Review: Writing the Short Story [review-book]

1911 The School Review  
Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the mid--seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non--commercial purposes. Read more about Early Journal
more » ... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. THE SCHOOL REVIEW THE SCHOOL REVIEW THE SCHOOL REVIEW as distinct from the tale, and, in America, the development by competent craftsmen of types of story other than those discovered by Poe, Hawthorne, and Bret Harte. Altogether the work is satisfactorily done and with much appreciation for the best of contemporary work. Yet the reader lays down the book with the conviction that the technique of the modern story has yet to be treated with authority. A critic such as Poe or Stevenson, himself a successful writer of stories, is needed for the task. Writing the Short Story. By J. BERG ESENWEIN. New York: Hinds, Noble & Eldredge, I909. Pp. 44I. $I.25. Mr. Esenwein, who as editor of Lippincott's has had much practical experience in rejecting manuscripts and has thereby developed theories as to the methods of salable fiction, has in his volume, Writing the Short Story, attempted to lay down the lines upon which a short story should be constructed. There is much advice which will prove of value to the writer who has had some training, many "tips" bought by someone with sad experience, and a good deal of sound criticism and comment culled from many editors and critics. To one who has already served his apprenticeship in the trade and has come to some understanding of the principles underlying all narrative writing the book should take its place with other good handbooks and aid him to a better understanding of his own defects. To a beginner, however, the arrangement of the book with its innumerable subdivisions is sure to prove rather bewildering than helpful. He will be unable to piece together from scattered passages the simple principles underlying the narrative form. This he needs as a basis before he goes on to a study of the difficulties of method, problems of introduction, dialogue, transitions, description, and the like, which are made evident only when a story begins to assume form, however crude. In other words, Mr. Esenwein is not sufficiently academic in his effort to get at fundamental principles, and his arrangement and subdivision of his matter are over-complex. The fault is the converse of the treatise of the college theorist upon the art of writing, and is one which will make the book unsatisfactory for classroom purposes. The teacher, however, as the writer, may derive from it many helpful suggestions.
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