iously by our literary artists,
may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in
formulA|, and organised criticism at its best would be nothing more than
dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead.
What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh,
living current which flows through the best of our work, and the
psychological and imaginative reality which our writers have conferred
upon it.

No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic
substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is
beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair
to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination
than we display at present.

The present record covers the period from October, 1919, to September,
1920, inclusive. During this period, I have sought to select from the
stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life
imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. Substance is
something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather than
something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a
story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist's power of
compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth.
The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis
is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected
facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently called the test of
substance.

But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other
stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into
the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and
arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing
presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.

The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous
years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first group consists
of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test
of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the
yearbook without comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group
consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they survive
either the test of substance or the test of form. Each of these stories
may claim to possess either distinction of technique alone, or more
frequently, I am gla