The air was thick with the war feeling, like the electricity of a storm which has not yet burst. Editha sat looking out into the hot spring afternoon, with her lips parted, and panting with the intensity of the question whether she could let him go.
“Editha” was the author’s attempt to apply his approach to literary Realism to anti-war literature. The sentimentalism of romantic plots was heavily present in the same approach to war stories which Howells felt was responsible for propagating an immature view toward war. Because fiction did not show the ugly reality, readers of fiction remain ignorant. He therefore created a protagonist for his anti-war novel intended to reflect fully the danger of an idealistic view toward war being based on ignorance. This is the opening line of that story.
“What is it?” said the little girl, and she rubbed her eyes and tried to rise up in bed.
“Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!” they all shouted, and waved their stockings.
“Nonsense! It was Christmas yesterday.”
Thanks to Hollywood, the most well-known short story of Howells to modern readers is probably the story he wrote for his children about a little girl who makes a wish for every day to be Christmas. As might be expected, by the end the wish has boomeranged and must be undone. The concept has been applied to several made-for-TV movies.
A girl at school mislaid a pencil which she thought she had lent him, and he began to have a morbid belief that he must have stolen it; he became frantic with the mere dread of guilt; he could not eat or sleep, and it was not till he went to make good the loss with a pencil which his grandfather gave him that the girl said she had found her pencil in her desk, and saved him from the despair of a self-convicted criminal.
Howells wrote a series of stories detailing the exploits of “my boy.” In this entry, the reader learns from the narrator of his boy developed all manner of strange superstitions and beliefs that dogged him terribly. The story is strange and a little macabre, but not dark enough to be considered horror. Nevertheless, there is something quite horrific about it.
It had long been the notion of Frederick Erlcort, who held it playfully, held it seriously, according to the company he was in, that there might be a censorship of taste and conscience in literary matters strictly affiliated with the retail commerce in books.
This opening to “A Critical Bookstore” is very nearly a perfect example of the preferred manner in which Howells opened his stories. His narrator is factual, observant and slightly alienated, but with a careful and precise control of language that allows the reader to interpret irony as he sees fit.
