Information to Users

INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly fi^om the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter fiice, while others may be fi’om any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing ftom left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zed) Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 EDWARD J. O'BRIEN: BEST SHORT STORIES AND THE PRODUCTION OF AN AMERICAN GENRE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Jacquelyn S. Spangler, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1997 Dissertation Committee: Professor Debra Moddelmog, Advisor Approved by Professor Susan Williams Û . Advisor Q Professor Valerie Lee Department of English Professor Melanie Rae Thon UMI Number: 9731720 UMI Microform 9731720 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeh Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48103 ABSTRACT From 1915-1941, during his twenty-six years as the first editor of Best Short Stories (the annual anthology that continues today as Best American Short Stories), Edward J. O'Brien established that series as a center of judgement for the literary ideal of the short story. As the leading authority on the American short story, O'Brien achieved his goal of transforming the short story from a commercial to a literary genre by defining acceptable standards of form and substance, by promoting the Iowa Writer's Workshop, by influencing the early twentieth-century American short story canon, and by shaping the scope and focus of short story theory. This study looks at O'Brien's editorship of the Best Short Stories and argues that, although O'Brien was committed to maintaining a mass audience for the short story, his project of literary genrefication excluded the existing story audience from cultural authority and ultimately sacrificed popular support for the newly emerging story form. The cultural, economic, and political values inherent in the "standards" that O'Brien endorsed are illustrated in ii the stories he chose to reprint in his series and by those which he excluded, namely stories of the Harlem Renaissance and those by writers of color. This project analyzes O'Brien's aesthetic within a cultural and historical context, arguing that, despite poststructural awareness of language and representation, contemporary short story criticism continues to reflect O'Brien's standards for the literary ideal of the American short story, a position which has perpetuated an exclusive critical apparatus that dominates and determines the production of short stories well into the postmodern era. Ill Dedicated to Janet Kesselring Spangler IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Debra Moddelmog, for her intellect, her interest in this dissertation, and her support which made this project possible. I thank Susan Williams for extending the scope of this project into the 19th century and for generously sharing her knowledge of cultural production. I am grateful to Valerie Lee for her enthusiasm for this dissertation and her valuable input. I am also grateful to Melanie Rae Thon for her careful consideration of these pages and for giving me the chance to talk it out. I also wish to thank Cartha Sexton for endless help with red tape, and Mary Castoe for the many messages she delivered. Thanks to Jim Bracken for research clues and Viola Newton for last minute editing and inspiration. Muchas gracias to Pirouz. VITA March 28, 1963.... Born - Dixon, Illinois 1992...............M.A. English, The Ohio State University 1992 - present.... Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University Publications 1. Spangler, Jacquelyn, "Death to America." Kansas Quarterlv/Arkansas Review. 28(1), 1997. 2. Spangler, Jacquelyn, "What I Saw From There." Southwest Review. 79(2&3), 1994. Fields of Study Major Field; English VI TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract............................................... 11 Dedication............................................. Iv Acknowledgments........................................ v Vita................................................... vl Chapters: 1. Introduction: Best Short Stories and the Production of Taste............................................ 1 2. A Democracy of Letters: Cultural Nationalism and O'Brien's Aesthetic............................... 48 3. Best Short Stoles: An Aesthetic of Exclusion.... 108 4. Theorizing the Short story: Beyond the New Critical Myth.............................................. 176 5. Conclusion: O'Brien's Canon...................... 208 Bibliography..........................................216 Vll CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION BEST SHORT STORIES AND THE PRODUCTION OF AMERICAN TASTE The public taste is now being created. Add to this, the period in our national life: we are coming to our artistic maturity. Add the profound social transition that was upon us before the war. And add any other factor you may choose for what may come after the war; for I think that momentous events stand on the threshold of the world. — Edward O'Brien, Best Short Stories (1915) In 1915, young poet and literary aficionado Edward J. O'Brien published the first anthology of contemporary American stories. Best Short Stories and Yearbook of the American Short Story (later called Best American Short Stories), an annual series that has continued uninterrupted publication until today, and has influenced the careers of such literary figures as Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, John Cheever and John Updike, Eudora Welty and Joyce Carol Oates to name a few. Although comprehensive histories of the American short story had been published before 1915, and literary publishing companies such as Houghton Mifflin, Harper and Brothers, and Charles Scribner's Sons were publishing collections of individual authors, O'Brien was the first to collect stories newly published in American magazines by contemporary authors, many of them virtually unknown. O'Brien's editorship of the Best Short Stories began in 1915 with the outbreak of the First World War and ended in 1941 when he died soon after a heart attack suffered during the London blitz of World War II. Establishing his authority during the years between the two world wars— transformative years for the cultures of the United States, for the development of American Literature as an academic discipline within American universities, and for the short story as a literary genre— O'Brien rose to prominence in part because of his ability to recognize the significance of his historical moment and to assert his taste among a range of literary and cultural forces. For example, like most editors and social critics of the time, O'Brien was emphatically concerned with what he saw as the emergence of an American national culture and, like most academicians, the need for defining and legitimizing American literature. This dissertation shows :hat O'Brien's authority was so tremendously influencial because it was dispersed in many different aspects of short story production. Through his participation in literary lecture circuits, his two books of criticism, and his appearance in magazines as guest editor, judge, and story reviewer, O'Brien's critical voice reached a wide and varied audience. His interest in Midwestern realism supported the writers and teachers who became instrumental in the development of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and his crucial involvement with the establishment and promotion of Story magazine integrated his taste into the most institutionalized structures of story production of his time. Most important, however, O'Brien established and maintained authority by providing an annual prize of national distinction that, by O'Brien's rights to the title and his authority as editor, was accepted and revered as the "Best." This study demonstrates O'Brien's influence on the development of the American short story, emphasizing his role in creating the early twentieth-century short story canon and the means by which short stories continue to be produced today. Although the focus remains on O'Brien, it is important to note the impact of other editors such as H. L. Mencken and other sites of influence such as the growing number of literary organizations that, at times, intersected with O'Brien's project

Load more