SHERWOOD ANDERSON
he did succeed in formulating an organized-and
organizing-percep–
tion of the nature of that chaos, which then became the sustaining prin–
ciple of his work. But it is just as likely that Anderson's own vision was as
chaotic as modern life; that he was the captive of an experience he could
not aesthetically control. For what distinguishes the great writers of our
time is not that they see modern life as chaos (any fool knows
that)
but that they impose on it an image of order. These ordering images
need not be socially or morally usable; but they must be aesthetically
coherent.
It is precisely this kind of structure that is so conspicuously absent
in Anderson's work. In one of his better novels
Poor White,
he describes
his hero in what might be called the typically Andersonian
gesture of
initiation:
Hugh was boyishly eager to get on his way and to become at oncr a part
of the life in a new place. The gradual awakening of his mind had given him
courage, and he thought of himself as armed and ready for association with
men. He wanted to become fully acquainted with and
be
the fri end of people
whose lives were beautifully lived and who were themselves beautiful and full of
significance.
All of Anderson's novels and stories begin with such large gestures
towards liberation suggesting that the character will emerge into a world
of nobler dimensions and, more important, that Anderson will liberate
him from the constrictions of the gesture itself. The occasions for this im–
mensely grand, if rather vague, revelation arise in book after book:
Hugh McVey, poor white, will erupt fr?m stupor into consciousness;
Bruce Dudley will reach the heart of his innerness by listening to the
dark laughter of Negroes; Beaut McGregor will fulfill himself by joining
in the ecstasy of marching men; and George Willard, in the ultimate
act of filial rupture, will leave .Winesburg. Each book refondles the
central image of Anderson's work: the child bursting from the womb,
hungering for food and air, clutching for things to feel and swallow.
The popular notion that Anderson was obsessed with sex is of course
false; he was actually obsessed with birth. His life and work are a series
of never quite negotiated births: he sheds being after being, fictional
character after character in the hope of finding his unavailable self. For
such a writer sex, copulation ...
two
...
are inaccessible; his major
theme is the birth trauma, the burst from unbeing into consciousness.
But that is all. Consciousness soon turns out to be as black and
homeless as unbeing; birth a mere incidence of endless quest. The
door, one of Anderson's most persistent symbols, opens to an emptiness
as dreadful as that on which it closed; after a while, all that matters
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