Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  I have been walking in the streets of New York and thinking of my friend Alfred Stieglitz and suddenly he no longer stands alone. Certain other figures appear and in them I understand in him certain impulses I have not always understood. I have myself come into the years of manhood in an age of Ford factories, and often enough I have run with the pack. Too often in my own work I have not been patient enough. I have stopped half way, have not gone all the way. Shame comes to me and suddenly memories appear. I remember that when I was a lad in Ohio there were in my town certain fine old workmen come down into our new age out of an older time. In fancy now I see again two such men and hear them speaking of their work as they stand idling in the evening before one of the stores of my town. The lad, who was myself, is fascinated by their talk and stands behind them, listening. And now suddenly one of the workmen has remembered something he wants to explain to his fellow. They are both wagonmakers and each, in his young manhood, has served his long years of apprenticeship and has gone on his workman’s journey. The workman who is talking is trying to explain to his fellow how, in a certain shop where he once worked in the state of Vermont, they made a wagon felloe.

  “You come on,” he says, and the two old men go away together along the street in the dusk of a summer evening with a boy tagging at their heels. How sharply their figures remain in my mind, the two old lovers filled with a man’s love, we moderns have almost forgotten. And now they have gone to one of the two wagon shops in the town and one of them has lighted a lamp and has opened his chest of tools. How affectionately he handles them and how bright and clean and sharp the tools are. He begins fitting two pieces of wood together. “At that place I was telling you about we did it like this. Afterward I found out a quicker way but I believe the harder way is the best. It makes a better joint, stands up better in all kinds of weather; that’s what I mean,” the old workman says — and how sharply his figure comes back to me now as I think of Alfred Stieglitz, the prophet of the old workmen who by the intensity of his love of tools and materials has made himself such an outstanding American artist.

  There is another man in my mind of the Stieglitz sort. He lives now at Cleveland, Ohio, where he runs a book store, but some twenty years ago he came to America from Germany as a workman, as a church organ builder. On an evening last summer he walked and talked with me and as he walked and talked his mind went back to his boyhood in a German town. He spoke of the workmen in his father’s shop and their treatment of him when he was a lad, learning his trade. When he had grown careless the workman, whose assistant he was, did not report the matter to the superintendent but took the blame on himself. Then the old workman and the boy looked into each others’ eyes. “I didn’t cut up any more monkey-shines after that,” said the bookseller of Cleveland.

  On Sundays, when he was a lad, my friend at Cleveland walked in the state forest with his father. Other workmen also came with their sons. One of them went to touch one of the trees with his fingers. Soon now that particular tree would be offered for sale and already the workman had put his hand on his materials. He intended to be on hand and to be a bidder when that particular tree was offered for sale. “After my father died,” my friend at Cleveland said, “I went to a sale in the forest and bought a tree just because I had once seen my father look long and hungrily at it and because I knew he would want me to get my hands on it and work it up.”

  And this man of Cleveland came to America to be a foreman in one of our church organ factories. He didn’t last long. He quit because they used nails instead of wooden pegs in the factory where he was employed. The owner of the factory tried to reason with him but he quit. “Here you have to do things in a hurry, in the American way. What’s the difference? No one knows. They can’t tell the difference.”

  But my friend quit. The fact that nails were used instead of wooden pegs seemed to him a quite sufficient explanation of his inability to stay. He thought the nails affected, in a quite poisonous way, the tone of the instruments. He seemed to care about that. “Every time I drove one of the nails it hurt my arm,” he said, and there was something that hurt him too when he heard the other workmen driving the nails. The sound hurt him. He winced when he spoke of it and quite suddenly one saw that the sound of the nails being driven into the materials he loved was to him what the sound of the nails being driven into the cross of Christ might have meant in the ears of a primitive Christian.

  It is just the spirit of these men that has always been alive and has always been kept alive in the person of Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer. In a peculiar way he has made himself an outstanding figure in the lives of innumerable American artists. In the beginning of this article I said that something must have happened to him long ago. He saw something we others haven’t often seen. To me and to many other men I know his figure has been sharply defined, and as the years pass is becoming more and more sharply defined, as the type of the old workman whose love of his tools and his materials has been so passionate that he has emerged out of the workman to become the artist.

  And perhaps that he is a photographer is significant too. It may well be the most significant thing of all. For has he not fought all of his life to make machinery the tool and not the master of man? Surely Alfred Stieglitz has seen a vision we may all some day see more and more clearly because of the fight he has made.

  NOTES OUT OF A MAN’S LIFE

  NOTE 11

  NEW ORLEANS WILL some day be again one of the greatest American cities, perhaps as great as New York. Goods run down-hill from the whole Mississippi Valley to New Orleans. It is a great funnel. Down the long watery groove made by the Mississippi the goods slip into the hold of ships. To the east and west of the great Valley all goods must be lifted over mountains.

  The railroads killed the river. Now the automobile, the aeroplane and the river may crush the power of the railroads. The aeroplane will take care of passengers for long hauls, the automobiles and trucks will handle local traffic, heavy slow-moving freights will again take to the river.

  Coal for export, iron, corn, wheat, cotton. Incoming freights — coffee, sugar, hemp — in time lumber — will go up river.

  The Mississippi will live again but men will still hunger for the old days.

  For song mostly. The negroes are giving up singing. In the old days all negro laborers sang. Now they only sing in the back country where the modern age with its perverted hunger for an efficiency that is not efficient has not yet penetrated.

  NOTE 12 —

  I awake. I am depressed. My nerves have gone back on me. I sleep in the room where I work, liking to be near books, my desk, the smell of ink.

  When I awake I know I cannot work but I arise hopefully. There is a pile of white sheets that I have covered so that dust does not settle on them.

  Now I brush the cloth of my desk, rearrange my books and papers.

  I shall not write today. My nerves are on edge. I am incapable of sustained thought or feeling. I think perhaps I am getting old, that my capacity for sustained work is gone forever. The thought sends a shudder through my frame. I shall walk about today seeing strong well men everywhere. I want to kill some man, take from him his youth and strength and go gayly on my way.

  There is a strong man who thinks he wants fame. He would give anything for fame. Well I have had a little of that. He may have mine. Let’s trade.

  I want only strength to sit here at my desk all day. I want the words and sentences to march across the sheets. Let someone else sign all I do. If any fame is to come to me let someone else have it.

  I want to work. It is my life. I want to gather together the thousand impressions of life that have come to me.

  I want to put meaning and music into prose.

  But I shall not be able to work today. My nerves are shattered.

  I must go out, flee from this desk, go walk in the streets.

  I put on my clothes and go away. I feel like weeping when the day comes wherein I cannot work.

  NOTE 13

>   Popular fictionists are born, not made. You have to be that way. What is acquired is a stopping place. People want something finite, something definite. If there is a certain limitation to the searchings of your own mind you are all right.

  You believe for example that if labor could come into power the world would be a better place to live in. The obvious fact that the average man of labor has in him a certain sweetness just because he is not in a position of power must be overlooked. You must get men and women as definite things, working within definite limits.

  Most popular novelists have the newspaper headline point of view. Let a woman be murdered and she becomes automatically beautiful.

  The cowboy is brave, the thief bold and dangerous.

  You work always within a limited circle.

  The thing can’t be done effectively unless you are born that way. Nothing is more pitiful than the sight of a man trying to be popular who is not born to it.

  NOTE 14

  Since I have been a boy there has been one thing from which I have never been able to escape. Money — the desire for money — the need of money has always been hurtful to me and to all the men and women I have known.

  Often I walk about looking at others. There is a rich man passes me on the street. I follow him to his house. He goes through a gate into a wide garden. Would I enjoy life in such a garden — in such a house?

  Some men inherit money and it is handled for them by some agent. The agent however must needs be quick, alert, on guard.

  I am always being caught οff-guard. When I have accumulated a little money — a few thousand dollars — someone comes and takes it.

  Then I am poor again and am worried. I cannot manage things, cannot get things clear. When I sit down to work there comes a man to collect a bill and I have no money to pay.

  When I want peace I go among the poor. They are poor because they are not clever, cannot get the best of me or anyone.

  It is because life is so difficult we come in the end to welcome death.

  It is not only that others get the best of us about money but in turn we get the best of others. All are on guard.

  When I have the best of another I feel cheaper than when he has the best of me.

  NOTE 15

  I have a letter from a woman. I cannot answer it. She has written a book which I have read. She was born rich, never in her life earned money. When she had got to a certain age she began adventuring. At once she went to Europe and lived there most of her life. A business man in America must have handled her affairs.

  When I saw the woman in the flesh we had something for each other. Perhaps she felt in me something of the soil. I remember one evening sitting in a room with her. I felt her, as I might have felt some warm exotic plant.

  When she wrote books however all became lost. The people of her books moved about like things in the air. No one in her books had any roots in the soil. I do not like ugliness but to me the soil, the houses in which poor people live, the overalls of workers, the brown strong gnarled hands of workers are not ugly.

  Often these things have for me a strange haunting and unforgettable beauty that cannot be matched in the most delicate fabrics, in the most elegant houses.

  NOTE 16

  I do not think of God. I think of the things outside my window — the life on sidewalks, in buildings. Everything changes. Soon there will be a new scene and I will not be sitting here writing. Shortly thereafter the last faint fragrance of me will have been blown away.

  That is rather wonderful. If any fragrance of me remained there would be a stench too. I have not achieved clearness often. In my work I have seldom come quite clear.

  WHEN THE WRITER TALKS

  SUCH A STRANGE place to be in. I am in a huge western State university. It is night. I have been lecturing on Modern American Writing before a thousand young men and women. What an absurd thing to try to do. There I have been standing, before all these young men and women, talking and talking. How silly! I did it for money. I have been broke and have been lecturing to get some money into my pockets. I would like so well the things money buys — cigarettes, horses, warm clothes, a fine house to live in. I would so like to have a great deal of money. Why does not someone who has ten or fifteen million dollars give me a million, or a half million, anyway? If you meet a man bothered by his money tell him about me. I would like to wear clothes made of delicate fabrics, gay, brightly-colored neckties, flashing vests, plaid socks. I would like a string of race horses, a farm, a yacht. There is in me something that likes to strut before men, make a splash of color in the street where I walk. I do not want the women to wear all of the bright gay things. The little city girl, who works in a factory or in an office and spends all of her money to buy clothing she can ill afford, has won my heart. She is my sister. Long ago, in some old European corner, she and I belonged to the same tribe.

  And so I am lecturing to get money to buy the necessities of life and a few gay things, not necessary, for myself, for my wife, for my sons.

  But what an odd experience, this lecturing. There are a thousand young men and women in the hall where I have been speaking. What do they think of me, standing up there and trying to say bright wise things to them? As I talked I had an idea. I shall propose it to my lecture manager. It is inconceivable to me that anyone should want to come to hear any man lecture. Perhaps students are bullied into it. Husbands are brought by wives who are after culture and who have the erroneous notion that I am cultured. I shall propose to my manager a scheme. People may hear me lecture for 25 cents but shall be charged $1 for the privilege of staying away. Millions will want to stay away. We shall both grow rich like a prize fighter and his manager. I have such brilliant business ideas.

  The lecturing excites me. When I come out on the platform something happens. There is an actor sleeping in me and now he is awake. I stand, pause for effect, I become for the moment something I have never been before, walk in a new way, look at people out of new eyes. The world of the actor opens before me. What a strange world it is. Now this being, that is myself, is no longer myself. My body, my voice, my mind are instruments I have to learn to play. I do it badly enough.

  I have lectured in the large hall and most of the people who have heard me have gone away. There are, however, twenty or thirty young men and women who have got me into a smaller room and are asking me questions.

  Lord God of the mountains and valleys preserve me! Every question is so fundamental. These people now firing questions at me want to become writers in their turn. They are asking me how to do it and I am trying to answer. My bitterest enemy would be glad if he could see me now, if he knew how silly and helpless I feel inside myself. Had I never any modesty? What has become of it? I am actually trying to answer the questions. I think of Ben and Paul and Joe — wits all of them. In fancy I can see Ben giving an imitation of me as a lecturer. Thank Heavens, they are not here!

  Why is money so hard to come by? There is so much of it about. If you see the man with the superfluous million do remember my name. It may be he is worried about his income tax. Tell him I shall not worry.

  The young men and women are asking me questions that — if I could answer them at all — it would take a long book to answer. If I could answer them at all how wise I should be.

  Everything that has to be so definitely said so falls to pieces when said. It becomes at once half a lie. There is a kind of insult in answering off-hand questions that apparently mean so much to the one who asks. If anyone actually took my answers seriously or remembered them it would be terrible.

  Poets I fancy come off better at this business. They go about reading their poetry. Poetry read, and when the poet has a good voice, is a way of singing. My father was once in the show business and did a song and dance. What rotten luck that I can neither sing nor dance.

  I dare say actors come off all right. Someone else has written the lines they speak. An actor when he does not make a hit can always blame the play. Playwrights should never bec
ome actors and the actor should never write a line. The alibi is one of the prime necessities of life.

  There is too much pretense in this standing up, as I am doing now, and pretending to think quickly and accurately before a lot of people. How do I know I can think at all — even in a quiet place and when I am alone? Why, I am a story-teller, not a thinker.

  The questioners are very insistent. They keep at me. I fire off answers. Something inside me is beginning to grow tired. In a moment I shall fly off the handle. I will give smart impertinent answers perhaps to the most sensitive of all these people.

  When I was myself a young writer I once began asking questions of another and older writer and he answered me rudely, with a vulgar fling of his hand, dismissing me. It was an experience I never forgot. The questions I had asked were of such deep importance to me — just at that time in my life.

  I wanted to know how to have my cake and eat it, how to write just what I pleased and yet get well paid. You see what an important question that may be to a young writer but I cannot answer it. A whole lifetime has not taught me the answer.

  That is only one of the questions now being flung at me. I feel like an animal pursued by enemies. Help, I am getting groggy. Why do so many people want to be writers anyway? There is a young man in the crowd who has just the look in his eye people always have when they are about to ask an impossible question. If he asks it I shall fling my watch at his head.

  Someone rescues me. He is a professor in the

  WRITER college and has perhaps seen the tired puzzled look in my eyes. Or perhaps he is one of the men responsible for getting me to make that particular speech and is afraid — as I am myself — that in another moment I shall betray my ignorance of all the so deadly important things I am supposed to know about and that I do not know.