Explore "The Lost Phoebe" by Blanche Colton Williams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
STARTING POINT. The beginning of this story lay in a bit about an insane man in Missouri, a story which came to Mr. Dreiser quite ten years before he developed it. The story quality testifies to the value of the long dormant period.
SETTING. Study the narrative, observing with respect to place that although you may feel you have your mind on the exact locality, it presently flits to another probable setting. This is because Mr. Dreiser attaches no importance to the locality of his short stories, so long as the incidents are American -- and either urban or rural. The gain is, of course, in favor of the essential nationality; the loss is to the individual community. Does the first grasp of setting bring with it the atmosphere of the narrative?