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One Basket, by Edna Ferber
- Abstract
Every writer has favorite words or phrases whose repeated use becomes tic-like with him. For Proust the word is “stupefy.” “Immense” and “in fine” are obsessive with Henry James. Writers of genius and writers of no genius alike have this habit of riding their ritual words to death. Edna Ferber’s word is “honest.” Honest pies, honest eyes, honest cakes, honest hats, honest tables, and other honest objects too numerous to mention are strewn across the pages like dandelions in this collection of short stories written between 1913 and 1942. Miss Ferber’s vocabulary is monotonous. Sometimes instead of being honest, things are “real,” as in “real soup.”
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