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great adolescent question, and the world Anderson saw is essentially,
most store. And we must sometimes feel that he had dared too
and even when it is inhabited by adults, the world of the sensitive
much for his art and therefore expected too much merely from his
young person. It is a world that does not "understand," a world of
boldness, believing that right opinion must necessarily result from
solitude, of running away from home, of present dullness and far-
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
·-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-·-·-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-·-··-··-··-··-·-··
Sherwood Anderson
25
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off joy and eventual fulfillment; it is a world seen as suffused by
one's own personality and yet-and therefore-felt as indifferent
_.. b
'd t belong to it. In modern times it has been continued
may e sa1 o
h
h b I
to one's own personality. And Anderson used what seems to a
b Blake and Whitman and D. H. Lawrence. T ose w o e ong
y
young person the very language to penetrate to the heart of the
h
d'ti'on usually do something more about the wrong way
to t e tra 1
.
.
world's mystery, what with its rural or primeval willingness to say
Id
es than merely to denounce it-they act out their de-
the wor go
.
· ·
k
things thrice over, its reiterated "Well ... " which suggests
and assume a role and a way of life. Typically they ta e
the
nunciat1ons
·
.
.
groping of boyhood, its "Eh?" which implies the inward-turning
h ·
cks and leave the doomed respectable city, JUSt as Ander-
� t w �
son d.d
I • But Anderson lacked what his spiritual
11
co eagues h ave
wisdom of old age.
.
cl
. d
Most of us will feel now that this world of Anderson's is a pretty
always no�Iy had. We ma� call i� mind, b_ut energy an spmte -
·
inadequate representation of reality and probably always
nw,m thei·r relation to mmd will serve JUSt as well. Anderson
was. But
we cannot be sure that it was not a necessary event in our history,
never understood that the moment of enlightenment and conver-
like adolescence itself; and no one has the adolescence he would
sion-the walking out-cannot be merely celebrated but must be
have liked to have had. But an adolescence must not continue bedeveloped, so that what begins as an act of will grows to be an act yond its natural term, and as we read through Anderson's canon
of intelligence. The men of the anti-rationalist tradition mock the
what exasperates us is his stubborn, satisfied continuance in his
mind's pretensions and denounce its restrictiveness; but they are
earliest attitudes. There is something undeniably impressive about
themselves the agents of the most powerful thought. They do not
the period of Anderson's work in which he was formulating his
of course really reject mind at all, but only mind as it is co_nceived
characteristic notions. We can take, especially if we have
by respectable society. "I learned the Torah £�om al_l the l_1mbs of
a modifywith their _sensaing consciousness of its historical moment,
my teacher," said one of the Hasidim. They_ thmk
Windy MacPherson's
.
Son, despite its last part which is so curiously
tions, their emotions, and, some of them, with their sex. While delike a commercial
magazine story of the time;
nouncing intellect, they shine forth in a mental blaze of energy
Marching Men has power even though
its political mysticism is repellent;
which manifests itself in syntax, epigram, and true discovery.
Winesburg, Ohio has its touch
Anderson is not like them in this regard. He did not become a
of greatness; Poor White is heavy-handed but not without its force;
"wise" man. He did not have the gift of being able to throw out a
and some of the stories in The Triumph of the Egg have the kind
of grim
sentence or a metaphor which suddenly illuminates some dark
quaintness which is, I think, Anderson's most successful
corner of life-his role implied that he should be full of "sayings"
mood, the mood that he occasionally achieves now and then in his
and specific insights, yet he never was. But in the preface to Wines
later short pieces, such as "Death in the Woods." But after 1921, in
burg, Ohio he utters one of the few really "wise" things in his work,
Dark Laughter and Many Marriages, the books that made the
and, by a kind of irony, it explains something of his own inad
y.
greatest critical stir, there emerges in Anderson's work the compul
�quac_
The preface consists of a little story about an old man w�o 1s writsive, obsessive, repetitive quality which finally impresses itself on us ing what he calls "The Book of the Grotesque." This is the old
as his characteristic quality.
man's ruling idea:
Anderson is connected with the tradition of the men who maintain a standing quarrel with respectable society and have a perpetual That in the beginning when the world was young there were a gr_eat
bone to pick with the rational intellect. It is a very old tradition, for
many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himthe Essenes, the early Franciscans, as well as the early Hasidim, self and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts.
All about in the world were.truths and they were all beautiful.
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
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Sherwood Anderson
27
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The old man listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try
f attack upon the order of the respectable world, can con-
to tell you all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of
means o
.
.
·
passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy,
world which is actually without love and pass10n and not
tnve a
of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths
"f ., . 1
worth being ree· m.
and they were all beautiful.
In Anderson's world there are many emotions, or rather many
And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up
·
es of a few emotions, but there are very few sights, sounds,
instanc
one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen
and smells, very little of the stuff of actuality. The very things to
of them.
which he gives moral value because
they are living and real and
It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had
quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that
opposed in their organic nature to the insensate abstractness of an
the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called
industrial culture become, as he writes about them, themselves abit his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the stract and without life. His praise of the racehorses he said he loved
truth he embraced became a falsehood.
ives us no sense of a horse; his Mississippi does not flow; his tall
�orn grows out of the soil of his dominating subjectivity. The
Anderson snatched but a single one of the truths and it made
beautiful organic things of the world are made to be admirable not
him, in his own gentle and affectionate meaning of the word, a
for themselves but only for their moral superiority to men and
"grotesque"; eventually the truth itself became a kind of falsehood.
machines. There are many similarities of theme between Anderson
It was the truth-or perhaps we must call it a simple complex of
and D. H. Lawrence, but Lawrence's far stronger and more sensitruths-of love-passion-freedom, and it was made up of these tive mind kept his faculty of vision fresh and true; Lawrence had
"vague thoughts": that each individual is a precious secret essence,
eyes for the substantial and even at his most doctrinaire he knew
often discordant with all other essences; that society, and more
particularly the industrial society, threatens these essences; that the
the world of appearance.
And just as there is no real sensory experience in Anderson's
old good values of life have been destroyed by the industrial diswriting, there is also no real social experience. His people do not pensation; that people have been cut off from each other and even
from themselves. That these thoughts make a truth is certain; and
really go to church or vote or work for money, although it is often
its importance is equally certain. In what way could it have become
said of them that they do these things. In his desire for better social
a falsehood and its possessor a "grotesque"?
relationships Anderson could never quite see the social relationships
The nature of the falsehood seems to lie in this-that Anderson's
that do in fact exist, however inadequate they may be. He often
affirmation of life by love, passion, and freedom had, paradoxically
t In the preface of The Sherwood Anderson Reader, Paul Rosenfeld, Anderson's
enough, the effect of quite negating life, making it gray, empty,
friend and admirer, has summarized in a remarkable way the vision of life which
Anderson's work suggests: "Almost, it seems, we touch an absolute existence, a
and devoid of meaning. We are quite used to hearing that this is
curious semi-animal, semi-divine life. Its chronic state is banality, prostration, dismemberment, unconsciousness; tensity with indefinite yearning and infinitely stretchwhat excessive intellection can do; we are not so often warned that ing desire. Its manifestation: the non-community of cranky or otherwise asocial
emotion, if it is of a certain kind, can be similarly destructive. Yet
solitaries, dispersed, impotent and imprisoned ... . Its wonders-the wonders of
m chaos-are fugitive heroes an
when feeling is understood as an answer, a therapeutic, when it bethe dismembered Dionysius .... Painfully the absolute comes to itself in consciouscomes a sort of critical tool and is conceived of as excluding other ness of universal feeling and helplessness . ... It realizes itself as feeling, sincerity,
understanding, as connection and unity; sometimes at the cost of the death of its
activities of life, it can indeed make the world abstract and empty.
creatures. It triumphs in anyone aware of its existence even in its sullen state. The
moment of r�alization is tragically brief. Feeling, understanding, unity pass. The
Love and passion, when considered as they are by Anderson as a
divine life sinks back again, dismembered and unconscious."
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
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Sherwood Anderson
29
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spoke, for example, of unhappy, desperate marriages and seemed
derson's prose has a purpose t� which these manneri�r.ns are e
_
�sential
to suggest that they ought to be quickly dissolved, but he never
-it has the intention of makmg us doubt our famihanty with our
understood that marriages are often unsatisfactory for the very rea
Orld and not we must note, in order to make things fresher
own w
,
,
sons that make it impossible to dissolve them.
for us but only in order to make them seem puzzling to us and re-
His people have passion without body, and sexuality without
mote from us. When a man whose name we know is (requently
gaiety and joy, although it is often through sex that they are supreferred to as "the plowmaker," when we hear again and again of posed to find their salvation. John Jay Chapman said of Emerson
"a kind of candy called Milky Way" long after we have learned, if
that, great as he was, a visitor from Mars would learn less about life
we did not already know, that Milky Way is a candy, when we
on earth from him than from Italian opera, for the opera at least
are told of someone that "He became a radical. He had radical
suggested that there were two sexes. When Anderson was at the
thoughts," it becomes clear that we are being asked by this false
height of his reputation, it seemed that his report on the existence of
naivete to give up our usual and on the whole useful conceptual
two sexes was the great thing about him, the thing that made his
grasp of the world we get around in. .
work an advance over the literature of New England. But although
Anderson liked to catch people with their smgle human secret,
the visitor from Mars might be instructed by Anderson in the mere
their essence, but the more he looks for their essence the more his
fact of bisexuality, he would still be advised to go to the Italian
characters vanish into the vast limbo of meaningless life, the less
opera if he seeks fuller information. For from the opera, as never
they are human beings. His great American heroes were Mark
from Anderson, he will acquire some of the knowledge which is
Twain and Lincoln, but when he writes of these two shrewd, ennormally in the possession of natives of the planet, such as that sex during men, he robs them of all their savor and masculinity, of all
has certain manifestations which are socially quite complex, that it
their bitter resisting mind; they become little more than a pair of
is involved with religion, politics, and the fate of nations, above all
sensitive, suffering happy-go-luckies. The more Anderson says about
that it is frequently marked by the liveliest sort of energy.
people, the less alive they become-and the less lovable. Is it strange
In their speech his p
eople have not only no wit, but no idiom. To
that, with all Anderson's expressed affection for them, we ourselves
say that they are not "real" would be to introduce all sorts of usecan never love the people he writes about? But of course we do not less quibbles about the art of character creation; they are simply
love people for their essence or their souls, but for their having a
not there. This is not a failure of art; rather, it would seem to have
certain body, or wit, or idiom, certain specific relationships with
been part of Anderson's intention that they should be not there.
things and other people, and for a dependable continuity of exist
His narrative prose is contrived to that end; it is not really a colence: we love them for being there.
loquial idiom, although it has certain colloquial tricks; it approaches
We can even for a moment entertain the thought that Anderson
in effect the inadequate use of a foreign language; old slang persists
himself did not love his characters, else he would not have so thorin it and elegant archaisms are consciously used, so that people are oughly robbed them of substance and hustled them so quickly off
constantly having the "fantods," girls are frequently referred to as
the stage after their small essential moments of crisis. Anderson's
"maidens," and things are "like unto" other things. These mannerlove, however, was real enough; it is only that he loves under the isms, although they remind us of some of Dreiser's, are not the reaspect of his "truth"; it is love indeed but love become wholly absult, as Dreiser's are, of an effort to be literary and impressive. An-stract. Another way of putting it is that Anderson sees with the
30
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
Sherwood Anderson
-·-•-•-••-•t-11-..-11•-•-n-•-•-•-••-•-•-••-••-••-•-•-•�•-•1
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eyes of a religiosity of a very limited sort. No one, I think, has comto
much as anything else that reminds us of Hemingway's relation_
mented on the amount and quality of the mysticism that entered
Anderson-and a few racing drivers of whom Pop Geers was chief.
the thought of the writers of the twenties. We may leave Willa
It is a charming hero worship, but it does not make an adequate