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Horizons, v. 7, issue 4, whole 27, June 1946

Page 14

STOCKTON, FRANK R
A Chosen Few Short Stories
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895; 240-vi pp.; 16 cm.; $1.25

Further Information: This volume, bound in green with gold stamping, contains "A Tale of Negative Gravity", "Asaph". "His Wife's Deceased Sister", "The Lady or the Tiger?", "The Remarkable Wreck of the 'Thomas Hyke'", "Old Pipes and the Dryad", "The Transferred Ghost", "The Philosophy of Relative Existences", and "A Piece of Red Calico", all of them reprinted from earlier books by Stockton. The book also contains a two-page preface by the author, and an etched portrait of Stockton by W. H. W. Bicknell. The book is one of a series of volumes issued by Scribner's as the "Cameo Edition". 

Review: Stockton's short stories belong to an age when it was still possible to gain popularity while writing fiction that made no pretensions at literary significance, social innuendos, or experimental prose. His methods are as subtle as a sledge-hammer: in virtually all his stories, he gets one or more rather stupid characters into an absurd situation, then spends from fifteen to fifty pages extricating them. The humor that must have seemed so sparkling at one time is dull now, but the stories still have a gentle charm that sets them apart from most of the fantasies of the period.

Not all the stories in this book are fantasy. "Asaph", "His Wife's Deceased Sister", "A Piece of Red Calico", and the inevitable "The Lady, or the Tiger?" are mundanes, and definitely inferior in literary worth to the remainder of the volume. 

Stockton's methods are best demonstrated by the opening story in the book, "A Tale of Negative Gravity". This is the leisurely narrative of how an elderly gentleman discovers how to produce and control negative gravity. Its value in reducing the weight of knapsacks when hiking is related at great length. Once it gets out of hand and sends the narrator a number of feet above the ground, where he remains many uncomfortable hours before it occurs to him to get himself hauled down by a rope. Eventually, it provides the means by which the couple's son may marry the girl he loves.

"The Transferred Ghost" is of approximately equal mediocrity. The supernatural element is a ghost who is unable to find a dead man to replace, and therefore settles upon the gentleman who tells the story in the first person. Most of the humor falls flat on its face, when Stockton tries to make sport with the hero's efforts to converse with both the ghost and his fiancee at the same time.

Slightly more amusing, and almost a forerunner of "Probability Zero", is "The Remarkable Wreck of the 'Thomas Hyke'". Strictly speaking, it contains no fantasy or stf element, but it is indubitably the story of a wreck which never happened or will happen. The ship, you see, has watertight compartments, and when it is wrecked sinks only about halfway down; remaining in this half-submerged state for some days, it is eventually redeemed when a storm comes along and knocks the bottom out of the boat, allowing its cargo to sink to the bottom of the sea and the lightened boat to rise!

The other two stories are the redeeming features of the volume. "Old Pipes and the Dryad" would be worth anthologizing even today, for its quiet, easy narrative style and the pleasant though slightly rambling fairy-tale plot. Old Pipes has grown too old to pipe the cattle home when the story opens, then lets a Dryad out of her tree and is rewarded by being made younger. However, he eventually gets into trouble with an Echo-Dwarf who lives in the nearby mountain, since Old Pipes' renewed vigor enables him to pipe once more and forces the Echo-Dwarf to fulfill his functions. Everything comes out all right in the end.

"The Philosophy of Relative Existences" is also quite different from the usual Stockton style. A couple of philosophizing young men happen upon a strange, quiet village occupied by the ghosts of the people who will live there in the years to come. The narrator -- who is believed to be a ghost himself by the spectral people who live there -- is assured of success for his planned book when he spies someone reading a published copy of it; his pal didn't fare so well.

-- Harry Warner Jr.

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STOCKTON, FRANK R A Chosen Few Short Stories New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895; 240-vi pp.; 16 cm.; $1.25 Further Information: This volume, bound in green with gold stamping, contains "A Tale of Negative Gravity", "Asaph". "His Wife's Deceased Sister", "The Lady or the Tiger?", "The Remarkable Wreck of the 'Thomas Hyke'", "Old Pipes and the Dryad", "The Transferred Ghost", "The Philosophy of Relative Existences", and "A Piece of Red Calico", all of them reprinted from earlier books by Stockton. The book also contains a two-page preface by the author, and an etched portrait of Stockton by W. H. W. Bicknell. The book is one of a series of volumes issued by Scribner's as the "Cameo Edition". Review: Stockton's short stories belong to an age when it was still possible to gain popularity while writing fiction that made no pretensions at literary significance, social innuendos, or experimental prose. His methods are as subtle as a sledge-hammer: in virtually all his stories, he gets one or more rather stupid characters into an absurd situation, then spends from fifteen to fifty pages extricating them. The humor that must have seemed so sparkling at one time is dull now, but the stories still have a gentle charm that sets them apart from most of the fantasies of the period. Not all the stories in this book are fantasy. "Asaph", "His Wife's Deceased Sister", "A Piece of Red Calico", and the inevitable "The Lady, or the Tiger?" are mundanes, and definitely inferior in literary worth to the remainder of the volume. Stockton's methods are best demonstrated by the opening story in the book, "A Tale of Negative Gravity". This is the leisurely narrative of how an elderly gentleman discovers how to produce and control negative gravity. Its value in reducing the weight of knapsacks when hiking is related at great length. Once it gets out of hand and sends the narrator a number of feet above the ground, where he remains many uncomfortable hours before it occurs to him to get himself hauled down by a rope. Eventually, it provides the means by which the couple's son may marry the girl he loves. "The Transferred Ghost" is of approximately equal mediocrity. The supernatural element is a ghost who is unable to find a dead man to replace, and therefore settles upon the gentleman who tells the story in the first person. Most of the humor falls flat on its face, when Stockton tries to make sport with the hero's efforts to converse with both the ghost and his fiancee at the same time. Slightly more amusing, and almost a forerunner of "Probability Zero", is "The Remarkable Wreck of the 'Thomas Hyke'". Strictly speaking, it contains no fantasy or stf element, but it is indubitably the story of a wreck which never happened or will happen. The ship, you see, has watertight compartments, and when it is wrecked sinks only about halfway down; remaining in this half-submerged state for some days, it is eventually redeemed when a storm comes along and knocks the bottom out of the boat, allowing its cargo to sink to the bottom of the sea and the lightened boat to rise! The other two stories are the redeeming features of the volume. "Old Pipes and the Dryad" would be worth anthologizing even today, for its quiet, easy narrative style and the pleasant though slightly rambling fairy-tale plot. Old Pipes has grown too old to pipe the cattle home when the story opens, then lets a Dryad out of her tree and is rewarded by being made younger. However, he eventually gets into trouble with an Echo-Dwarf who lives in the nearby mountain, since Old Pipes' renewed vigor enables him to pipe once more and forces the Echo-Dwarf to fulfill his functions. Everything comes out all right in the end. "The Philosophy of Relative Existences" is also quite different from the usual Stockton style. A couple of philosophizing young men happen upon a strange, quiet village occupied by the ghosts of the people who will live there in the years to come. The narrator -- who is believed to be a ghost himself by the spectral people who live there -- is assured of success for his planned book when he spies someone reading a published copy of it; his pal didn't fare so well. -- Harry Warner Jr.