100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

1930–1940

In 1930, the same year that his wife died, series editor Edward O’Brien met Ruth Gorgel, a poor sixteen-year-old German girl. To the surprise and dismay of his family and friends, he married her soon after. They had two daughters, and O’Brien began to travel yet more in order to drum up work and money to support his growing family.

He became a highly public figure, both in England, where he often hosted visiting Rhodes Scholars, and in the United States, where he traveled on grueling lecture tours. He once wrote to Ruth that he rarely had time to go to the bathroom or enjoy more than fifteen minutes to himself. He was treated like a celebrity and juggled dozens of interviews, lectures, and business lunches, sometimes daily. He was asked in one interview how he found the time to read so many stories. He replied that over time, his reading speed had increased. He also said, “You don’t have to swallow an oyster to know that it’s bad.”

He continued to live in England, removed from the daily realities of the Depression. He hardly mentioned the dire situation in the United States in his forewords. He did take note, though, when sales of the series began to plummet. His Best American and Best British story volumes were combined in 1934 as a result of low sales of both. Smaller magazines began to go under. In the 1930s, just three weekly general-interest magazines maintained a circulation of over one million: The Saturday Evening Post, Liberty, and Collier’s. But “glossy” magazines — especially women’s magazines, many of which featured fiction — held their ground.

During the Depression, southern writing, often dark and agrarian, came to the fore. In 1931 O’Brien wrote, “The old pretentiousness is gone. The false sentiment is gone. The ‘hard-boiled mask’ is gone. The reader is now confronted with two or three people and a situation.” He went on: “The American scene is dusty and colorless. Its beauty and meaning depend on line and mass rather than on colour and decorative detail. The beauty of American life is not exterior. It is a hidden beauty which requires patient search to reward the finder.”

Also during this time, stories became more political and socially conscious. Writers like Theodore Dreiser, Erskine Caldwell, Meridel LeSueur, and John Steinbeck explored injustices associated with class, gender, and race. O’Brien did not hide his political preferences, at least when it came to short fiction. In 1935 he admitted, “During the past four or five years, it is on the left rather than on the right that I have found the most fruitful interpretation of American life by the short story writer.”

Some critics continued to clamor for O’Brien to choose stories with more intrigue and plot. In 1936 he responded: “What I do object to is the short story that exists for the sake of the plot. The plot, after all, is merely a skeleton which the story clothes. The story which exists for the sake of the plot is merely a grinning and repulsive skeleton without flesh and blood.”

One “small” magazine that was started during this time made a significant impact on the publishing world: Story. Martha Foley and her husband, Whit Burnett, founded the magazine while they were serving as foreign correspondents in Vienna. Foley wrote, “We did not plan to spend our lives at ephemeral day-to-day reporting. We wanted to produce literature.” Foley and Burnett’s first idea was to present Story as a catalogue of potential new writers for fiction editors. The first publication, sixty-seven mimeographed copies, opened with their statement of purpose: “[Story will] present short narratives of significance by no matter whom and coming from no matter where… [it will be] a sort of proof-book of hitherto unpublished manuscripts.” Foley and Burnett were soon flooded with submissions, and Story became a bona fide bimonthly magazine.

O’Brien was a fan of Whit Burnett’s own fiction and was enthusiastic about Story right away. His support bolstered the magazine’s reputation and visibility. Random House contacted Foley and Burnett and offered to publish Story when the two returned to the United States. The new publishing house, primarily a reprint house at the time, drew a flood of new talent with the publication of Story. Foley and Burnett were the first to publish a number of writers who went on to achieve major success: Charles Bukowski, Erskine Caldwell, Tennessee Williams, J. D. Salinger, William Saroyan, and John Cheever, among others.

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.