Short Stories

Half Way East. By David Footman: (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.) 0. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories. Selected by Harry

Hansen. .(Heinemann. 7s. 6d.) •

Selected Short Stories. By Hjalmar Soderberg. (Allen and Unwin. is. 6d.) - • •

A SHORT- story, just as much as a novel, ought surely to contain the whole of a man's life; the intensity of personal experience, so that a- story written by -X. couldn't have been written in quite- that --way by. Y. But tif the _printer had swapped around the authors' names in the, collection of Atherican prize stories made -by -Mr. Hansen I doubt whether even an American reader _would have noticed. You will look in vaia--for any feature which distinguishes Lows Paul from Benjamin - Appel; - or -Harry. Sylvester' from John Wexley and the rest. They might all be pseudonyms for

the same man, drawing his material from the second-hand stock of negroes and tough guys, simple, violent, superficial material which, unless all American short-story writers are buddies by birthright, has simply been taken on from older writers. Here are a few of the ready-made, anonymous openings :

" Jedwick smiled at the woman drawing water from the well. `Kin I have me a drink, ma'am ? ' he drawled, his broad shoulders drooped shyly in a half-bow." (Louis PAUL.)

" He made a racket running up the stairs, stamping his feet, and who wouldn't Zixo was the best pigeon he ever had. As his palm slid on the bannister, his big ring, handy for socking a guy, tapped out an irregular worse code on the smoothness."

(BENJAMIN APPEL.)

" Coburn was very weary. His neck hurt from the constant, bent,- stilted position he held it in to protect his chin with his shoulder. One eye was half-closed but did not hurt." (Hamm SyLvEsrza.) " It was very cold for Tennessee. And it_was colder for the boy called Texas Kid. He sat on the running board of the small

car . . ." (JOHN WEXLEY.) -

Mr. Footman's characters are_ drawn from a more self-con- scious and therefore, from the writer's point of view, more interesting level. They are the English residents of Tsernigrad, a seedy Balkan capital. " Some are here with the intention of making a packet and clearing out again ; some can get a bigger salary and make a bigger ShoW- than they could at home ; some are hanging on to a bare livelihood which they cannot see elsewhere." There is Miss Greenway, the spinster who teaches English' (Mr. Footman admirably avoids the horrors so often committed in the name of pity) ; there is Mrs. Herrick, the _devas-tating, dtitiful wife of a husband

who had lost his arm in the War : . t` I've .got to make it up to him. Pm like that. Other people have got to "come first " ; above all, there is Drake : Drake, like his name, . a little -too English ; Drake who read Service,- Kipling and Sapper ; Drake who drew his expreSsions from rim-wane fiction, keeping " a stiff upper lip " in misfortune, ready " to fight to the last ditch " for his mining concession, who appealed all the time in all his relationships to emotion and finished, after his - wife, " a real partner," had deserted him, as a big noise among the Blaelcshirts at Tunbridge Wells. These amusing, ruthless studies of irritating and pathetic characters are as intelligent as Mr. Maugham's and deserve an equal success.

Mr. Chamberlain's promising work belongs too exclusively at present to the weekly review. He can write sketches of the right " weekly " brevity ; like- the proverbial young reporter he is quite prepared to go out into the street and write up anything he sees. Nothing is too trivial. A man tries to swat a fly and then tries to save it from drowning in his ink bottle. It was clever to make a sketch out of that, but it might have been cleverer to recognize that it was not' worth doing. At present Mr. Chamberlain simply

hasn't found' material; and 'his observation struck me, in his hingeat story, as inaccurate where it atteittpttd to be more than superficial. For why-should an English " simple " character describe in American- d- motor-cycle trial in which he took part except for the reason that the only model Mr. Chamberlain could find for this type of character was in Hemingway and Mr. Chamberlain still...relies on literary

models ? :

,Lightness is not a quality one usually associates with Scandinavian literature,. but how heavily most of the stories on this list weigh_ beside ,Mr. Sfiderberg's, which are ,dyed through and through by tt personal experience' expressed with gentle (sometimes too gentle) Mr. Eliot once compared the " Meaning " of a poem to the piece of meat.a burglar giyes a watchdog to keep him quiet., Mr. Sijderbeig, perhaps because he gives the min' immix of meat, is able more easily to play with hid form. his stories don't•begin and end with their particular characters ; they emerge

from the whole of life and fade into it again.' He is amusing when he is melancholy, lyrical when he is matter-of-fact. There is -a story here,--".Churehyard 'Arahegilue," which begins with the cheap literary gossip of two writers strolling among the graves ; they drop into the church where a service is being held for some unknown countrywoman, and the novelist, whose mind has been completely engrossed by a critic's unfavourable reviews, is mistaken for a friend of the dead woman and asked to say a few words at the grave.

He mounts with bared head the mound of earth and taking the stranger's three names, Eva Martha Christina, as his theme, speaks with a sincerity which moves his friend. It doesn't " mean " anything, this sudden change to .tenderness

from intrigue and gossip, it's not a sentimental compliment to the goodness in human nature, any more than the episode of pr: Gtistiv Henck who goes home to his wife in a fur coat borrowed from his friend has any cynical meaning :

"She stole up to him in the darkest corner of the hall, twined her arms about his neck, and kissed him warmly and intensively. Then she burrowed her head into the collar of his ftir coat and whispered : `Gustav isn't horns yet.' -

' Yes,' answered -Dr.'Henck in a voice that trembled 'slightly, while he caressed her hair with both hands, ' Yes, he's home."

It is simply that these stories give the sense of having been written with the • whole Of a man's experience.

Gnaws ni GREENE.