Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America

499 Pages·2006·2.13 MB·English

by  Walter B. Rideout

Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood
Anderson
(cid:2)
A W R I T E R I N A M E R I C A
V O L U M E 2
Walter B. Rideout
Introduction by Charles Modlin
The University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53711
www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/
3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU, England
Copyright © 2007
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved
1 3 5 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rideout, Walter B. (Walter Bates)
Sherwood Anderson : a writer in America / Walter B. Rideout ; introduction by Charles E. Modlin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn0-299-21530-x(cloth : alk. paper)
1. Anderson, Sherwood, 1876–1941. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
ps3501.n4z773 2005
813'.52—dc22 2005011164
isbn0-299-22020-6 (volume 2)
This book was published with the support of the Brittingham Fund and the Anonymous Fund for the
Humanities of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
To Jean

Contents
Preface to Volume 2 viii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
1. Break-Up 3
2. The Year of the Crash 25
3. Factories and Speeches 52
4. A Semipublic Figure 78
5. Radical 119
6. Unsettled 158
7. On, and off, the Road 193
8. Looking for an Art Form 222
9. The Year of Kit Brandon 252
10. Slippage 288
11. Going toward Pieces 321
12. A Sort of Rescue 339
13. Home Town, Memoirs, and Others 371
14. The Storyteller’s Ending 397
Notes 403
Selected Bibliography 443
Index 447
vii
Preface to Volume 2
In its finished form Walter Rideout’s long-anticipated biography of
Sherwood Anderson turned out to be much more than a magisterial
treatment of a single author and his work. It represents as well the story
lines of author and editor and, in turn, the evolution of the text itself, all
of which deserve comment because they are remarkable and inseparable.
Walter Rideout’s graduate studies at Harvard had been interrupted by
World War II, but he returned as a Navy veteran in 1946 to complete his
doctorate in English with Howard Mumford Jones. In the early 1950s,
as scholars were beginning to revisit and assess the life and work of Sher-
wood Anderson, who had died in 1941, Rideout collaborated with Jones
in preparing the first collected edition of Anderson’s letters (1953). By this
time Rideout was deeply immersed in the study of Anderson. Although it is
noted in the introduction that he began his research in 1959, there is abun-
dant evidence that he had been interviewing individuals who had been close
to Anderson in the early 1950s. About this time he signed a contract to
write Anderson’s biography, having received the blessing of Eleanor, the
author’s widow, who would support his work in innumerable ways until
her death more than three decades later.
Rideout began his teaching career at Northwestern University in 1949
and in 1956 published his first major critical work, The Radical Novel in
the United States, 1900–1954.In 1962 he accepted a visiting professorship
at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he remained for the rest
of his career, chairing the English Department from 1965 until 1968 and
retiring in 1986 as Harry Hayden Clark Emeritus Professor of Twentieth-
century American Literature. As one might expect, the demands of his ac-
ademic career—such as chairing a large department, directing more than
fifty dissertations, and accepting Fulbright and other lectureships—slowed
his progress on the Anderson biography. Thus, a favorite question at con-
ferences during the 1970s and ’80s became “How far has Walter got on
thebiography?”
viii
Preface to Volume 2
Although deterred, Rideout was never discouraged, and he made it
known to fellow Andersonians that once he retired, he would devote his
full time to a task that was now in its fourth decade. When completed, it
was entering its fifth—surely one of the most protracted works of its kind
in the history of American letters. But by now problems over which he had
no control had emerged. His original editor had retired and was replaced by
another who questioned the wisdom of publishing a manuscript of some
2,300 pages. Moreover, Rideout was experiencing early symptoms of de-
mentia, which made the ultimate fate of the work even more doubtful.
Then the University of Wisconsin Press emerged as the agent of salvation,
by accepting the work for publication.
By the time the Press was ready to start preparing the biography for
publication, however, Rideout was too ill to do anything himself about
adding a still missing introduction or to participate in reading and cor-
recting proofs. The editors thus turned to another accomplished Anderson
scholar and good friend of Rideout’s, Charles Modlin, to write an intro-
duction and participate in preparing the material for final publication.
Modlin was an ideal choice, for he not only had a detailed grasp of An-
derson’s life and work, but his publications on the subject were distin-
guished in quality and in both breadth and depth. His editing was notable
for accuracy, economy, and precision. The Jones-Rideout collection of An-
derson’s letters had drawn almost entirely from the extensive Newberry
Collection, but Modlin’s Sherwood Anderson: Selected Letters(1984) made
available many other important letters not only from the Newberry, but
from twenty-three additional libraries. With the blessing of Eleanor An-
derson, his close friend, he next turned his attention to the extensive (some
1,400 letters), and long sealed, collection of letters that Anderson wrote
to Eleanor from the time of their courtship until the end of his life. From
this effort came his fascinating and informative Sherwood Anderson’s Love
Letters to Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson(1989).
Notable among Modlin’s other projects is Certain Things Last: The Se-
lected Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson(1992), a collection of thirty
of Anderson’s finest short stories, with judiciously edited or re-edited texts,
including five fine stories that appear in print for the first time. He was,
furthermore, a congenial, generous colleague, who coedited three collec-
tions of Anderson material in collaboration with other scholars.
Modlin completed an informative introduction to Rideout’s biogra-
phy—distinguished by his usual precision and economy of expression—
and worked closely with the Press to provide whatever author’s correc-
tions were needed in volume 1. Before he completed these tasks, however,
he was himself beset by a grave illness that would soon take his life. Dur-
ing periods of hospitalization, he would take the manuscript with him
and continue proofreading. Only his death, on January 1, 2006, prevented
ix