Short Stories

Ours is the great generation of the short story. The growth of the newspaper, the development of the magazine, the universality of popular education with its increase in human curiosity – most of all, the increasing pace of modern life, its speed of living and competitive pressure – gave this literary type its greatest encouragement. Here is the people’s literature, and the most democratic of all forms of writing because it offers a means for the use of every conceivable sort of plot, character or background. It’s just the right length in a world of tumult and hurry; it is a form that presents things concisely and graphically, and it is the type of writing most easily understood by every kind of reader.