Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

In 1936 Story announced its plan to begin publishing longer stories, coining the English word novella: “We have gone somewhat far afield, and are bringing back the ancient and traditional Italian word novella for this neglected but highly important and eminently readable literary form.” There was and still is much disagreement over the “official” length of a novella. Stephen King once called the genre “an ill-defined and disreputable literary banana republic.”

O’Brien visited Hollywood, where he met Edwin Knopf, the brother of Alfred Knopf, Romer’s American publisher. Edwin Knopf headed a major department at MGM, and after a luncheon party with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Luise Rainer, Greta Garbo, and two producers—“I think it was a psychological test to see how I would act”—Knopf offered O’Brien work as MGM’s “European Scenario Editor.” The job would mean instant affluence and an even higher profile. O’Brien took the job but continued his work with the story anthology and his many other editorial projects. His grueling schedule became even worse. He allowed himself only weekday evenings, Saturdays, and Sunday mornings for nonfilm work.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896–1940) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University. While training in army boot camp, he wrote a draft of his first novel, This Side of Paradise . His next two books were collections of short stories: Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age . Fitzgerald became renowned as a fictional chronicler of the Jazz Age as well as a keen social critic.

Series editor Edward O’Brien did not select many of Fitzgerald’s short stories for The Best American Short Stories , which angered Fitzgerald, who called O’Brien “the world’s greatest admirer of mediocre short stories.”

In the midst of his career, Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, had struggles with mental illness. Fitzgerald himself soon became ill, and he suffered financially. He tried unsuccessfully to make a living by becoming a screenwriter in Hollywood.

Fitzgerald’s most influential later books were The Great Gatsby and The Last Tycoon , left incomplete when he died at the age of forty-four. The Great Gatsby earned tepid reviews and its sales were meager at first. At his funeral, Dorothy Parker looked down at him in his coffin and, taking a line from The Great Gatsby , said, “You poor son of a bitch!” Only after his death did the book garner greater admiration and more positive reviews. Its republication made it one of the most popular American novels of the century.

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“AND WHERE’S MR. Campbell?” Charlie asked.

“Gone to Switzerland. Mr. Campbell’s a pretty sick man, Mr. Wales.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. And George Hardt?” Charlie inquired.

“Back in America, gone to work.”

“And where is the snow bird?”

“He was in here last week. Anyway, his friend, Mr. Schaeffer, is in Paris.”

Two familiar names from the long list of a year and a half ago. Charlie scribbled an address in his notebook and tore out the page.

“If you see Mr. Schaeffer, give him this,” he said. “It’s my brother-in-law’s address. I haven’t settled on a hotel yet.”

He was not really disappointed to find Paris was so empty. But the stillness in the bar was strange, almost portentous.

It was not an American bar any more — he felt polite in it, and not as if he owned it. It had gone back into France. He felt the stillness from the moment he got out of the taxi and saw the doorman, usually in a frenzy of activity at this hour, gossiping with a chasseur by the servants’ entrance.

Passing through the corridor, he heard only a single, bored voice in the once-clamorous women’s room. When he turned into the bar he traveled the twenty feet of green carpet with his eyes fixed straight ahead by old habit; and then, with his foot firmly on the rail, he turned and surveyed the room, encountering only a single pair of eyes that fluttered up from a newspaper in the corner. Charlie asked for the head barman, Paul, who in the latter days of the bull market had come to work in his own custom-built car — disembarking, however, with due nicety at the nearest corner. But Paul was at his country house to-day and Alix was giving him his information.

“No, no more. I’m going slow these days.”

Alix congratulated him: “Hope you stick to it, Mr. Wales. You were going pretty strong a couple of years ago.”

“I’ll stick to it all right,” Charlie assured him. “I’ve stuck to it for over a year and a half now.”

“How do you find conditions in America?”

“I haven’t been to America for months. I’m in business in Prague, representing a couple of concerns there. They don’t know about me down there.” He smiled faintly. “Remember the night of George Hardt’s bachelor dinner here?… By the way, what’s become of Claude Fessenden?”

Alix lowered his voice confidentially: “He’s in Paris, but he doesn’t come here any more. Paul doesn’t allow it. He ran up a bill of thirty thousand francs, charging all his drinks and his lunches, and usually his dinner, for more than a year. And when Paul finally told him he had to pay, he gave him a bad check.”

Alix pressed his lips together and shook his head.

“I don’t understand it, such a dandy fellow. Now he’s all bloated up—” He made a plump apple of his hands.

A thin world, resting on a common weakness, shredded away now like tissue paper. Turning, Charlie saw a group of effeminate young men installing themselves in a corner.

“Nothing affects them,” he thought. “Stocks rise and fall, people loaf or work, but they go on forever.” The place oppressed him. He called for the dice and shook with Alix for the drink.

“Here for long, Mr. Wales?”

“I’m here for four or five days to see my little girl.”

“Oh-h! You have a little girl?”

Outside, the fire-red, gas-blue, ghost-green signs shone smokily through the tranquil rain. It was late afternoon and the streets were in movement; the bistros gleamed. At the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines he took a taxi. The Place de la Concorde moved by in pink majesty; they crossed the logical Seine, and Charlie felt the sudden provincial quality of the left bank.

“I spoiled this city for myself,” he thought. “I didn’t realize it, but the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone.”

He was thirty-five, a handsome man, with the Irish mobility of his face sobered by a deep wrinkle between his eyes. As he rang his brother-in-law’s bell in the Rue Palatine, the wrinkle deepened till it pulled down his brows; he felt a cramping sensation in his belly. From behind the maid who opened the door darted a lovely little girl of nine who shrieked “Daddy!” and flew up, struggling like a fish, into his arms. She pulled his head around by one ear and set her cheek against his.

“My old pie,” he said.

“Oh, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, dads, dads, dads!”

She drew him into the salon, where the family waited, a boy and girl his daughter’s age, his sister-in-law and her husband. He greeted Marion with his voice pitched carefully to avoid either feigned enthusiasm or dislike, but her response was more frankly tepid, and she minimized her expression of unalterable distrust by directing her regard toward his child. The two men clasped hands in a friendly way and Lincoln Peters rested his for a moment on Charlie’s shoulder.