New Book of the Grotesques

Robert Dunne

Description

The first extensive treatment of Sherwood Anderson's work from a postmodern perspectiveSherwood Anderson, remembered chiefly as a writer of short stories about life in the Midwest at the turn of the century, was acknowledged as an innovator of the short story form and a major influence on such writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Valuable critical studies have examined his works from biographical, New Critical, or psychoanalytical approaches, but contemporary criticism on Anderson has been nearly nonexistent.A New Book of the Grotesques (the title is adapted from the first tale in Winesburg, Ohio) does not challenge previous studies of Anderson as much as it looks at Anderson's early fiction from contemporary interpretative methodologies, particularly from poststructuralist approaches. With this study, author Robert Dunne breaks new ground in Sherwood Anderson scholarship: his is the first sustained, full-length critical work on Anderson from a postmodern theoretical perspective and is the first study of a substantial body of Anderson's work to be published in more than thirty years.A New Book of the Grotesques is an important critical study that adds significantly to the field and to the understanding of Sherwood Anderson's fiction and the modernist period.

Sujets

• Idioma inglés
• USA
• English
• États-Unis
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612774268
• Langue: English

Extrait

A NEW BOOK OF THE GROTESQUES
ROBERT DUNNE
A New Book of the Grotesques
CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO SHERWOOD ANDERSON S EARLY FICTION
THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
KENT AND LONDON
2005 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2004025483
ISBN 0-87338-827-5
Manufactured in the United States of America
09 08 07 06 05
5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dunne, Robert, 1964-
A new book of the grotesques : contemporary approaches to Sherwood Anderson s early fiction / Robert Dunne.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87338-827-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941-Criticism and interpretation. 2. Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941. 3. City and town life in literature. 4. Grotesque in literature. 5. Ohio-In literature. I. Title.
PS 3501. N 4 Z 59 2005
813 .52-dc22
2004025483
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.
This one s for you, Mary
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
SHERWOOD ANDERSON S PLACE IN A MILLENNIAL CANON
1 Anderson s Grotesques
PERSONAL SUBJUGATION AND THE INDETERMINACY OF MEANING IN A HOSTILE WORLD
2 The Early Novels
ESTABLISHING THE HORIZON FOR WINESBURG
3 Getting the Thing Needed
THE MODERN GROTESQUE IN WINESBURG, OHIO
Epilogue
BEYOND THE GROTESQUES
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Long in my mind and slowly chipped away at for over a dozen years, this book is a fulfillment of my years of reading and thinking about Sherwood Anderson s works. Finally getting it all down on paper, however, would not have been possible without the sabbatical leave that Central Connecticut State University awarded me in 2000. Several other research grants, as well as time made available by Central for the project, are also gratefully acknowledged.
I wish also to thank the staff at Central s Elihu Burritt Library, especially at the interlibrary loan office, for their help and expeditious service.
Portions of this book had trial runs as conference papers at the annual meetings of the Modern Language Association, the Midwest Modern Language Association, the American Literature Association, and the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature; I would like to thank the many scholars of Sherwood Anderson who provided constructive comments.
Students in two graduate seminars, Sherwood Anderson and Some Cross-Currents of Modernism, and Narrative Duplicity in the American Short Story, as well as students in my course on Modern American Literature, provided many fine insights.
I want especially to thank Mary M. Bellor, whose timely help in the home-stretch allowed me to finish revising the manuscript, and the staff at the Kent State University Press for its expert guidance in preparing the manuscript for publication.
Finally, endless gratitude goes to my wife, Mary-partner, friend, fellow new parent, and longtime supporter of this project. Cheers, kid!
Introduction
SHERWOOD ANDERSON S PLACE IN A MILLENNIAL CANON
The time will come when ... there will be a renaissance and then my own work and my own life will be appreciated.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
During his lifetime, Herman Melville was well aware of the significance that a literary reputation had in his culture and also particularly aware of his own standing among his peers. In the midst of writing Moby-Dick he lamented his reputation to Nathaniel Hawthorne: Think of it! To go down to posterity is bad enough, any way; but to go down as a man who lived among the cannibals ! 1 Indeed, at the time of his death in 1891, if Melville was remembered at all it was for such works as Typee and Omoo , not for Moby-Dick or Benito Cereno ( Billy Budd not yet having been published).
Only after Melville was rediscovered in the 1920s did his standing in the American literary canon shift from a marginalized corner to a place of central importance, where it has comfortably rested to the present day. But his reputation has not remained static. Throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, each generation of critics has found a new Melville who merits his preeminent place in the canon. As Paul Lauter has ably shown, critics in the early 1920s embraced the Melville who shunned genteel American culture; 2 later in the 1920s other critics loved the Melville who was a forerunner of Freud; by World War II critics had discovered the fiercely democratic Melville; and in the last thirty years, Marxist critics, African Americanists, poststructuralists, and queer-studies critics have heralded their Melville. Melville s works have of course remained the same, yet the reasons for his secure standing in the canon have been as varied as the critical temperament of each generation that has examined him.
The history of Melville s critical reputation serves as an apt illustration for the motivation behind this book: locating Sherwood Anderson s place in an expanding American literary canon. Now, few would argue that Anderson s work merits as high a regard as Melville s. And perhaps fewer still should be concerned that Anderson is in danger of being omitted entirely by the practical guardians of the canon: writers of literary histories, editors of literature anthologies, and professors of college courses in American literature. In fact, Anderson enjoyed a fairly esteemed reputation during his lifetime (which Melville did not), one that has not abated since he died in 1941. But what concerns me here is that the variety of critical perspectives that has sustained Melville s reputation through the years is lacking for Anderson, especially now as today s generation of critics rediscovers and introduces more and more writers into the canon. Anderson s significance in Midwestern circles has always loomed large, but his position in the wider American literary canon has never been at the center, and in the current academic and critical climate, that position is in danger of becoming even more insignificant. 3 But need it be?
As noted, unlike Melville, Anderson gained entrance into the canon when he was still alive. As early as 1926, Doubleday s American literature anthology included several Winesburg tales: A Man of Ideas, Queer, and Drink. Even when Anderson s reputation was on the wane in the 1930s, another anthology, The American Mind (1937), lavished him with two sets of entries, including An Apology for Crudity in a section on literary criticism and I m a Fool under the section Recent Trends in Fiction. Two years later the austere Oxford Anthology of American Literature included one story, Death in the Woods. At the time of his death in 1941, the first anthology of American literature published by D. C. Heath also included I m a Fool. 4
Anderson s steady appearance in American literature anthologies continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Usually these collections limited his inclusion to a single short story: Death in the Woods in Scribner s anthology of 1949; Queer in another Heath anthology and arranged thematically under The Revolt of the Individual ; and I Want to Know Why in the first Norton anthology of American literature. 5
If we accept literature anthologies as a valid gauge of an author s place in the canon, then Anderson attained his most significant place in it as a result of Perry Miller s influential Major Writers of America anthology (1962). 6 Grouped with Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Anderson received lengthy biographical treatment by Mark Schorer and the inclusion of three stories ( The Book of the Grotesque, The Egg, and I Want to Know Why ); excerpts from A Story Teller s Story; his sketches Four American Impressions ; and twelve letters. Only twenty-seven authors are included in this two-volume anthology, which ranges in chronology from William Bradford to William Faulkner. Thus Anderson found himself in rather exclusive company.
Approaching our present time, however, Anderson s representation has again been limited to one short story, in many cases-although the Norton Anthology of American Literature from its inception in 1979 (Gottesman) up to its 1998 edition (Baym) had been very generous, including four Winesburg tales. The Little, Brown anthology of 1970 (Poirier) includes only the story I Want to Know Why, and the current Prentice Hall Anthology of American Literature (McMichael) also includes just one tale ( Death in the Woods ). The most recent anthologies have moved in opposing directions, with the latest edition of the Heath Anthology of American Literature (Lauter) doubling the number of entries by Anderson from its previous edition to two works ( Hands and Death in the Woods ) and the 2002 Norton scaling back to three: Mother, Adventure, and Queer (Baym). 7
As this brief survey demonstrates, Anderson has never garnered the kind of attention that a Hawthorne or a Faulkner has; in anthologies from the 1930s up to the present his representation has often been limited to a single short story. So someone might ask me, What s your point? He s receiving the same kind of attention now as he generally did when he was alive. How then is his place in the canon threatened? I contend that his place in the canon is becoming less significant for this reason: the first American literature anthologies typically were one thousand to fifteen hundred pages in length, but the recent ones, particularly the Heath , run to well over three thousand pages. The inclusion of a dozen or so pages by Anderson in today s anthologies carries less weight and presence than it once did.
As today s leading anthologies-especially the Heath but also Prentice Hall s and the Norton -attempt to be more representative of America s multicultural heritage, they are faced with the challenge of expanding their inclusion of authors while at the same time keeping the number of pages within realistic bounds. If this trend continues, Sherwood Anderson s significance in American lit