Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  For after all, even in Gopher Prairie or in Indianapolis, Indiana, boys go swimming in the creeks on summer afternoons, shadows play at evening on factory walls, old men dig angleworms and go fishing together, love comes to at least a few men and women, and everything else failing, the baseball club comes from a neighboring town and Tom Robinson gets a home run. That’s something. There is an outlook on life across which even the cry of a child, choked to death by its own mother, would be something. Life in our American towns and cities is barren enough and there are enough people saying that with the growth of industrialism it has become continually more and more ugly, but Mr. Paul Rosenfeld and Mr. Ring Lardner apparently do not find it altogether barren and ugly. For them and for a growing number of men and women in America there is something like a dawn that Mr. Lewis has apparently sensed but little, for there is so little sense of it in the texture of his prose. Reading Mr. Sinclair Lewis, one comes inevitably to the conclusion that here is a man writing who, wanting passionately to love the life about him, cannot bring himself to do so, and who, wanting perhaps to see beauty descend upon our lives like a rainstorm, has become blind to the minor beauties our lives hold.

  And is it not just this sense of dreary spiritual death in the man’s work that is making it so widely read? To one who is himself afraid to live there is, I am sure, a kind of joy in seeing other men as dead. In my own feeling for the man from whose pen has come all of this prose over which there are so few lights and shades, I have come at last to sense, most of all, the man fighting terrifically and ineffectually for a thing about which he really does care. There is a kind of fighter living inside Mr. Sinclair Lewis and there is, even in this dull, unlighted prose of his, a kind of dawn coming. In the dreary ocean of this prose, islands begin to appear. In Babbitt there are moments when the people of whom he writes, with such amazing attention to the outer details of lives, begin to think and feel a little, and with the coming of life into his people a kind of nervous, hurried beauty and life flits, like a lantern carried by a night watchman past the window of a factory as one stands waiting and watching in a grim street on a night of December.

  NOTES OUT OF A MAN’S LIFE

  NOTE 1

  THIS BOOK HAS become my confessional, Formerly I tried in another book — unpublished — to make what I called a Testament.

  I tried to do it in song but the song broke.

  The making of a testament, or rather a confession, is a kind of relief.

  When I go into a church I find myself unable to kneel before a priest or a preacher. As the need of a symbol has been strong in me I have tried other things. I have been in turn a river worshiper, a moon and sun worshiper, a mountain worshiper. Often I have followed a child through the streets.

  Once when I had been drunk and had been with a so-called fallen woman I did something that nearly led to my arrest.

  Nearly all physically strong men have periods of pure flesh worship. I had been in such a period and had picked up a woman in the streets.

  She did not understand my mood. Why should she understand? This was in Chicago. We went into a house and I stayed there all night. I tried to talk with her, to tell her something of my young man’s impulses, of the confusion in me that had led me to her but she could not understand. She had been cheated, buffeted, beaten.

  All prostitutes are morons. The clever, alive prostitute of fiction does not exist in fact. Writers are prone to be sentimental about prostitution because they spend so much of their own lives walking close to the line of their own kind of prostitution.

  When I had been with the woman all night I left in the early morning. The sun was shining brightly. In the streets children were playing.

  That day I got drunk and in the afternoon went into a park. Seeing a child with its mother I followed.

  At last I ran to the child and falling on my knees tried to apologize.

  It was not understood. People thought me insane. Kneeling before the child I muttered a few words about life, the sources of life and how they were befouled.

  The mother, being frightened, screamed — the child stared at me.

  I escaped through bushes and running a long way got into a street car.

  I had to laugh at myself and you will laugh.

  It doesn’t bother me — not now.

  At last after seeking many confessionals I came to paper. I am humble before these sheets. They are clean.

  I write my testament upon them. It is all I can do.

  NOTE 2

  Many men I know who are without leisure constantly cry out for it, not knowing the responsibilities of leisure. Responsibilities to whom? To oneself, alas.

  How many men have told me they wanted leisure to write poetry.

  Great God!

  The amount of physical labor needed to make a man widely known as a poet of merit is infinitesimal. All the actual physical labor of writing done by the greatest and most profound of poets could be done by any average newspaper man during any average month of work.

  Leisure achieved ends in what? “I have this time on my hands now. What shall I do with it?”

  “I shall walk about, seeing men at work, talking to men.”

  “But why am I not at work?”

  To the man of sensibilities there is too much time left to think of self.

  I myself go about playing at life. I am a young boy, a vagrant picked up by the police.

  I am in a cell with drunken negro women, with white women, prostitutes, thieves.

  Now I am standing before a judge. “What excuse have you for being alive, for cluttering the streets?”

  “But occasionally I tell tales, have them printed in books.”

  “What of that? Does not every one tell tales? Is it an excuse for not being at work?”

  “Men live by carving wood, pounding iron, steering ships, plowing the ground, building houses. When they are not so employed they sometimes sing, tell tales.”

  “But I am a judge and it is my business to pass judgment. I pronounce you a guilty man.”

  “Oh judge, you are quite right. I am a vagrant, a no-account.

  “But you see, judge, there are no houses being built. Men do not carve wood, shape iron, steer ships. All that is at an end. It is done by radio now.”

  The judge is as puzzled by life as I am. He also is a vagrant. Something has got out of the hands of men.

  For ages now men have cried out for leisure. One of these days the impatient gods will punish men by giving it to them.

  NOTE 3

  A book or story, when you are writing it, must get to the place where reading what you have already written excites you to write more.

  If you come to a day when you cannot write, do not try. If you force yourself what you write at such times will poison all the future pages. If you do write at such times throw all away.

  Every writer should say to himself every morning, “I do not have to write. I can be a tramp.”

  When a story gets to the place where reading over what you have written excites you to write more it has done what I call “come alive.”

  It will go now if you let it. Be patient. Go talk to men. Go fishing or swimming. When your fingers itch run home to your desk and write again.

  I write down rules like this because I break them so often and when I do break them I feel such a fool.

  NOTE 4

  A When I am not writing all my instincts lead me to go where men are working with their hands. Formerly I also worked with my hands, touched to some purpose wood, iron, brass, brick, stone, the earth. That one should get money by writing, painting, making music is in some way false.

  I love rich delicate fabrics and carpets, love to touch such things with my fingers but why should I possess them?

  As an outcast in the world of men, working my way from place to place, I was uncomfortable but happy.

  In the south, where I now live, it seems to me the negroes, who do all the hard work, are the sweetest people.

  I c
annot approach the negro, cannot speak intimately with him. Such an attempt on my part would arouse the suspicions of both whites and blacks.

  I stand aside, make myself as much as I can a part of the wharves, the streets, the fields where these men and women work.

  Others feel as I feel. A southern woman writer, of what is called a distinguished family down here, whispered to me across a dinner table. “What, if you were not yourself, would you like to be?” I had asked her, making conversation.

  “Above all things I should like to be a negro woman,” she said.

  I talked to a southern man, the son of a planter. For a long time he had been at work on a novel. It was smart and clever. That was not what he wanted it to be. “If there is ever an art produced in the American south it must come from the negro,” he said.

  I dress in as fine linen as I can afford, wear bright ties, loud socks, carry a cane. The negroes on the docks among whom I spend so much of my time like me so. I can see the looks of approval pass from eye to eye. We have something in common. Together we love bright gaudy colors, food, the earth, the sky, the river. We love song and laughter, night, drink, and lust.

  NOTE 5

  It is hopeless for me to dream of becoming an aristocrat. When I have much money in my pockets I feel like apologizing to every man and woman I meet. The wealthy never make me really envious.

  I remember a time spent in the home of a rich man. That was just after I had done what is called “raising myself from the ranks of labor.”

  I had been reading George Moore, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, — had decided I would devote myself to becoming delicate-minded, an aristocrat.

  I was in the house of the rich man and it was evening. I remember his wife’s dress, how lovely it was. I kept wanting to touch it. She had full lips, eyes like half faded flowers seen along paths in the forest on hot summer days and long slender fingers on which were finely wrought rings.

  We talked of books. The woman had a kind of admiration for me because I had written books that had been published. How foolish of her. Her husband had shrewd hard eyes and was a collector of first editions.

  After we had dined several people came in and there was more talk. I talked foolishly, trying to appear clever. At last the evening passed and I was shown to a room. I had never slept in such a room before. Sleep would not come.

  I thought of the woman’s eyes, of her husband’s eyes. After sitting for a long time by a window I got up and ran about the room touching everything with my fingers.

  I touched the bed hangings, the chairs, the carpet, the window curtains. Many single things in the room had cost more money than I had been able to earn by years of labor with my hands.

  That did not matter. I did not feel at home, did not feel comfortable. When all the house was asleep I tiptoed into a hallway. A servant caught me creeping along the hallway. I stammered some poor excuse, that I wanted to go into the grounds for a walk.

  Outside the grounds were lovely but there was a high iron fence and I was still uncomfortable. I climbed the fence and just as I reached the top looked back toward the house. Through a window I saw the woman standing in her night dress in a room. She was weeping. It was an unhappy household. Had that driven me away?

  Leaping down from the fence I walked for a long way in a dusty road. I had left my bag with my few belongings. Beside the road was a railroad and in a creek some men were fishing. They had set out night lines and had built a fire. They were drinking and as I passed broke out into a song. It was one o’clock.

  That is all. Nothing else happened. I got on a train and went to another town where I slept in a workingman’s hotel. The furniture was ugly and I did not like that but I had got back among people to whom I belonged.

  I belong to men who work with their hands, to negroes, to poor women — the wives of workers, heavy with child, with work-weary faces. Often I think them more lovely than any aristocrat, any man or woman of leisure I have ever seen. That they do not understand what I feel and do not know their own beauty when it flashes forth does not matter. I belong to them whether they will have me or not.

  As to the rich man and his wife, I met them once in another house and they acted strangely. The man was angry and the woman embarrassed. She had still her own kind of impersonal beauty but it did not touch me. We were left alone together for a moment and she wanted to speak of what happened. “You know how to be cruel, how to punish people,” she said suddenly, but I thought she had missed the point and I did not answer.

  A NOTE ON REALISM

  THERE is something very confusing to both readers and writers about the notion of realism in fiction. As generally understood it is akin to what is called “representation” in painting. The fact is before you and you put it down, adding a high spot here and there, to be sure. No man can quite make himself a camera. Even the most realistic worker pays some tribute to what is called “art.” Where does representation end and art begin? The location of the line is often as confusing to practicing artists as it is to the public.

  Recently a young writer came to talk with me about our mutual craft. He spoke with enthusiastic admiration of a certain book — very popular a year or two ago. “It is the very life. So closely observed. It is the sort of thing I should like to do. I should like to bring life itself within the pages of a book. If I could do that I would be happy.”

  I wondered. The book in question had only seemed to me good in spots and the spots had been far apart. There was too much dependence upon the notebook. The writer had seemed to me to have very little to give out of himself. What had happened, I thought, was that the writer of the book had confused the life of reality with the life of the fancy. Easy enough to get a thrill out of people with reality. A man struck by an automobile, a child falling out at the window of a city office building. Such things stir the emotions. No one, however, confuses them with art.

  This confusion of the life of the imagination with the life of reality is a trap into which most of our critics seem to me to fall about a dozen times each year. Do the trick over and over and in they tumble. “It is life,” they say. “Another great artist has been discovered.”

  What never seems to come quite clear is the simple fact that art is art. It is not life.

  The life of the imagination will always remain separated from the life of reality. It feeds upon the life of reality, but it is not that life — cannot be. Mr. John Marin painting Brooklyn Bridge, Henry Fielding writing Tom Jones, are not trying in the novel and the painting to give us reality. They are striving for a realization in art of something out of their own imaginative experiences, fed to be sure upon the life immediately about. A quite different matter from making an actual picture of what they see before them.

  And here arises a confusion. For some reason — I myself have never exactly understood very clearly — the imagination must constantly feed upon reality or starve. Separate yourself too much from life and you may at moments be a lyrical poet, but you are not an artist. Something within dries up, starves for the want of food. Upon the fact in nature the imagination must constantly feed in order that the imaginative life remain significant. The workman who lets his imagination drift off into some experience altogether disconnected with reality, the attempt of the American to depict life in Europe, the New Englander writing of cowboy life — all that sort of thing — in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred ends in the work of such a man becoming at once full of holes and bad spots. The intelligent reader, tricked often enough by the technical skill displayed in hiding the holes, never in the end accepts it as good work. The imagination of the workman has become confused. He has had to depend altogether upon tricks. The whole job is a fake.

  The difficulty, I fancy, is that so few workmen in the arts will accept their own limitations. It is only when the limitation is fully accepted that it ceases to be a limitation. Such men scold at the life immediately about. “It’s too dull and commonplace to make good material,” they declare. Off they sail in fancy to
the South Seas, to Africa, to China. What they cannot realize is their own dullness. Life is never dull except to the dull.

  The writer who sets himself down to write a tale has undertaken something. He has undertaken to conduct his readers on a trip through the world of his fancy. If he is a novelist his imaginative world is filled with people and events. If he have any sense of decency as a workman he can no more tell lies about his imagined people, fake them, than he can sell out real people in real life. The thing is constantly done but no man I have ever met, having done such a trick, has felt very clean about the matter afterward.

  On the other hand, when the writer is rather intensely true to the people of his imaginative world, when he has set them down truly, when he does not fake, another confusion arises. Being square with your people in the imaginative world does not mean lifting them over into life, into reality. There is a very subtle distinction to be made and upon the writer’s ability to make this distinction will in the long run depend his standing as a workman.

  Having lifted the reader out of the reality of daily life it is entirely possible for the writer to do his job so well that the imaginative life becomes to the reader for the time real life. Little real touches are added. The people of the town — that never existed except in the fancy — eat food, live in houses, suffer, have moments of happiness and die. To the writer, as he works, they are very real. The imaginative world in which he is for the time living has become for him more alive than the world of reality ever can become. His very sincerity confuses. Being unversed in the matter of making the delicate distinction, that the writer himself sometimes has such a hard time making, they call him a realist. The notion shocks him. “The deuce, I am nothing of the kind,” he says. “But such a thing could not have happened in a Vermont town.”