University of Virginia Library

The Composition of Sherwood Anderson's Short Story "Not Sixteen" by Mary-Elisabeth Fowkes Tobin

Myths about Sherwood Anderson's life and art die hard. In recent years, critics have worked hard to dispel the notion that Anderson wrote little of value after the 1920s and that only Winesburg, Ohio and a handful of short stories are worthy of critical recognition.[1] Another notion that needs correction concerns Anderson's method of composition. Some critics have argued that Anderson wrote only when "in the mood" and was not interested in revising and reworking half-formed material.[2] Malcolm Cowley describes Anderson as "a writer who depended on inspiration. . . . He couldn't say to himself, 'I shall produce such and such an effect in a book of such and such a length.'"[3] James Schevill argues that "Anderson always had difficulty in disciplining himself to go over his work and improve poor passages."[4]

Though there is, indeed, some evidence suggesting that Anderson despaired about and neglected revision of some of his longer works, it is also clear that he revised his late short stories very carefully. A demonstration of the care with which Anderson wrote and revised one of these late short stories, "Not Sixteen," will help to dispel some of these old, and erroneous, assumptions about Anderson's method of composition and make clear that he was well in control of his artistry.

"Not Sixteen" was written between 1938 and 1940 in what many critics feel to be Anderson's "disastrous" late period.[5] The Newberry Library has the five versions of "Not Sixteen": a holograph manuscript, two typescripts and their respective carbon copies. The holograph manuscript, 24 pages long, written on yellow legal-sized paper in black ink, has few revisions.[6] It looks as though Anderson wrote the story rapidly in one sitting (the handwriting is larger and looser toward the end). The few corrections he made as he wrote involve words misformed, crossed out, and begun again. Anderson typed up his manuscript, again making very few corrections, and produced a typescript eight pages long (T.S.1) with a yellow carbon copy. Leaving the carbon

copy of this first typescript untouched (possibly for use to check against the emended verisons), Anderson did the bulk of his revisions on the ribbon typescript, making copious annotations, corrections, deletions, and additions. To make room for all the corrections he pasted another piece of paper to the right-hand side of each page. He then typed up this heavily revised first typescript, producing a second typescript (T.S.2) and its carbon copy.[7] While typing this second typescript, Anderson made very few changes so that the second typescript and its carbon are virtually the same as the revised first typescript except for one major difference: Anderson did not complete typing the story. He stopped typing on the middle of page 10 of the second typescript and did not complete at this time the process of transcribing the story as it appears in the holograph manuscript or in the revised first typescript. The second typescript (T.S.2) and its carbon differ from each other because it is on the carbon that Anderson later reshaped the ending, incorporating some of the T.S.1's revisions and adding to that ending a few new but quite significant phrases.

Many of the changes made in "Not Sixteen" (especially in T.S.1) suggest that Anderson consciously tried to write this story in the manner of his greatest work, Winesburg, Ohio. The plot of "Not Sixteen" is similar to the one used repeatedly in the Winesburg stories: a character is revealed in a state of emotional conflict, a history is then given of how the character developed the conflict, and finally the conflict is resolved in a moment of self-revelation. "Not Sixteen" is the story of how a boy, nineteen, deals with his sexual feelings toward a girl, much younger than he (not yet sixteen). We see enough of his past to know that he has a problem with self-control—he avoids the drudgery of going to school, spends his money carelessly, and, when confronted with the girl's refusal to marry him and/or to have sex with him, he has trouble coping with her determined resistance. But, because he is able to respect her strength and ability to wait until she is sixteen, he discovers in himself the ability to wait and to control himself. Pleased with himself, he says, "I have controlled myself. It is a fine thing." His triumph is only of the moment, however, for we know that he will not have enough control or determination to fulfill his fantasy of going to school and becoming a rich businessman.

The style of "Not Sixteen" is also similar to Winesburg, Ohio. The prose is direct with simple subject-verb sentence structure. Gone from Anderson's style is the impressionistic and jerky stream-of-consciousness which he affected in Dark Laughter, spoiling his straightforward and simple Midwestern prose. The various drafts show Anderson systematically removing the half-sentences and replacing them with plainer and simpler syntax. In the manuscript and first typescript there are many half-sentences joined either by a dash or by ellipses. In subsequent revisions the ellipses and dashes are deleted and replaced with a period or comma, and the half-sentences are turned into simple subject-verb sentences. In the first typescript, for example, this sentence appears: "I came down from her room one night . . . it was one of the moonlight nights . . . pretty cold . . . I'd been lying up there, on the blanket beside her

bed" (T.S.1 8.6-8). In contrast, in the revised typescript this sentence becomes: "He had come down from her room. It was one of the moonlight mights and cold. He'd been lying up there on the blanket by her bed" (T.S.2 10.19-20).[7]

Anderson also revised repetitive sentences that had given the prose a staccato quality, thus making the sentences simpler and smoother. The sentence which in the first typescript reads "I though about that. At night, in bed, I thought about it" (T.S.1 1.11) becomes in the second typescript, "He thought about it at night in bed" (T.S.2 1.15). He also took many single sentences which stood as separate paragraphs and joined them to make a free-flowing long paragraph. In the first typescript he wrote:

In the second typescript the following revision appears:

The care with which Anderson used punctuation to form the fluid prose style associated with Winesburg, Ohio is obscured in the two published versions of "Not Sixteen" by over-zealous editors who took it upon themselves to standardize Anderson's unusual punctuation.[8] Thus, many of the nuances of phrasing Anderson so painstakingly created in "Not Sixteen" are missing from the published texts. Published posthumously in 1946 in Tomorrow and in 1947 in Paul Rosenfeld's The Sherwood Anderson Reader, neither edition of "Not Sixteen" received authorial approval. The most frequent example of over-editing is the removal of commas which Anderson carefully and deliberately placed in a phrase to stop the reader's eye and to make him consider what he has just read. This type of editorial intervention occurs in the Rosenfeld edition approximately twenty-five times. For instance, Anderson wrote in the second typescript: "She kept on insisting on it. She whispered it in the barn, at night, after the day in the cornfield" (T.S.2 1.11-12). Anderson purposely placed the commas to break up the sentence, to make the reader pause so that the impression is one of her repeating and insisting on not being sixteen. The editor, misunderstanding the purpose of the comma, removed it: "She kept on insisting on it. She whispered it in the barn at night, after the day in the corn field" (p. 836). Again, Anderson wrote: "She was shy and, at the same time, bold" (T.S.2 6.8), which the editor changed to "She was shy, and at the same time bold" (p. 840). In deleting the comma, the editor shifted the cadence and removed the emphasis on her boldness, and thereby altered the original meaning of the text.

In another effort to control the effect of his prose and create a feeling of simplicity and spareness, Anderson deleted more than ten repetitive passages and revised passages that were ambiguous. The boy in the first typescript, for instance, says, "I told her how it was different with me and her" (T.S.1 6.16), and in the second typescript says, "I was afraid of her but I'm not of you" (T.S.2 8.29), a change that qualified the difference.

Aware that his audience might be offended by this story of sexual attraction, Anderson carefully removed the eight passages that could be construed as over-explicit. For instance, Anderson wrote in the second typescript: "When he began to plead with her, she knew what he meant. She wanted to" (T.S.2 2.2); he crossed out in hand "She wanted to." He also removed from the first transcript: "She told me that she had seen the animals, the hens and roosters, the pigs and sheep, doing it" (T.S.1 6.19).

These kinds of small but significant stylistic changes suggest that Anderson approached "Not Sixteen" with the care of a skilled craftsman and refute the idea that Anderson in his later years could not discipline himself to make revisions. Yet some critics have argued that Anderson could only make relatively small stylistic changes—"pencil work"—and was not able to make substantive improvements. Cowley writes: "He couldn't tighten the plot, delete a weak passage, sharpen the dialogue, give a twist to the ending; if he wanted to improve the story, he had to wait for a return of the mood that had produced it, then write it over from beginning to end" (p. 4). But if we look at the substantive changes Anderson made while revising "Not Sixteen," this assessment simply does not hold up.

The concern Anderson showed over the ending of "Not Sixteen" is indicative of the care he gave to revising this short story. In typing up the second typescript, Anderson did not quite make it to the end of the story, but stopped transcribing the revised first ribbon typescript at the bottom of page 7 when the boy is begging "Please, please."[9] Anderson then attached the last page of the heavily revised first typescript (page 8) to the carbon copy of the second typescript, crossing out the "8" and adding the notation "11". Not yet satisfied with this ending, Anderson wrote in a large, bold hand across the bottom of this page, "Self-control is a fine thing,'." Anderson produced his next version of this story by adding to the second typescript a retyped page 10 and 11, a transcript of page 8 of the revised first typescript, making no changes while typing. Finally, Anderson corrected this last version by hand, crossing out "Self-control" of the phrase "Self-control is a fine thing," and adding in its place, "'I have controlled myself. It," thus making, "'I have controlled myself. It is fine thing,' he thought." This last version bears his signature under the title of the story on page 1.

Perhaps the most significant revision Anderson made in writing "Not Sixteen" was in the revisions of the first ribbon typescript when he changed the narrative voice from the first person to the third, thus breaking away from the formula he used in most of his successful short stories. One explanation might lie in his desire to return to the effective narrative technique of Winesburg,

Ohio, where a sense of profound compassion and sympathy for the main characters of the story is achieved by the voice of an omniscient narrator.

In the manuscript and first typescript version of the story, the narrator, who tells of his encounter with Lillian, expresses himself in a crass manner and is incapable of understanding the significance of his own story. By changing the voice to an omniscient one, Anderson created a vantage point outside the boy and his adventure, thus investing the boy's story with a meaning and a sense of pathos far beyond the boy's ability to understand or to articulate.

By changing the narrative technique, Anderson also made this pathetic boy a more attractive character. The crass, bragging quality of the boy's character in the first version is largely gone, and his thoughts and feelings seem more complex. For instance, in the first typescript Anderson wrote: "I could have stood it" (T.S.1 8.12). In the second typescript this is changed to: "He thought he could have stood it" (T.S.2 10.25). The first typescript's "struggle with her until she gave up but I didn't" (T.S.1 7.17) in the second typescript becomes "struggle with her until she surrendered but, for some obscure reason, he didn't" (T.S.2 10.2-3). And in the first typescript Anderson wrote "I got quiet" (T.S.1 7.11) which is changed in the second typescript to "he got strangely quiet" (T.S.2 9.24).

When Anderson changed the story's narrative voice and created two different points of view—the boy's and the narrator's—he widened the separation between their perspectives by formalizing the narrator's language and by making the boy's more casual. For instance, on page 7 of the first typescript where the boy-narrator says "couldn't" and "made up" (T.S.1 7.20), the omniscient third person narrator says "could not" and "invented" (T.S.2 10.5). The boy's speech is revised from the first to the second typescript to contain more colloquialisms. "All right" (T.S.1 3.23) is changed to "O.K." (T.S.2 4.27) and "repair" (T.S.1 3.29) to "fix" (T.S.2 5.5); the boy in the first typescript says, "You marry some rich girl" (T.S.1 4.23); whereas, in the second typescript he says, "You marry, say now, a rich girl" (T.S.2 5.9).

This separation between the narrator and the boy enables the reader to view the boy from the outside and encourages the reader to judge the boy's thoughts and actions, and yet the tone, the incidents, and the boy's character create in the reader a feeling of sympathy. Anderson's artistry in his great stories lies in this ability to make the reader feel the distance between himself and the character, heightening the reader's sense of the character's isolation, while at the same time arousing in the reader sympathy and compassion for the pathetic and often grotesque character.

One of the ways Anderson makes the boy more sympathetic is by giving him some admirable character traits. Much that is likable in the boy was added when he revised the first typescript. Among the details Anderson added that enhance the boy's character are those describing his past, in particular, his experience as a swipe on the grand trotting circuit, as a factory worker in a Detroit automobile plant, and as a soldier in World War I. Added, for instance, is a paragraph of about fifty words that describes John's homecoming

from the war and his acute and bitter assessment of the town's attempt to make the returning soldiers into heroes. "There had been a banquet in the town hall. He and other soldiers had been called heroes again. . . . 'All this talk. It's bushwa,' he said. 'They are handing us the lousy bunk,' he said" (T.S.2 2.14-2.20). Added also are the brief descriptions of how the boy felt about his job "on the line" in automobile factory, how the "job had got me," and how he had "chucked" that job (T.S.2 2.21-2.25). Even John's belligerent observations on patriotism and factory work make him a sympathetic character, for his anger implies a sturdy individualism, a refusal to be victimized by the forces of imperialism and industrialization.

John's love of horses and horse-racing also make him attractive because the racing world represents an escape from the grind of alienating factory work and the drudgery of farm work. Anderson added a lengthy section to the first ribbon typescript that sharpens our sense of the boy's longing for an alternative to his dull life and exhausting work. Wondering what to do with his life, John considers returning to his old job in the horse-racing circuit. "It had been a temptation to John. He went to caress the horse. He ran his hand along his back and down his legs. 'He's a good one,' he thought. He thought of the drifting from town to town. In time he might become a driver. It was an old dream come back" (T.S.2 3.22-3.25). John recognizes that the appeal of life on the racing circuit is its escape from middle-class responsibilities; however, he rejects the life of a horseman for that very reason. In the course of his reflections he discovers that he has middle-class aspirations—to go to school and to get an education so that he may become a successful businessman and perhaps marry a rich woman. "If he did not get an education he would remain as he was—sunk, a worker, a man going through life with his feet in the mud. There was a ladder up which you climbed. Education was the thing that did it" (T.S.2 4.23-4.27).

With the addition of a few lines, Anderson deftly portrays the boy's struggle between his love of horses, racing, and track life and his more respectable goals. "He thought of nights, in strange towns, with the other swipes. There'd be drinking, there'd be some whoring done. He stood looking at the horse. 'No,' he thought. 'I got to cut that out.' 'Those race horsemen,' he thought, 'where do they ever get?'" (T.S.2 3.28-4.3). Trying to convince himself that with an education he could become a "prosperous man" (T.S.2 4.17) and then perhaps own horses and race them, he says to himself, "OK, . . . I'll give up what I want to be, a horseman" (T.S.2 4.28-29).

The theme of escape from alienating work, a theme which reoccurs in Anderson's work as well as in his accounts of his own life, is paired with a valorization of the imagination. Of all the added details the ones that perhaps make John the most attractive are those which give him a vivid imagination. In one scene he spins a fantasy for the young girl who loves to listen to him talk.

Despite the attractiveness of John's imagination and his resistance to accepting his life as it is and despite the sympathy Anderson so carefully arouses in the reader for this boy, we cannot fail to see that John in his effort to overcome the conditions of his life is pathetic. Anderson strives to make very clear by his several revisions of the ending that this boy lacks sustained self-control. John is pathetic because he has rather lack-luster middle-class aspirations which he will never realize since he lacks the self-discipline necessary for achievement. John's display of self-control at the end of the story is only of the moment and not a permanent feature of his personality. We know that he will drift from job to job, his mind filled with unrealizable and half-formed aspirations. Anderson's seemingly simple story is really complex, raising moral as well as political and social questions in his portrayal of a boy who recognizes that there is something wrong with his life and yet is unable to do anything about it.

The fact that "Not Sixteen" was very deliberately and carefully revised supports the contention that, despite what many critics have suggested, Sherwood Anderson, even after 1925, was a serious craftsman who was concerned about producing certain effects through his art. That Anderson returned to the mode of narration, form, and style of Winesburg, Ohio shows how in his later years he abandoned affected Joycean forms and began to come to terms with his own great contribution to American literature—the simple and direct Midwestern prose and a story that evokes a bittersweet yearning in the reader. In the middle and late 1930s Anderson produced some of his best literature. Besides the monumental Memoirs, he wrote great short stories—among them, "The Corn Planting," "Nobody Laughed," and "Not Sixteen." A careful study of the typescript states of "Not Sixteen" and the final intended version of the story shows Anderson to be a dedicated artist and craftsman even after 1925. Similar studies of the composition of some of Anderson's other late works should further corroborate this point.

Notes