It was not, of course, all good talk, and we suffered then, as now, from the a priori critic. Just as nowadays he goes about declaring that the work of such-and-such a dramatist is all very amusing and delightful, but -it isn't a Play,- so we' had a great deal of talk about the short story, and found ourselves measured by all kinds of arbitrary standards. There was a tendency to treat the short story as though it was as definable a form as the sonnet, instead of being just exactly what any one of courage and imagination can ...
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It was not, of course, all good talk, and we suffered then, as now, from the a priori critic. Just as nowadays he goes about declaring that the work of such-and-such a dramatist is all very amusing and delightful, but -it isn't a Play,- so we' had a great deal of talk about the short story, and found ourselves measured by all kinds of arbitrary standards. There was a tendency to treat the short story as though it was as definable a form as the sonnet, instead of being just exactly what any one of courage and imagination can get told in twenty minutes' reading or so. It was either Mr. Edward Garnett or Mr. George Moore in a violently anti-Kipling mood who invented the distinction between the short story and the anecdote. The short story was Maupassant; the anecdote was damnable. It was a quite infernal comment in its way, because it permitted no defence. Fools caught it up and used it freely.
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Add this copy of The Country of the Pointed Firs to cart. $44.94, good condition, Sold by BookDrop rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Phoenix, AZ, UNITED STATES, published 2017 by Blurb.
Add this copy of The Country of the Pointed Firs to cart. $88.21, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hialeah, FL, UNITED STATES, published 2017 by Blurb.
It is hard to say what makes this book so endearing. Jewett tells about her summers in a remote seaside village and the people she knows there. Perhaps it is the harking back to a pastoral kind of life but it is her descriptions of the people going about their days and the joys and sorrows of those lives that shines through.
