The best short stories of 1915, and the yearbook of the American short story — Reading Notes

The Editor's Criteria and the Yearbook

O'Brien's introduction is essential for understanding the volume's design. He explicitly states that he has read 'several thousand' stories from American periodicals and selected only those that 'approach the dignity of a fine art.' He dismisses stories written for 'the tired business man' and instead champions those that reveal 'the soul of a people.' The yearbook section, which follows the stories, lists every short story published in 1915 by author and magazine, along with a bibliography of criticism. This apparatus transforms the anthology into a reference work, allowing readers to trace the year's output and compare O'Brien's choices against the broader field. The editor's voice is authoritative and opinionated, and his criteria—artistic integrity, national character, and formal innovation—shape the reading experience from the outset.

Rural Life and Family Tension in the Opening Story

The excerpt from 'The Water-Hole' (the volume's first story) offers a concentrated example of the anthology's preoccupations. The scene is a farmhouse kitchen, where a boy named Frank learns that his mother has tuberculosis and must move west for her health. The dialogue is halting and understated: 'Well, Frank,' his father begins, then stops. The boy's internal conflict—his desire to escape the farm versus his guilt—is rendered through physical actions: he 'picked up his hat and went outside, closing the screen-door noiselessly.' The prose is precise about setting: a 'far-away straw-stack which lay a mass of dull gold in the sombre setting of plowed land.' This combination of emotional restraint and sensory detail typifies the naturalistic strain O'Brien favors. The story does not resolve the boy's dilemma within the excerpt, leaving the reader to infer the outcome from the accumulated weight of family obligation and economic pressure.

Structure and Selection: A Range of Voices

The anthology's table of contents reveals a deliberate variety of settings and styles. Alongside rural dramas like 'The Water-Hole,' O'Brien includes urban tales (Ben Hecht's 'Life'), supernatural stories (Wilbur Daniel Steele's 'The Yellow Cat'), and comic pieces (Donn Byrne's 'The Wake'). The authors range from established figures like Fannie Hurst to newcomers like Benjamin Rosenblatt, to whom the volume is dedicated. This mix suggests that O'Brien's definition of 'best' is inclusive of genre and tone, as long as each story demonstrates what he calls 'a fresh and vigorous approach to life.' The reader moving through the collection will encounter abrupt shifts in voice—from the lyrical melancholy of 'The Water-Hole' to the ironic detachment of 'Mr. Eberdeen's House'—which underscores the editor's belief that the short story can encompass a wide emotional and formal spectrum.

Recurring Details: The Weight of Place

Across the excerpts, a recurring motif is the oppressive or defining power of place. In 'The Water-Hole,' the farm is both a home and a trap; the boy's memories of playing Indian in the grove are tinged with loss. The story's title itself refers to a specific landmark, a water-hole that presumably anchors the family's history. Other stories in the volume, as indicated by titles like 'Chautonville' and 'Heart of Youth,' likely explore similar tensions between individual desire and geographic rootedness. O'Brien's introduction praises stories that 'interpret American life,' and the excerpts suggest that this interpretation often involves characters caught between the pull of home and the lure of elsewhere. The reader should attend to how each story establishes its setting—whether a farm, a small town, or a city—as a character in its own right, shaping the characters' choices and fates.

O'Brien's anthology rewards a reading that moves between the stories and the editorial matter. The yearbook and introduction provide a framework for evaluating the selections, while the stories themselves offer a cross-section of American short fiction in 1915. Readers interested in the development of the form will find here a deliberate, argued collection that reflects one editor's taste and his moment's literary currents. Pay attention to how O'Brien's criteria—artistic conscience, national character, formal innovation—play out in each story, and consider how the volume as a whole constructs a particular canon of early twentieth-century American writing.

Edward J. O'Brien's 1915 gathering treasures the quiet ache inside ordinary lives—the farmer’s unspoken grief, the mother’s withheld anger. Years later, I find that same patient attention waiting in American short stories — A Closer Reading, as if the older collection had cleared a path for this steadier, kinder gaze upon our shared and stubborn hearts.