Page 38 - 1930 October - To Dragma

OCTOBER, 1930 37

last fall, but themes to be read and criticized, lectures to be prepared,
books to be reviewed, demanded that i t be set aside. Moreover, my
own lack of faith in my ability to write fiction of the kind obviously
desired by the editors and the judges of the contest did not tend either
to strengthen my confidence or to heighten my desire. M y mind,
as I have said, is not a plot-forming one, and the very term "situation
story" was frightening. "Now if it were only an essay or a sketch or
a narrative without plot!" I said to myself a bit wistfully as I re-
turned to Tom Jones and to Thomas De Quincey on Literature of
Knowledge and Literature of Power. But it was a story that was
wanted and, moreover, a story of plot or at least of situation. Where-
upon I very wisely put the announcement entirely from my head and
did not resurrect it until one cold morning in February just five days
before the contest closed. By the beneficent Goddess of Chance that
morning was free, and since I keep house as well as teach in Smith
College, I determined to enjoy a purely domestic existence. M y silver
being in a sadly obscure condition, I prepared to clean and polish it,
and I set about the operation. When lo! in the midst of brightening
my great-grandmother's tea service, the story popped into my head
from that mysterious place where stories wait to be born. There it
was! And I abandoned forks and spoons, trays and sugar-bowls, and
sat down at eleven A.M. i n my apron to write i t .

I can not honestly say that the task was a hard one or that I
counted and recounted the words to secure just the twenty-five hundred
allowed. As a matter of fact, I finished with 2474 and found cutting
unnecessary. And I finished at two o'clock, ate a bowl of cereal, and
completed my silver polishing, wondering meanwhile (1) i f it really
was a "situation story" and (2) if it was at all a good one.

That it dealt with a situation and certainly a not uncommon one
I knew, for a child does sometimes die without a new suit to be buried
m and some one must buy such a suit. Indeed, i t is but fair to say
that a friend had told me months before of just such a circumstance.
Why, ! said to myself, has not such a situation occurred to hundreds
of writers? And yet, search as I would, I could not recall an instance.

That it had unity I knew, too, for some kind and guiding spirit
had shown me devices to secure i t ; a radio in the beginning and in
the end; a baseball which was presented by a stupid clerk to a dead
P°y and which at the same time was the chief subject of interest
to a living one of the same age; two blue suits, one worn by a living
P?.v, the other to be placed upon a boy that was dead. Such repetitions

i ya s t o r together, I well knew, into a consistent whole.
That the dialogue was real and good, I hoped, grateful that I had
tudied and tried to teach and to practice the fine dialogue of Galsworthy,
Hemingway, Willa Cather, O. Henry.

rt. r ^ ye s t o r was human in the best sense, I must believe, and,

^erefore, that it was true.

'Does it have plot?" I asked. Well, it moved along, I told myself,