资料题：We can assume that the public, in modem times, are mare likely to read（　）。

In the 1920s and the 1930s, the short story, as a form, was difficult to sell.Readers found it an awkward compromise between a poem and a longer novel.The long short story or novella(中篇小说)was scarcely known.Certain comic geniuses like P.G.Wodehouse found it easy to reach and keep a vast public with short stories, either alone or in series.And of course there was W.Somerset Maugham.Bu the less accomplished writers found the market dwindling(缩小)even further.Since 1945, the entire literary picture has changed.Fiction of all kinds, but above all the short story, has become more and more uneconomic to publish.Many magazines have gone out of business.As a type, the“man of letters”puffing a pipe has almost vanished, t be replaced by the university lecturer or the television scriptwriter.The pubic is not attracted by imaginary plots in books but prefers the actual, the real story of real people.For those who do not read at all, television provides an enticing alternative.Such a decline is in many ways a sad one because the old-time short story had a human quality about it which is now eroded (受到侵蚀).Yet, in an odd way, in our chaotic electronic age, the short story sill has a prospect of living.it has been discovered by film script writes that the form of the short story provides a useful structure for television; it readily provides the basis for a one-hour program.