before this, I had become not a little pessimistic as to the trend of American short fiction, as well as long—the impossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we had it. My own experience with “Sister Carrie” as well as the fierce opposition or chilling indifference which, as I saw, overtook all those who attempted anything even partially serious in America, was enough to make me believe that the world took anything even slightly approximating the truth as one of the rankest and most criminal offenses possible. One dared not “talk out loud,” one dared not report life as it was, as one lived it. And one of the primary warnings I had received from the president of this very organization—a most eager and ambitious and distressing example of that American pseudo-morality which combines a pirate-like acquisitiveness with an inward and absolute conviction of righteousness—was that while he wanted something new in fiction, something more virile and life-like than that “mush,” as he characterized it, to be found in the current magazines, still (1), it must have a strong appeal for the general reader (!); and (2), be very compelling in fact and clean, as the dear general reader would of course understand that word—a solid little pair of millstones which would unquestionably end in macerating everything vital out of any good story.
Still I did not despair; something might be done. And though I sighed, I hoped to be able to make my superior stretch a point in favor of the exceptional thing, or, as the slang phrase went, “slip a few over on him,” but that of course meant nothing or something, as you choose. My dream was really to find one or many like this youth, or a pungent kind of realism that would be true and yet within such limits as would make it usable. Imagine, then, my satisfaction in finding these two things, tales that I could not only admire genuinely but that I could publish, things that ought to have an interest for all who knew even a little about life. True, they were ironic, cruel, but still with humor and color, so deftly and cleanly told that they were smile-provoking. I called him and said as much, or nearly so—a mistake, as I sometimes think now, for art should be long—and bought them forthwith, hoping, almost against hope, to find many more such like them.