In the first half of the
20th century the appeal of the short story continued to grow. Literally
hundreds of writers—including, as it seems, nearly every major dramatist, poet,
and novelist—published thousands of excellent stories. William Faulkner suggested
that writers often try their hand at poetry, find it too difficult, go on to
the next most demanding form, the short story, fail at that, and only then
settle for the novel. In the 20th century Germany, France, Russia, and the U.S.
lost what had once appeared to be their exclusive domination of the form.
Innovative and commanding writers emerged in places that had previously exerted
little influence on the genre: Sicily, for example, produced Luigi Pirandello;
Prague, Franz Kafka; Japan, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke ;
Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges. Literary journals with international circulation,
such as Ford Madox Ford’s Transatlantic Review, Scribner’s Magazine,
and Harriet Weaver’s Egoist, provided a steady and prime exposure for
young writers.
As the familiarity with it
increased, the short story form itself became more varied and complex. The
fundamental means of structuring a story underwent a significant change. The
overwhelming or unique event that usually informed the 19th-century story fell
out of favour with the storywriter of the early 20th century, who grew more
interested in subtle actions and unspectacular events. Sherwood
Anderson, one of the most influential U.S. writers of the early 20th century,
observed that the common belief in his day was that stories had to be built
around a plot, a notion that, in Anderson’s opinion, appeared to poison all
storytelling. His own aim was to achieve form, not plot, although form was more
elusive and difficult.
