BOO KS
691
oirs on Willa Cather and others. The '20s, which only a few years ago
felt so near, are gradually slipping back into that vault called American
Literature, where the valuables are kept. The publication of letters is
a compliment which suggests the writer is worth a kind of scrutiny not
granted every author. As these writers begin to take on that far-away,
mysterious, "historical" glaze, publications about them are of consider–
able importance; a certain ice of opinion, fact and fancy is already
spreading over their images. And we cannot assume that eventually all
letters, every scrap of interesting material will be published; what is
more likely is that the selections, the biography, as we have them now
will stand for a time.
It is, then, interesting that the first volume (who knows
if
there
will be another?) of Sinclair Lewis' letters
1
should be entirely given
over to communications he wrote and
received
from his publishers. In–
deed, this correspondence is rather good fun, dealing as it does with the
finagling, financing and advertising which, though uncommonly exposed
to this extent, are in some way a part of literary history, as the billboard
is a sort of cousin to the performance. We see Lewis composing a fan
letter to be sent by his publishers to all the best writers of his day on
the subject of that remarkable book
Main Street;
and wondering if per–
haps something special isn't needed for the elegant eye and heart of
Edith Wharton. This was all a part of the game, but we may doubt
Lewis, much as he liked to appear in print, would have been delighted
by this whole volume of business testimony.
Sherwood Anderson's letters are unhappily selected for quite the
opposite reason. They are often bleak and dull to read because they are
chosen upon a principle of reckless high-mindedness, a remorseless track–
ing of Anderson the writer, the artist, the thinker, at the expense of biog–
raphy. It is felt Anderson the advertising man, Anderson before forty,
was, though alive, a mute statistic; and even after he has been allowed
existence at forty only his literary life is permitted. But with Anderson,
"the man" is overwhelmingly important. He appears to have been
splintered, repressed, uncertain in an exceptional way; in a very real
sense his literary equipment began and ended with this painful state of
being. Though he could sometimes grow mannered and arty, he is not
particularly vivid if you isolate him as "an artist." It is as
a case
that
he is unfailingly interesting, this peculiar rising and waning star, this
man who brought to literature almost nothing except his own lacerated
feelings. This latter circumstance, and not his Flaubertian dedication, is
what makes us think of him sometimes as a typical American writer.
1 From Main Street to Stockholm.
Harcourt, Brace. $5.00.
