Literary History

The Modern American Short Story

Overview
While American Romanticism clearly illustrated rich details for the reader, Modernist writers left much to the imagination with tighter, leaner prose. Modernist stories also reflected average people and their struggles.

In 1915 poet and playwright Edward J. O’Brien published the first volume of the Best American Short Stories. Still published today, the annual collection publishes quality fiction from new and recognized talent. O’Brien was devoted to this new brand of literature, the American short story.

In 1923 O’Brien published a short story, “My Old Man,” by an unpublished young writer named Ernest Hemingway, launching one of the most notable literary careers of the twentieth century. Some of the other well-known writers of this period who mastered the American short story were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Katherine Anne Porter, William Faulkner, and Sherwood Anderson.

Two literary terms were coined during this time: stream of consciousness and epiphany. Modernists were influenced by the teachings of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The belief was that people have a constant stream of ideas in their minds that they have no control over and that have no pattern or logic.

Irish author James Joyce redefined the short story when he introduced the “epiphany” in his short story collection Dubliners. An epiphany is the moment when a particular truth is revealed.

Another writer that influenced the Modernists was Russian writer Anton Chekhov. His short stories and plays were translated into English between 1916 and 1923 and featured an understated style and story lines of everyday events with sometimes humorous characters. Hemingway was especially influenced by Chekhov’s abbreviated style.

Bibliography
The Portable Dorothy Parker. New York: Penguin Classics, 2006. A collection of the verse, short stories, essays, and journalism of one of the twentieth century’s most quotable authors.

Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Bantam Classics, 1995. Sherwood Anderson’s collection of short stories that define the modern American short story.

The Best American Short Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. This annual volume has been published since 1915. The collection brings together the short stories of well-known and newly published authors of the year.

The Portable Chekhov. New York: Penguin, 1977. A collection of selected English translations of Chekhov’s short stories and plays, including the famous Cherry Orchard.

Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner. New York: Modern Library, 1993. William Faulkner’s collection of more than a dozen short stories about small-town Mississippi life.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005. New York: Anchor, 2005. An annual collection of O. Henry prize-winning short stories. The 2005 edition was devoted to Anton Chekhov, on the one hundredth anniversary of his death.

Web links
Katherine Anne Porter
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/porter_k.html
Read about American writer Katherine Anne Porter, who embodied the understated style of the Modernists in her short stories, nonfiction works, and novel Ship of Fools.

Virtual Ernest Hemingway
http://www.hemingwaysociety.org/virthem.htm
Here are more than 375 Hemingway-related links organized into 23 categories such as books, articles, biographies, photos, and even recipes from his cookbook!

Anton Chekhov
http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/chekhovbio.html
A comprehensive resource to the life and works of Russian writer Anton Chekhov, whose works were translated into English and introduced to the United States between 1916 and 1923.