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Notes
A major contributor to this notion of deterioration is Irving Howe, especially in a chapter "The Downward Curve" of Sherwood Anderson (1951). More recent criticism beginning in the mid-60s and culminating in 1976 with the celebration of Sherwood Anderson's centennial has tried to counter such negative assessments of Anderson's life and work. See, in particular, David D. Anderson's introduction to Sherwood Anderson: Dimensions of his Literary Art (1976), his introduction to Critical Essays on Sherwood Anderson (1981), his critical biography, Sherwood Anderson: An Introduction and Interpretation (1967), and his essay included in Hilbert Campbell's Centennial Studies (1976). Also see Walter B. Rideout's introduction to Sherwood Anderson: A Collection of Critical Essays (1974) and Ray Lewis White's The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson (1966).
William L. Phillips suggests that Anderson himself may have been partly responsible for promulgating this myth; Phillips quotes from Anderson's memoirs: "I am not one who can peck away at a story. It writes itself, as though it used me merely as a medium . . . . The short story is the result of a sudden passion. It is an idea grasped whole as one would pick an apple in an orchard. All of my own short stories have been written at one sitting." Phillips points out that Anderson's own accounts of his method of composition are often tinctured with "romantic subjectivity." Trying to determine how Anderson really wrote his stories, Phillips examines the manuscript of "Hands." He concludes that "the story, although first drafted in a 'sudden passion' was reworked several times." "There are . . . two hundred instances in which earlier words and phrases are deleted, changed, or added to, to provide the readings of final published version of the story." "Not Sixteen" like "Hands" seems to have been written in one sitting, but then, like "Hands," was heavily revised. See Phillips, "How Sherwood Anderson Wrote Winesburg, Ohio," American Literature 23 (1951), 7-30, especially pp. 19-21.
Malcolm Cowley ed., "Introduction," Winesburg, Ohio (1984), p. 3. This myth may be slow to die because Cowley's introduction to Winesburg, Ohio, published first in a 1960 Viking edition, is now attached to the popular Penguin edition which has undergone 14 printings in the past 10 years.
Paul Rosenfeld says "Not Sixteen" was written in 1940. See The Sherwood Anderson Reader (1947), p. 836. However, an earlier date can be deduced from material found in the Newberry Library folder which contains the holograph manuscript and typescripts of this story. A hand-written note, most likely Mrs. Eleanor Anderson's handwriting as it matches the word "finish" on one of the typescripts (see note 9 below), contains a few phrases describing the subject matter of the story ("Spanish Amer War," "What Chance (Horse)"), a reference to a letter from Chambrun, his literary agent, with the date of August, 1938, and a list of the magazines this story was sent to—Harpers, Mercury, Atlantic Monthly, College Humor, and For Men Only.
I gratefully acknowledge the Newberry Library's and the Sherwood Anderson Estate's permission to quote from this material.
I have chosen out of convenience to use the notation T.S. 1 to refer to the first typescript before he revised it as indicated by the carbon copy. T.S. 2 refers to the second ribbon typescript which is virtually the same as the heavily revised first ribbon typescript until page 10 of the new typescript.
Ray Lewis White comments on the fact that most editors and critics think that because Anderson had only one year of high school education, he did not understand comma placement. White writes: "The grand assumption—a false one—among all previous editors of Sherwood Anderson's manuscripts has been that the author knew nothing about the mechanical preparation of his writing for publication. The fact is that Anderson was by no means ignorant of paragraphing, punctuation, and grammar. . . . Sherwood Anderson knew how to write as he wanted his material read—slowly, carefully, each sentence building itself by progressive relative clauses and separate phrases into a full, often complicated structure and thought." (See his "Introduction," Memoirs [1969], p. xxxvi.) Editors confronted with Anderson's loose and apparently formless sentences often standardized and stiffened his free flowing prose and ignored his clearly marked episode spacing and paragraphing. White says that "one would not exaggerate in speculating that almost no essay or book by Anderson was published as the author intended in his manuscripts." (See White's "Introduction," Marching Men [1972], p. xxv.)
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