Poe formed a new
conception of the short story, one which Professor Brander Matthews[1]
has treated formally and explicitly as a distinct literary form,
different from the story that is merely short. Without calling it a
distinct form, Poe implied the idea in a review of Hawthorne's
"Twice-Told Tales":
[Footnote 1: "The Philosophy of the Short-Story," Chapter IV of "Pen
and Ink."]
The ordinary novel is objectionable from its length.... As it cannot
be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense
force derivable from _totality_.... In the brief tale, however,
the author is enabled to carry out the fulness of his intention, be it
what it may. During the hour of perusal, the soul of the reader is at
the writer's control....
A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not
fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having
conceived with deliberate care a certain unique or single
_effect_ to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents--he
then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this
preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the
out-bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In
the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the
tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre?«stablished design.
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