104
PARTISAN REVIEW
Sherwood Anderson:
I.
I am afraid I do not know what you mean by "usable past."
It
seems
to me that for the story teller everything is usable. I am afraid that my
difficulty in trying to answer these questions is that I spend little time
thinking of either the past or the future. It is my passionate desire to live
in the NOW. Mine is not a very critical mind. No, I do not believe that
Henry James's work is more relevant to American writing than Walt Whit·
man's. There is more of the earth in Whitman's. No matter what fool
things man does the earth remains.
2. This is also difficult for me to answer. I do not believe that I ever
think of an audience as a definite thing. · I often sing to myself in bath·
rooms. I tell myself stories, but just the same no man could go on working
in any of the arts without a response.
You ask whether the audience for serious American writing has grown
or contracted in the last ten years and frankly I do not know.
3. Yes, I do place value on criticism my own work has received. I have
been helped by criticism. I know well enough that good criticism is rare
but hasn't it always been rare. Of course the literary supplements have
been corrupted by advertising. For nearly fifteen years I had to spend my
own time as an advertising writer because I felt myself not strong enough
physically to stand day labor and couldn't make a living by my story tell·
ing. I sincerely believe that all advertising is corrupt.
4;
It
seems to me that the answer to this depends upon what you mean by
making a living. I have had to do all sorts of things to keep going hut
believe also that men working seriously in any of the arts have always had
a hard time making a living. Now that I have been writing for twenty or
twenty-five years enough does usually trickle in to keep me going.
It
has,
~owever,
been a long hard pull.
5. I am sure that all my writing has always been simply an expression of
my own feelings
1!-S
an individual. I have a notion that any writing done
for the purpose of propaganda is basically corrupt.
6. Like most writers I am really not a great reader. I did most of my
reading before I began writing. Now I am chiefly interested in the lives of
people immediately about me.
If
you are an American how can you help
emphasizing what you feel and see in the particular portion of America
immediately about you. My mind cannot go beyond that. From time to
time I have made efforts to think nationally and internationally but it has
a-lways seemed bunk to me.
