The Web of the Sun (Adventure Magazine, 1922)
Some Explorations on the Nanay, a Tributary of
the Upper Amazon, and Transcribed
by T. S. Stribling
Author of “The Green Splotches”
EDITOR'S NOTE—During the eleven years of this magazine's life I think we have not once prefaced a story with any statement to the effect that “this is the most remarkable story of the, etc.” We do not so announce “The Web of the Sun.” Its place in the literature of the day must be determined by the general judgment. To those who wish only a good story of action it will, I think, be fully satisfying. But you will find it much more than that. One critic, whose judgment seems to me personally of first-rank value on such a point, gave as his opinion—with an almost fierce enthusiasm unusual to him—that this story ranks Mr. Stribling with Voltaire and the greatest satirists of all time. I do not feel myself competent to draw such a comparison, but I believe that no thinking man can read this story without finding Mr. Stribling's rapier very deeply inserted in his notions of things in general.
To any who may be distracted from the main point of the story by one phase of one of its factors, finding what seems disparagement of any man's religious belief, let it be pointed out that Birdsong emerges with at least as much credit as do the characters who disparage it and him, that the fictitious narrator cannot be taken as expressing the author's own opinions, and that said narrator in the end confesses his own failure to assess correctly the values of men and philosophies. In other words, the story must be judged as a whole, not by any detached part of itself. In the broad sense, the same words the Century uses to characterize Mr. Stribling's “Birthright,” the negro-problem serial now being featured in that magazine, may be applied also to this other story of his—“without a line of preachment or prejudice.”—A. S. H.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1965, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 58 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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