By Ray Lewis White

Whatever Sherwood Anderson thought of the many students and teachers who wrote to ask him for books, autographs, advice, recommendations, and explanations, the author was fortunate that his life and his writings did attract the curiosity and the energy of numerous academic individuals. For without the enthusiastic teaching of Anderson’s fiction in classrooms from secondary school through graduate school and without the continuing scholarly debate over Anderson’s proper historical and critical whereabouts, even Winesburg, Ohio might have gone out of print and Anderson might have become only another once-promising Midwestern author, a name among others in lists of influences on Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner.

But Anderson even before his death in 1941 became the subject of the graduate-school theses and dissertations that would form the basis of continuing analysis, biography, and bibliography. Anderson theses and dissertations frequently became published volumes (Fagin, Sutton, Hoffman, Mann, Taylor, Ingram, Curry, Fanning, Hilfer, Idema, and Bruyère, among others); and the early theses written by Dinsmoor, Davenport, and Kintner and the dissertations written by Sutton and Phillips even yet aid biographers in their discoveries. The critical judgments of Fagin, Hoffman, Hilton, and Thurston pioneered lengthy and thorough analyses; and the bibliographical thesis completed by Gozzi in 1947 actually founded secondary Anderson bibliography. Gozzi’s catalogue of Anderson publications in periodicals inspired (and formed much content in) the Sheehy / Lohf bibliography (1960), a book which led to the secondary bibliography of White (1977); the short-fiction guide by Small (1994); and the continuing lists of Anderson studies in The Winesburg Eagle. Thus I have compiled this new list of dissertations (for doctoral degrees), theses (for master’s degrees), and undergraduate honors and seminar essays (for bachelor’s degrees) that have found their way into permanent college and university collections and that are worthy of discovery and study by students of Anderson and American literature. I attempt here to correct errors in previous lists of Anderson studies (including errors in my own publications), and I think that this record of 227 entries at least doubles the number of dissertations, theses, and research papers hitherto enumerated.

1. Aarnes, Jane. “Sexual Fulfillment in Anderson’s Women Characters: Theme and Variations.” Thesis, Bowling Green, 1963.
2. Abrams, Ann. “Heightening Sensitivity to the Human Condition through Novels.” Thesis, San Diego State, 1984.
3. Anderson, David Daniel. “Sherwood Anderson and the Meaning of the American Experience.” Dissertation, Michigan State, 1960.
4. Anderson, Judith V. “The Egg versus the Machine in Sherwood Anderson’s “Triumph of the Egg.” thesis, Colorado State, 1967.
5. Ardat, Ahmad Khalil. “A Linguistic Analysis of the Prose Styles of Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, and Gertrude Stein.” Dissertation, Miami (Ohio), 1978.
6. Babbs, John E. “John O’Hara’s Assembly: Descendant of Winesburg, Ohio” thesis, Ohio State, 1962.
7. Bade, Dennis Eugene. “Sherwood Anderson: The Machine and the Horse as Symbols.” Thesis, Emory, 1974.
8. Banduk, Maria Lucia Alves. “A Translation of Three American Short Stories.” Thesis, Bucknell, 1991.
9. Barillas, William David. “Place and Landscape in Midwestern American Literature.” Dissertation, Michigan State, 1994.
10. Barks, Cathy W. “The Second Act: American Autobiography and the Moderns.” Dissertation, Maryland, 1995.
11. Barringer, Bobby Dewayne, Jr. “‘From Boyd City to the Big City and Beyond’: Six Stories with a Critical Introduction.” Thesis, North Texas, 1993.
12. Boing, Jessica. “Primitivism in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Jean Toomer’s Cane.” Thesis, North Carolina State, 1979.
13. Bousquet, Elizabeth, Sister. “The Twain Tradition: Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane.” Thesis, Montreal, 1968.
14. Brown, Sheila Goodman. “A Carnival of Fears: Affirmation in the Postmodern American Grotesque.” Dissertation, Florida State, 1992.
15. Bruyère, Claire. “L’Oeuvre de Sherwood Anderson: Sentiment d’Impuissance et Création Littéraire.” Dissertation, Paris, 1982.
16. Byrne, Mary Ellen Morris. “An Exploration of the Literary Relationship between Sherwood Anderson and William Faulkner.” Dissertation, Temple, 1975.
17. Carabine, Keith. “‘A Pretty Good Unity’: A Study of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time.” Dissertation, Yale, 1978.
18. Carlson, G. Bert, Jr. “Sherwood Anderson’s Political Mind: The Activist Years.” Dissertation, Maryland, 1966.
19. Carr, Edward F. “Sherwood Anderson, Champion of Women.” Thesis, Pittsburgh, 1946.
20. Chung, Chenchun Peter. “Sherwood Anderson’s Early Fiction: A Study in Culture, Psychology, and Technique.” Dissertation, Hawaii, 1992.
21. . Ciancio, Ralph A. “The Grotesque in Modern American Fiction, an Existential Theory.” Dissertation, Pittsburgh, 1964.
22. Cochran, Virginia Ruth G. “Welcome to Winesburg: A Dramatic Reading of Two Stories from Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Ball State, 1965.
23. Coker, Jeffrey W. “A Leftward Glance: The Depression Era Politics of Dreiser, Dos Passos, and Anderson.” Thesis, Southwest Texas, 1994.
24. Cole, Janice Ellen. “Many Marriages: Sherwood Anderson’s Controversial Novel.” Dissertation, Michigan, 1965.
25. Coonley, Donald E. “The Fall in Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, South Florida, 1969.
26. Crist, Robert Lenhart. “Sherwood Anderson’s Dark Laughter: Sources, Composition, and Reputation.” Dissertation, Chicago, 1966.
27. Curry, Martha Mulroy. “The ‘Writer’s Book’ by Sherwood Anderson: A Critical Edition.” Dissertation, Loyola (Chicago), 1972.
28. Davenport, Kenneth. “Sherwood Anderson: An Appreciation of His Life and Fiction.” Thesis, Fort Hays State, 1937.
29. Davis, Dale W. “A Thematic Study of Winesburg, Ohio: The Conflict Between Material and Human Values.” Thesis, Oklahoma, 1963.
30. DeFazio, Albert John. “A Reassessment of the Influence of Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein upon Ernest Hemingway.” Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic, 1985.
31. Defoe, Jeanne A. “Sherwood Anderson’s Critical Theory and Literary Practice.” Thesis, Oklahoma State, 1968.
32. Deich, Frances. “The Inversse Moralism of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Oregon, 1937.
33. Dinsmoor, Mary Helen. “An Inquiry into the Life of Sherwood Anderson as Reflected in His Literary Works.” Thesis, Ohio Univ., 1939.
34. Dorwart, Jack Hoff. “A Study of Dark-Light Imagery in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Washington (Seattle), 1977.
35. Duffy, Donald D. “The Moral Codes of the Adolescents of Clemens, Anderson, and Salinger.” Thesis, Oklahoma State, 1963.
36. Durham, John Edward. “The Critical Reception of the Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Duke, 1956.
37. Duty, Michael. “Two Views of the American Small Town: Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis.” Thesis, Midwestern, 1975.
38. Eaton, Dallas B. “Truths and the Grotesques in Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, California State, 1973.
39. Eden, Walter Anthony. “A Critical Approach to Autobiography: Techniques and Themes in Sherwood Anderson, Benedetto Croce, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Richard Wright.” Dissertation, New York Univ., 1975.
40. Elston, Suzanne Poteet. “Garrison Keillor and American Literary Traditions.” Thesis, North Texas, 1988.
41. English, James Wilson. “A Limiting of Perspective.” Thesis, Virginia, 1981.
42. Enniss, Stephen C. “Alienation and Affirmation: Sherwood Anderson and the Good Life.” Thesis, Georgia, 1987.
43. Erickson, Beverly A. “Syntactic Patterms in the Writing of Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis.” Thesis, San Diego State, 1964.
44. Eschelmüller, Valerie. “Sherwood Anderson: Versuch einer Kritischen Betrachtung Seines Prosawerkes.” Dissertation, Vienna, 1955.
45. Esplugas, Celia. “Female Sexual Encounters in Works by Sherwood Anderson and Manuel Puig and Existential Themes and Literary Techniques in Sherwood Anderson’s and Manuel Puig’s Works.” Dissertation, Toledo, 1981.
46. Evans, Deborah Marie. “Anderson’s Winesburg, Jewett’s Pointed Firs, and the Creation of a New Genre.” Thesis, North Carolina (Chapel Hill), 1991.
47. Fagin, Nathan Bryllion. “The Phenomenon of Sherwood Anderson: A Study in Contemporary American Life and Letters.” Thesis, George Washington, 1924.
48. Fanning, Michael Wilson. “France and Sherwood Anderson.” Dissertation, Arkansas, 1971.
49. Feldman, Eugene. “The Isolation of the Individual as Seen by Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Columbia, 1947.
50. Ferres, John H. “The Right Place and the Right People: Sherwood Anderson’s Search for Salvation.” Dissertation, Louisiana State, 1959.
51. Finkel, Jan Monroe. “Techniques of Portraying the Grotesque Character in Selected Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sherwood Anderson, and Joseph Heller.” Dissertation, Indiana, 1973.
52. Finley, Mary Sue. “Leaves of Autumn: Sherwood Anderson and the Season of Epiphany.” Thesis, Houston, 1973.
53. Finnegan, Michael John. “The Beautiful and the Grotesque: An Evaluation of Sherwood Anderson’s Short Fiction Craftsmanship.” Dissertation, Rhode Island, 1982.
54. Fioravanti, Joseph A. “A Comparative Study of the Grotesques in Sherwood Anderson and Hawthorne.” Thesis, New York, 1952.
55. Frame, Gary A. “William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson: A Study of a Literary Relationship.” Thesis, British Columbia (Canada), 1968.
56. Gage, Barbara Murel. “Correspondence: Sherwood Anderson and Benjamin W. Huebsch, 1918-1925.” Thesis, George Washington, 1968.
57. Gavaldon, Loraine. “A Definition of Tragedy as Found in the Works of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, California State (Sacramento), 1960.
58. Gentile, James Michael. “Sherwood Anderson and the Rewriting of American History.” Dissertation, Columbia, 1992.
59. Gilman, Owen W. “Sherwood Anderson: Marriage and the Artist.” Thesis, North Carolina (Chapel Hill), 1973.
60. Glaberson, Eric Abraham. “Historical Humanism in the Work of Two New York Intellectuals: Irving Howe and Alfred Kazin.” Dissertation, New York Univ., 1982.
61. Göbel, Walter. “Sherwood Anderson: Ästhetizimus als Kulturphilosophie.” Dissertation, Heidelberg, 1982.
62. Gokcen, Nilsen. “Societal Fragmentation and Problems of Communication in Sherwood Anderson’s Major Fiction.” Dissertation, Kent State, 1994.
63. Goldman, Irene Carolyn. “Captains of Industry and Their Mates: A New Look at the American Business Novel from Howells to Dreiser.” Dissertation, Boston, 1986.
64. Goodson, Rita Annette. “Influences of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio on Jean Toomer’s Writing of Cane.” Thesis, Iowa State, 1974.
65. Gottschall, Marcia Petty. “A Key to Isolation in the Fiction of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Texas Tech, 1970.
66. Gozzi, Raymond Dante. “A Descriptive Bibliography of Sherwood Anderson’s Contributions to Periodicals.” Thesis, Columbia, 1947.
67. Grant, Jean B. “The Experimental Novel.” Undergraduate Essay, Catawba, 1975.
68. Greasley, Philip Alan. “American Vernacular Poetry: Studies in Whitman, Sandburg, Anderson, Masters, and Lindsay.” Dissertation, Michigan State, 1975.
69. Greenough, Sarah Eden. “Alfred Stieglitz’s Photographs of Clouds.” Dissertation, New Mexico, 1984.
70. Gridley, Roy Elliott. “Sherwood Anderson: A Study in the Creation of Fiction.” Thesis, Brown, 1959.
71. Griffith, Malcolm Anstett. “The Grotesque in American Fiction.” Dissertation, Ohio State, 1966.
72. Gronna, Anne T. M. “Analysis of Two Stories by Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Iowa State, 1949.
73. Grosch, Anthony Richard. “Chicago Novels: An Introduction for Teachers.” Dissertation, Northwestern, 1979.
74. Gross, Gregory Walter. “Epiphany in James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, and Thomas Wolfe.” Undergraduate Essay, Tulane, 1986.
75. Guo, Qing. “The Perception of a Self: A Comparison of In Our Time and Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Clark, 1990.
76. Haggart, Marjory Archer. “Naturalism in Selected Titles of Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson.” Undergraduate Essay, North Dakota State, 1964.
77. Hampton, Wade Gorrell. “The Idealization and Imitation of Animals in Sherwood Anderson’s Fiction.’ Thesis, North Carolina (Chapel Hill), 1981.
78. Hanley, Richard Eugene. “Place to Place: A Study of the Movement between the City and Country in Selected Twentieth-Century American Fiction.” Dissertation, New York (Binghamton), 1981.
79. Harper, Lawrence S. “Three Essays: Toward a Singular ‘They’; Theme and Style in Sherwood Anderson’s ‘The Untold Lie’; Feminist Perspectives in Henry James’ The Bostonians.” Thesis, Brigham Young, 1986.
80. Hart, Robert Charles. “Writers on Writing: The Opinions of Six Modern American Novelists on the Craft of Fiction.” Dissertation, Northwestern, 1954.
81. Harvey, Cathy Chance. “Lyle Saxon: A Portrait in Letters, 1917-1945.” Dissertation, Tulane, 1980.
82. Harvey, Cyrus I. “Sherwood Anderson’s Natural History of Winesburg.” Undergraduate Essay, Harvard, 1948.
83. Haught, Viva Elizabeth. “The Influence of Walt Whitman on Sherwood Anderson and Carl Sandburg.” Thesis, Duke, 1936.
84. Haynes, Aldemeda S. “Small Town Life in the Writings of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis. George Peabody, 19467.
85. Hickerson, Jerry H. “The Critical Reputation of Sherwood Anderson since His Death.” Thesis, Kent State, 1968.
86. Higgs, Robert Jackson. “Sports and the Athlete in the Work of Sherwood Anderson, Ring Lardner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Thesis, Tennessee, 1964.
87. Hilfer, Anthony Channell. “The Revolt from the Village in American Literature, 1915-1930.” Dissertation, North Carolina (Chapel Hill), 1963.
88. Hill, Jean Marie. “Sherwood Anderson: Man Lives Alone.” Thesis, Nebraska (Omaha), 1964.
89. Hiller, Barbara Anne. “A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Radford, 1975.
90. Hilton, Earl Raymond. “The Purpose and Method of Sherwood Anderson.” Dissertation, Minnesota, 1950.
91. Hipkiss, Robert Arthur. “The Values of Expatriation for the Major American Novelists, 1914-1941.” Dissertation, California (Los Angeles), 1966.
92. Hoffman, Frederick John. “Freudianism: A Study of Influences and Reactions, Especially as Revealed in the Fiction of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Sherwood Anderson, and Waldo Frank.” Dissertation, Ohio State, 1943.
93. Holleran, Thomas R. “An Inquiry into Freudian Concepts in Sherwood Anderson’s Dark Laughter.” Thesis, Virginia Commonwealth, 1950.
94. Houston, James Dudley. “Three Varieties of Grotesquerie in Twentieth Century American Fiction: A Study of Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Stanford, 1962.
95. Hughes, Donald F. “A study of Mysticism int he Writings of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis Syracuse, 1950
96. Hughes, Robert Lee. “The Flight and the Search: The Quest for Creativity in the Novels of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Oklahoma, 1956.
97. Humphries, David Marshall. “Winesburg, Ohio: The Struggle for Dignity.” Thesis, Bucknell, 1969.
98. Hunker, M. Beth Sterner. “Gertrude Stein: A Rationale and Content for an Introduction to the Aesthetics of Modernism.” Dissertation, Ohio State, 1980.
99. Idema, Henry, III. “A Psychoanalytic Theory of Secularization in Three Novelists: Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Dissertation, Chicago, 1987.
100. Ingram, Forrest L. “Representative Twentieth Century Short Story Cycles: Studies in a Literary Genre.” Dissertation, Southern California, 1967.
101. Jackson, James Allan. “Breaking through the Walls: The Use of Touch in Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, South Florida, 1988.
102. Jackson, Kenny. “A Critical Bibliography of Novels Written about Chicago: 1900-1948.” Thesis, Northwestern, 1950.
103. Jarrett, Blanche Hargrove. “Sherwood Anderson: Poet and Mystic.” Thesis, North Carolina State, 1984.
104. Johnson, JoAnn. “The Search for a New Society for Old Visions: A Comparison of the Grotesque in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio with the Grotesque in Maxwell Bodenheim’s Novels.” Thesis, Kansas, 1963.
105. Kanno, Keiko. “Tragic Dimensions in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, DePaul, 1979.
106. Kennedy, John W. “‘The Backward View of Life’: The Initiation Theme of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Ohio State, 1986.
107. Kermane, Bruce N. “Excessive Truth: Sherwood Anderson and the American Grotesque.” Dissertation, Sussex, 1980.
108. King, Kathleen M. “Gossip: Right Here in River City.” Dissertation, Nebraska (Lincoln), 1984.
109. Kintner, Evelyn. “Sherwood Anderson-Small Town Man, A Study of the Growth, Revolt, and Reconciliation of a Small Town Man.” Thesis, Bowling Green, 1942.
110. Kirk, Gene Conrad. “The Short Fiction of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Western Illinois, 1966.
111. Kisawadkorn, Kriengsak. “American Grotesque from Nineteenth Century to Modernism: The Latter’s Acceptance of the Exceptional.” Dissertation, North Texas, 1994.
112. Kisner, Madeleine, Sister. “Color in the Worlds and Works of Poe, Hawthorne, Crane, Anderson, and Welty.” Dissertation, Michigan, 1975.
113. Klein, Alfons. “Figurenkonzeption und Erzaehlform in den Kurzgeschichten Sherwood Andersons.” Dissertation, Göttingen, 1978.
114. Klein, Marie Annette. “The Stalled Traveller: A New Approach to the Full-Length Works of Sherwood Anderson.” Dissertation, Illinois, 1973.
115. Klimczak, Robert Louis. “Sherwood Anderson’s Dark Laughter: A Reconsideration.” Thesis, Alaska (Anchorage), 1992.
116. Kores, Maryjo A. “The Search for Personal Identity and Meaning in Sister Carrie, Winesburg, Ohio, and the Novels of Herbert Gold.” Thesis, Ohio State, 1960.
117. Kraft, Robert George. “Sherwood Anderson, Bisexual Bard: Some Chapters in a Literary Biography.” Dissertation, Washington (Seattle), 1969.
118. Larson, Thomas W. “Culture as Social Process in Fiction of the Left: Michael Gold, Richard Wright, and Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, California (San Diego), 1987.
119. Lemmon, Dallas Marion, Jr. “The Rovelle, or the Novel of Interrelated Stories: M. Lermontov, G. Keller, S. Anderson.” Dissertation, Indiana, 1970.
120. Lenox, Winfield Scott. “The Significance of Sherwood Anderson’s Poetry.” Thesis, Loyola (Chicago), 1961.
121. Lewin, Lois S. “Social Theory in the Work of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Pittsburgh, 1960.
122. Lewis, Glen E. “The Treatment of the Negro in the Works of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1968.
123. Lewis, Jane Karen. “Sherwood Anderson’s Concept of Art and the Artist: Its Influence on the Style and Form of His Novels.” Thesis, Texas (Austin), 1963.
124. Llewellyn, Dara Virginia. “Short Story Boundaries.” Dissertation, Iowa, 1992.
125. Lockford, Joyce Claire. “Sherwood Anderson and the Great Adventure: His Subjective Interpretation of Human Reality.” Thesis, Utah, 1959.
126. Love, Glen A. “Sherwood Anderson’s American Pastoral.” Dissertation, Washington (Seattle), 1964.
127. Lowery, Burling Hunt. “A Study of Sherwood Anderson’s Short Stories.” Thesis, Cornell, 1946.
128. Lu, Cheng-Hong. “The Art and Unity of Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Northeast Missouri, 1974.
129. Lundkvist, Artur. “Tre Amerikaner: Dreiser, Lewis, Anderson.” Thesis, Stockholm, 1939.
130. Luscher, Robert Michael. “American Regional Short Story Sequences.” Dissertation, Duke, 1984.
131. MacPherson, Olive Beatrice. “The Romantic Natauralism of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Boston, 1938.
132. Madsen, Paula K. “The Evolution of Sherwood Anderson’s Thought.” Undergraduate Essay, Western Washington, 1970.
133. Maekawa, Reiko. “Sherwood Anderson: A Critical Study of His Early Writings (1909-1921).” Thesis, Case Western Reserve, 1981.
134. Mann, Susan Garland. “A Bibliographic and Generic Study of the Short Story Cycle: Essays on Dubliners, Winesburg, Ohio, In Our Time, Pastures of Heaven, and Go Down, Moses.” Dissertation, Miami (Ohio), 1984.
135. Marshall, Lucille May. “The Critical Reception of Sherwood Anderson’s Fiction.” Thesis, Wyoming, 1960.
136. Mayers, Oswald Joseph. “D. H. Lawrence Compared: Essays on His Literary Affinities with Hawthorne, Anderson, and Hemingway.” Dissertation, Oregon, 1981.
137. McCabe, Tracy Graham, “Resisting Primitivism: Race, Gender, and Power in Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance.” Dissertation, Wisconsin, 1994.
138. McCann, Michael James. “Symbolic Imagery in the Fiction of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Queen’s (Canada), 1982.
139. McCarty, Rebekah Gray. “Oral Tradition in the Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Angelo State (TX), 1993.
140. McCullough, Ann Catherine. “A History of B. W. Huebsch, Publisher.” Dissertation, Wisconsin (Madison), 1979.
141. McDermott, Darrelyn. “Winesburg, Ohio: A Study in Sterility and Loneliness.” Thesis, Eastern Washington, 1992.
142. McIntyre, Ralph Elwood. “The Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Columbia, 1949.
143. McKenna, Irene. “The Grotesque in the Early Novels of Sherwood Anderson and Luigi Pirandello.” Dissertation, California (Los Angeles), 1978.
144. McNeely, Darrell W. “Jean Toomer’s Cane and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio: A Black Reaction to the Literary Conventions of the Twenties.” Dissertation, Nebraska, 1974.
145. McNicol, Elinore Campbell. “The American Scene as Sherwood Anderson Depicts It.” Thesis, Colorado, 1934.
146. Menkin, Gabriel A. “Structure in Sherwood Anderson’s Fiction.” Dissertation, Pittsburgh, 1968.
147. Meyer, Avis Edward. “Literary Journalism: A Chronicle of Influence and Association from Addison and Steele, to Dreiser, Anderson, and Hemingway.” Dissertation, St. Louis, 1979.
148. Miller, Jackie Lynn Stewart. “The Controversy Surrounding the Influence of Freudianism on the Writing of Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Southern Illinois (Carbondale), 1983.
149. Miller, William Vaughn. “The Technique of Sherwood Anderson’s Short Stories.” Dissertation, Illinois, 1968.
     150. Moore, Anne Grigsby. “Sherwood Anderson, the Artist.” Thesis, Mississippi, 1958.
150. Moore, David Ryan. “Exiled America: Sherwood Anderson, Thomas Hart Benton, Benjamin A. Botkin, Constance Rourke, Arthur Raper and the Great Depression.” Dissertation, Brown, 1992.
151. Morreale, Mark James. “The Question of Audience in Winesburg, Ohio and The Pastures of Heaven.” Thesis, Ohio Univ., 1987.
152. Moses, William Robert. “Sherwood Anderson: His Life, His Philosophy, His Books and What Has Been Said About Him.” Thesis, Vanderbilt, 1933.
153. Mouscher, Karen-Elisabeth. “Sherwood Anderson: The Early Advertising Years.” Dissertation, Northwestern, 1986.
154. Mueller, Frances Heckathorne. “The American Scene in Sherwood Anderson’s Novels.” Thesis, Columbia, 1947.
155. Needham, Sylvan Eugene. “Logan First Ward: Literary Reflections on Mormon Community Life.” Thesis, Utah State, 1994.
156. Nemanic, Gerald. “‘Talbot Whittingham’: An Annotated Edition of the Text Together with a Descriptive and Critical Essay.” Dissertation, Arizona, 1969.
157. Nerney, James K. “Henry Adams and Sherwood Anderson: Art and Women in America.” Thesis, Boston College, 1962.
158. Palmieri, Anthony. “Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway: Literary Relationships.” Thesis, Maryland, 1966.
159. Papinchak, Robert Allen. “Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: A Study of the American Short Story.” Dissertation, Wisconsin, 1972.
160. Pepper, Linda F. “The Grotesques: Studies in Willful Fanaticism.” Thesis, South Florida, 1973.
161. Peronne, Maureen B. “Alienation in Sherwood Anderson’s Fiction.” Thesis, Maryland, 1967.
162. Petschan, Wolfgang. “Aesthetische Positionen und weltanschaeulich-politischer Standort des US-Amerikanischen Schriftstellers Sherwood Anderson.” Dissertation, Greifswald, 1985.
163. Pfeiffer, William Sanborn. “An Edition of Sherwood Anderson’s ‘Mary Cochran.'” Dissertation, Kent State, 1975.
164. Phillips, William Louis. “Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio: Its Origins, Composition, Technique, and Reception.” Dissertation, Chicago, 1949.
165. Pingree, Allison. “‘It’s Two that Makes the Trouble’: Figures of Replication in the Fiction of Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers.” Dissertation, Harvard, 1992.
166. Piper, James Kenneth. “The Novel of Stories: Form and Content in Four Collections of Related Short Stories.” Thesis, San Francisco State, 1965.
167. Piron, Alice Marie O’Mara. “Urban Metaphor in American Art and Literature, 1910-1930.” Dissertation, Northwestern, 1982.
168. Poppe, Hans Wolfgang. “Psychological Motivations in the Writings of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Southern California, 1948.
169. Potter, Hugh McClellan. “The ‘Romantic Nationalists’ of the 1920’s.” Dissertation, Minnesota, 1964.
170. Powers, Margaret Ellen. “‘The Unstrung Balloon’: A Study of Narrative Devices in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction.” Dissertation, Minnesota, 1981.
171. Quinlan, Jane. “Sherwood Anderson’s Contribution to the American Novel: A Study of the Style, Themes, and Characterization in Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Niagara, 1972.
172. Raglow, Stephen M. “A Men’s Studies Analysis of Sherwood Anderson’s Many Marriages.” Thesis, Bowling Green, 1991.
173. Raspaillaire, Jeanne Henrietta. “The Use of the Oral Idiom in the Modern American Novel.” Thesis, Ohio State, 1941.
174. Rea, Paul Wesley. “A Teacher’s Guide to the Modern American Short Story.” Dissertation, Ohio State, 1970.
175. Reed, Max Robert. “The Emergence of the Grotesque Hero in the Contemporary American Novel, 1919-1972.” Thesis, North Texas, 1976.
176. Reed, P. Larus. “The Integrated Short-Story Collection: Studies of a Form of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Fiction.” Dissertation, Indiana, 1974.
177. Reid, Tammy. “Eden and Utopia: The Theme of American Innocence in Sherwood Anderson’s Poor White and Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Eastern Washington, 1971.
178. Renalds, Brenda H. “Sherwood Anderson: Dramatist.” Thesis, Richmond, 1967.
179. Reser, James A. “Sherwood Anderson: Country Newspaper Editor-Owner-Publisher.” Thesis, East Tennessee, 1964.
180. Rhinesmith, Susan Clary. “Artistry and Form in Sherwood Anderson’s Short Stories-1914-1926.” Thesis, Stanford, 1964.
181. Riedell, Karyn Lea. “The Struggle Toward Androgyny: A Study of Selected American Writers.” Dissertation, Arizona State, 1984.
182. Rigas, Ellen Kristen. “An American Generation in Transition, 1870-1918: A Historical and Literary Perspective.” Undergraduate Essay, Harvard, 1982.
183. Risley, Edward H., Jr. “Sherwood Anderson: The Philosophy of Failure.” Undergraduate Essay, Harvard, 1939.
184. Rogers, Albert Alan. “The Small Town in American Literature: A Study of the Small Town in America as Illustrated Particularly by the Stories of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Auburn, 1931.
185. Rogers, Douglas Gerson. “A Critical Edition of Sherwood Anderson’s Many Marriages.” Dissertation, Chicago, 1982.
186. Rothweiler, Robert Liedel. “Ideology and Four Radical Novelists: The Response to Communism of Dreiser, Anderson, Dos Passos, and Farrell.” Dissertation, Washington (St. Louis), 1960.
187. Sabukewicz, Charles J., Jr. “A Study of Sherwood Anderson’s Use of Myth in Winesburg, Ohio and Poor White.” Thesis, Rhode Island, 1965.
188. Sanderson, Arthur Marshall. “Sherwood Anderson’s Philosophy of Life as Shown by the Actions of Characters in His Novels.” Thesis, Montana State, 1948.
189. Schofer, Erna. “Untersuchungen über Sherwood Andersons Short Stories.” Dissertation, Vienna, 1960.
190. Schorr, Mark. “Sherwood Anderson’s Imagination: History and Fiction.” Dissertation, Harvard, 1974.
191. Sebastian, Dillard Floyd, Jr. “Sherwood Anderson’s Theory of Art.” Dissertation, Louisiana State, 1972.
192. Shaw, Harry Walter. “Beyond the Grotesque: Relationships between Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and McCuller’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” Thesis, Oklahoma State, 1978.
193. Shawver, Jurgen Michael. “Sexuality and Human Development in Winesburg, Ohio.” Dissertation, Nebraska (Lincoln), 1978.
194. Shea, Jerome Paul. “Sherwood Anderson, Charles Burchfield, and the American Small Town.” Dissertation, New Mexico, 1975.
195. Shelton, Kay Trevathan. “Sherwood Anderson: Sexist as Artist.” Thesis, Southern Methodist, 1974.
196. Silverman, Raymond Joel. “The Short Story Composite: Forms, Functions, and Applications.” Dissertation, Michigan, 1970.
197. Skeels, George. “Sherwood Anderson: FAlse Gods in Modern American Society.” Thesis, Idaho, 1951.*
198. Smith, Larry R. “A Story Teller’s Telling: Sherwood Anderson’s Narrative Technique in Achievement of His Higher Realism.” Thesis, Kent State, 1969.
199. Smith, Philip Alan. “Dark Laughter: A Prose Poem.” Thesis, Adelphi, 1973.
200. Smith, Sara Frances. “Poe and Anderson: A Study in the Tradition of the Short Story.” Thesis, Alabama Polytechnic, 1949.
201. Solari, Rosetta. “Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Forscari )Italy), 1946.
202. Somers, Paul Preston, Jr. “Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway: Influences and Parallels.” Dissertation, Pennsylvania State, 1971.
203. Sorensen, Randolph Groo. “Sherwood Anderson: The Twisted Apples.” Undergraduate Essay, Utah, 1967.
204. Spears, Timothy Baird. “Changing Custom: Traveling Salesmen in American Culture.” Dissertation, Harvard, 1989.
205. Spencer, Patrice Grassinger. “George Willard’s Progress toward Maturity in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Eastern Illinois, 1975.
206. Spielmacher, Mark. “Using Lacan to Understand the Grotesque in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Waterloo (Canada), 1993.
207. Stallard, Charles K. “Sherwood Anderson’s Criticiam of American Writers.” East Tennessee, 1968.
208. Steele, Betty Jean. “The Industrial World of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Duke, 1963.
209. Stephens, Rebecca. “Narrative Strategies in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, South Florida, 1988.
210. Stover, Johnnie Mae. “Gwendolyn Brooks and Sherwood Anderson: Communication vs. Language.” Thesis, Florida Atlantic, 1985.
211. Strohl, Dona Ruth. “Materials for the Literary Pen: The Life of Sherwood Anderson Prior to the Literary Career.” Thesis, Illinois, 1948.
212. Sullivan, Barbara W. “A Gallery of Grotesques: The Alienation Theme in the Works of Hawthorne, Twain, Anderson, Faulkner, and Wolfe.” Dissertation, Georgia, 1968.
213. Sullivan, John H. “Sherwood Anderson’s Idea of the Country Weekly Newspaper.” Thesis, Marquette, 1960.
214. Sutton, William Alfred. “Sherwood Anderson’s Formative Years (1876-1913).” Dissertation, Ohio State, 1943.
215. Szuberla, Guy A. “Sherwood Anderson’s Influence on Ernest Hemingway.” Roosevelt, 1965.
216. Taylor, Elizabeth Savery. “Sherwood Anderson’s Legacy to the American Short Story.” Dissertation, Brown, 1989.
217. Taylor, Welford Dunaway. “Sherwood Anderson’s ‘Buck Fever’: A Critical Edition.” Dissertation, Maryland, 1966.
218. Taylor, William E. “Sherwood Anderson: His Social Creed.” Thesis, Vanderbilt, 1950.
219. Theriac, Susan Thornton. “‘To Express Something Learned’: One Role of the Old in Selected Works of Sherwood Anderson.” Undergraduate Essay, East Texas, 1986.
220. Thissen, John Hughes. “Sherwood Anderson and Painting.” Dissertation, Northwestern, 1974.
221. Thomas, Franklin Richard. “The Literary Admirers of Alfred Stieglitz, Photographer.” Dissertation, Indiana, 1970.
222. Thurston, Jarvis Aydelotte. “Sherwood Anderson: A Critical Study.” Dissertation, Iowa, 1946.
223. Tiffee, Ronald Elroy. “Sherwood Anderson’s Use of Symbolic Imagery in Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, California State (Chico), 1972.
224. Traynham, Linda Carol. “‘The Chosen of His Race’: The Horse as Symbol in Sherwood Anderson’s Fiction.” Thesis, South Carolina, 1966.
225. Tsuchiya, Hiromi. “The Significance of ‘Adventure’ in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.” Thesis, Baika Women’s College (Japan), 1993.
226. Uruburu, Paula Marie. “The Gruesome Doorway: A Definition of the American Grotesque.” Dissertation, New York (Stony Brook), 1983.
227. Verser, Nancy Ware. “The End of ‘Our Comfortable Tradition’: Characterization and the Small Town in Cather, Anderson and Lewis.” Undergraduate Essay, William and Mary, 1969.
228. Viscuso, Mary Jo. “Sherwood Anderson and William Faulkner: Thematic Parallels.” Thesis, Georgetown, 1979.
229. Waldman, Howard. “The Unbearable Self: A Study of the Theme of Identity in Sherwood Anderson.” Dissertation, Paris, 1977.
230. Walker, Don DeVere. “Anderson: Hemingway, Faulkner: Three Studies of Mytho-Symbolism in American Literature.” Thesis, Utah, 1947.
231. Walker, Emma Jean. “Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio: A Study of the Literary Representations of Social Institutions.” Thesis, Florida, 1958.
232. Watkins, Jane Magruder. “Everyman’s Loneliness: A Study of Loneliness as a Theme in the Writings of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Mississippi, 1962.
233. Weltz, Friedrich. “Vier Amerikanische Erzaehlungszyklen: J. London, Tales of the Fish Patrol; Sh. Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio; J. Steinbeck, The Pastures of Heaven; E. Hemingway, In Our Time.” Dissertation, Munich, 1953.
234. Wennerholm, Edward F. “Industrialization in the Works of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Adelphi, 1974.
235. White, Ray Lewis. “Sherwood Anderson’s Marching Men: The Genetic Manuscript Text.” Dissertation, Arkansas, 1971.
236. Wilkinson, Myler. “The Dark Mirror: American Literary Response to Russia, 1860-1917.” Dissertation, McGill (Canada), 1991.
237. Willey, John Robert, Jr. “The Torrents of The Sun Also Rises.” Dissertation, Florida State, 1991.
238. Williams, May Kellen. “Inverted Mirrors: Technique as Theme in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Nathalie Sarraute’s Tropisms.” Thesis, Clemson, 1985.
239. Wood, Marilee M. “Structure and Unity in the Novels of Sherwood Anderson.” Thesis, Rice, 1964.
240. Woodfin, James Dudley. “Sherwood Anderson, Critic of the Machine Age.” Thesis, Auburn, 1953.
241. Woodland, James Randal. “‘In That City Foreign and Paradoxical’: The Idea of New Orleans in the Southern Literary Imagination.” Dissertation, North Carolina (Chapel Hill), 1987.
242. Woolley, Lisa Kay Shillock. “The Chicago Renaissance: Privileged Speech and Social Change, 1900-1930.” Dissertation, Minnesota, 1993.
243. Wright, Charlotte Megan. “Plain and Ugly Janes: The Rise of the Ugly Woman in Contemporary American Fiction.” Dissertation, North Texas, 1994.
244. Yancey, Anita Virginia Rish. “Winesburg, Ohio and The Pastures of Heaven: A Comparative Analysis of Two Studies on Isolation.” Dissertation, Southern Mississippi, 1971.
245. Yates, Amelia Ann. “Sherwood Anderson: A Study of Literary Relationships.” Thesis, San Francisco State, 1980.
246. Yonan, Sally. “A General Semantic Criticism of Sherwood Anderson’s Fiction.” Thesis, San Francisco State, 1962.
247. Zenkin, Gabriel A. “Structure in Sherwood Anderson’s Fiction.” Dissertation, Louisiana State, 1968.

Introduction

In the late 1970s or early 1980s, someone in the Chamber of Commerce office in Marion, Virginia, called me to say that they had heard from an individual in Olathe, Colorado, who had a copper plate that had some connection with Sherwood Anderson. They gave me the name and phone number of the individual, and I called to inquire.

The gentleman told me he had found a metal plate with printing type on it in a hole in the barnyard of a farm he had bought near Olathe. He stuck the object between a couple of boards in the barn where it stayed for a few years, before he got around to trying to identify it. He took it to a newspaper office in Olathe. Someone there was able to make out some of the writing and told him it was about someone named Sherwood Anderson in Marion, Virginia. He then got in touch with the Marion Chamber of Commerce to help make contact with someone who might be interested. He asked if we might be interested in it. I asked him what he would take for it. He responded that he would take $60 for it and would mail it as soon as he received a check.

I contacted one or two of the officers of the Smyth County Historical Society and Museum, Inc., and they agreed that the Society should buy it. They provided a check to me and I mailed it to Colorado.

When the metal plate arrived, I took it to Marshall Guy at Guy Brothers Printing. He recognized it as a plate prepared to print a large sheet. He said he would mount it on a wooden frame and print a few sheets. A few days later he brought it to me, along with four printed sheets. He refused to take any payment, saying he did it for the Historical Society.

Some time later, Howard White, a member of the band, identified all the persons in the photograph at the top of the sheet. They are, from left to right, Frank Lieto, Trigg Scott, Gene White, Joe Stephenson, Howard White (partially obscured), Bill Robinson, Mack Wingo, Porter Snider, Ern Francis, Byron Groseclose, William Francis, Tack Jennings, Lynn Johnson, R.S. Sprinkle, Bill Sclater, Joe Lotario, Bill Snider, Arthur Slear, Casey Widener, Paul Thompson.

I do not know where this printed page originally appeared; however, the date was apparently 1928 because of the reference to Sherwood Anderson’s purchase “last fall” of the Marion newspapers. The first newspaper under Anderson’s ownership was the Marion Democrat, dated November 1, 1927. –Don Francis

No wonder the Marion band of Marion, Virginia, considers its troubles are over, says the Conn Music Center, Elkhart, Ind. Sherwood Anderson, who is reported to get a nickel a word for his short stories, is championing the band with a half to a column article every week in the Marion papers, which he recently bought.

Not only has this highly paid writer stirred up support in Marion, but many national figures have come to the support of the band.

Otto Kahn, international banker and donor to the Metropolitan Opera, has contributed $100. H.L. Mencken, “cussed” or praised by perhaps more people than any other writer in America, chipped in $12. So did Horace Liveright, well-known publisher. Alfred Knopf, another publisher of New York City, came across with $5, as did also Fred Black, Ford Motor Co., Detroit, and Brig. General Rosenbaum, Washington, D.C.

Sherwood Anderson says he is not an uplifter. He claims he took up the band cause from his own selfish desires. He says he likes a band. Band music just suits him. He would like to play the biggest horn in the band himself but lacks ability. He would like to be the drum major best of all, he confesses, but he doesn’t have the figure. It’s in his system, I guess, as his father used to play a cornet in the same town band with the late President Harding.

His First Story

“What does a band mean to a town?” Anderson asks in one of his first stories. “Better ask what is a town without a band? Life in a town goes on, just so. You know how it is. Merchants selling goods, lawyers fighting their cases, farmers coming into town to buy goods, spring, summer, fall, winter. People in their houses, women cooking, making beds. Life is dull enough.

“Days come. See, the men of the band have put on their uniforms and are coming up along the street. The big drum is booming, the horns going.

“Just suppose now, in our town, we are visited by some great man. Hurrah now, let’s give him a big day. It may be the governor of the state or some other dignitary. Our principal men are going to meet him down at the station. They have their best cars there, the biggest and best cars we have in town, all our leading citizens. And no band. Pshaw! What a frost.

“And what about Armistice Day and the Fourth of July?

“Or when the fair is on.

“Older men, staid citizens of a town, may be able to get along without a band, but what about the boys?

“When I was a boy my one great yearning was to play the biggest horn in the town band. I never made it.

There never was much music in me.

“Still and all, I’m not a jealous man. What I can’t have I don’t want to take away from the other fellow.

Fond of the Band

“I still like a band better than almost anything else in a town. Band music just suits me. There they come up the street. Lately I have only seen the Marion band in action a few times and then they didn’t have any drum major. I hope they get one again soon. I like to see the fellow in the big bearskin hat with his staff, stepping high and wide. I’d like to do it myself but I haven¹t got the figure for it.

“And how faithful and devoted the band members are. Then men of our Marion band, for example, go off to practice twice a week. Far from getting paid for their work they do it without pay. The members even pay dues to keep the band going.

“Recently, until these last few weeks, our Marion band has had a band leader who was paid a good salary because he was a good man. He was there to keep the boys up to snuff and would be there now but that he is sick.

Sacrifices of Band Men

“There are men in the Marion band who make a sacrifice every time they go out to play. Bear this in mind. When we want our band most, other towns, that haven’t any bands, would like one too. Our band gets offers to go all over the Southwest. Such offers almost always come when we need them here and they stay at home. Instead of going out and raking in money they stay here and give their services.

“And there are individual members of the band who make a sacrifice every time they go out to play. Do they kick? Not they.

“The boys of the band like their band, and so do we. Hurrah, here they come. Music floating on the breeze. every heart jumping. Life. Music. Zipp.

“We like that.

“The people of Marion owe it to their band to give it the heartiest kind of support. Get back of them. When they need a little money to keep going, shell out. A good band is the best investment a town can make.”

Join the Glory List

“Join the Glory List,” Sherwood Anderson headlines another story, and continues. “The Marion Publishing Company doesn’t intend to become a crusader. You know how city papers are. Well, we make no pretensions of being a big city paper. We are just a little old country weekly, that’s what we are.

“Still and all, as Mr. Ring Lardner is so fond of saying, we do not want the big city papers to hang it all over our eyes. City papers are always getting up a crusade for some good cause. They uplift this one or that one. Sometimes whole sections of society get uplifted like that. It’s wonderful.

“We aren’t, however, quite so ambitious. Up to date we have taken up but one cause and that is the Marion band. It may be the only one we ever will take up. And we are not doing that out of any altruistic purpose. It’s just because we like to hear the band play. We like to see them parade. When a big day comes, we like to see them put on their uniforms and come blowing their head off up Main street.

“Flags flying, everyone feeling fine. Life is drab enough on ordinary days. We have never found any way to be a canary bird ourselves.

Summer Night Concerts

“What we want is to see the band boys have a little money in the treasury. We want band concerts on summer nights.

“O, hearts of gold, who will put up $5.00 a year over a period of five years to get and keep our band in bang-up financial condition? We are making this appeal not only to Marionites but to all people in the surrounding country who read this paper and who like to come to our town when there is something stirring, or on summer nights to hear the band play.

“The King of England, President of France, President of the United States, Senators, Politicians, Millionaires, Rich Authors, Poor Ones, Farmers, Merchants, Anyone welcome.

“If you do not want to sign up for more than one year or cannot give $5.00, do not let that stop you.

“JOIN THE GLORY LIST.”

Spirit of the Band

Anderson says he would like to be the drum major in the band but doesn’t have the figure. Well, he may be a bit stiff but we’ll vote for him, anyway. He catches the spirit of the parading band. That’s what it takes to be a drum major.

“The band represents the town on its gay days,” he says. “When the fair comes, when there is a celebration, Fourth of July, any kind of a jamboree when every citizen becomes a boy again, then a good band, stepping gaily out, the drums beating, flags flying–what is a town without a good band?

“You cannot have a good band in debt. You cannot expect the boys to blow gaily, step out with real gusto, when they are in debt. To have a good band requires sticking to it. What can you expect when the boys have to come to band meeting and plunk down a dollar just for the privilege of working to be good when we want them good?

“The boys got a little discouraged. Their leader got sick. A lot of them are working boys. They got a little in debt. This paper is no uplift paper. It is just a good, little old country paper. But we like a band. We began writing about the Marion band in our paper.

“Well, don’t you worry about old Marion. We will rake in many a five-dollar bill for the boys.”

Viewpoint of the Band Men

Few have gotten the viewpoint of the small town band as has Sherwood Anderson. He has learned from the band men what they are up against. He also appreciates what the band really means to any town.

“One of the first signs of the decay of a town is when it cannot get up enthusiasm to support a band. The Marion band needs support. Most people don’t know it.

“In order to keep themselves up to snuff the boys practice twice a week. They pay a dollar a month out of their own pockets. This isn’t fair. They should not be asked to do that. The money goes to pay rent for a hall in which to practice, and other incidental expenses.

“Who will pay the yearly dues for one band boy? This paper will receive it for them. Some of the boys have got behind in their dues. A good many of them work hard for their money. When they get behind they do not feel like coming around to practice and the band suffers.

Loyalty of the Band

“Only last Armistice Day our band had an offer to go to another town. They could have got $250 for the day. They stuck to Marion. They have always stuck. We ought to stick to them.

“There is soon to be a show put on in town a part of the proceeds of which go to the band. Support that when it comes along. If you feel like chipping in to pay some fellow’s dues for a year, we will be glad to hear from you.”

When the campaign has run its course, the Marion band will probably be completely outfitted with quadruple gold-plated horns and uniforms with gold braid three inches wide. Anyway, the people of Marion are assured of band concerts this summer and of having a snappy band to liven up all their gala days with music.

By James E. Person, Jr.

The river, great symbol of life, is also the great symbol of death, for it is the symbol of samsara, of time. . . . Rivers are irreversible. Clocks are reversible. “You can’t go home again” does not mean that you can’t turn the clock back (because you can) but that you can’t turn the river back. This is true not only of our last exit from home, our final death, but also of a thousand little deaths before it. To be born, we must die to the womb, never to return. To be weaned, we must die to the breast, never to return (though we seek a thousand substitutes). To go to school, we must die to the all-embracing security of the home. To raise a family, we must die to the centrality of the family we came from. To move to a new home, a new job, or a new city, we must die to our old ones. And when we are old and death carries away our relatives, family, and friends, nothing replaces them sometimes except our own loneliness. The supremely lonely act is to die. When we die, we consummate the secret loneliness we inherited at birth. We part from everything–gradually in life, finally in death. All living is parting; all living is dying.¹–Peter Kreeft, from Love is Stronger Than Death.

* * * * * Describing the plaintive lives of small-town characters during the final years of gaslight America, Winesburg, Ohio is in many ways thematically similar to another collection of bittersweet stories, Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. Both books describe Midwestern town life and are based upon the respective authors’ firsthand observations. Sherwood Anderson based his setting upon Clyde, Ohio, one of the towns in which he lived during his boyhood. Born nearly two generations later, Bradbury crafted Green Town, the setting of Dandelion Wine, upon his hometown of Waukegan, Illinois. Beyond this, the similarities between the two works is not at all speculative or accidental. For in 1944, 24-year-old Ray Bradbury, then a contributor of horror stories and detective fiction to pulp magazines, jotted a note to himself that read, “Do book about people on Mars”; now he needed a framework and benchmark for style and tone for this ambitious work, and he found it in the work of a fellow Midwesterner. “It was Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio that set me free,” writes Bradbury in his preface to a new (1997) edition of The Martian Chronicles. He adds:

Sometime in my twenty-fourth year, I was stunned by [Winesburg’s] dozen characters living their lives on half-lit porches and in sunless attics of that always autumn town. “Oh, Lord,” I cried. “If I would write a book half as fine as this, but set it on Mars, how incredible that would be!”²

Elsewhere in the preface he writes:

Will you find traces of Sherwood Anderson here [in The Martian Chronicles]? No. His stunning influence had long since dissolved into my ganglion. You might see a few apparitions of Winesburg, Ohio in my other book-of-stories-pretending-to-be-a-novel, Dandelion Wine. But there are no mirror images. Anderson’s grotesques were gargoyles off the town roofs; mine are mostly collie dogs, old maids lost in soda fountains, and a boy supersensitive to dead trolley cars, lost chums, and Civil War Colonels drowned in time or drunk on remembrance.³ Readers of Dandelion Wine and Winesburg would perhaps agree that Bradbury’s remarks are not surprising. The following is offered as an introductory comparative essay that will explore such issues as style, world view, and other elements in Dandelion Wine and Winesburg, with points of agreement and of divergence discovered and examined. Overarching all, it will be seen, is the key unifying theme of both works: the authors’ belief that all living is parting; all living is dying, with both Dandelion Wine and Winesburg evoking masterfully and touchingly what Peter Kreeft has termed “the secret loneliness we inherited at birth.”

Readers of The Winesburg Eagle are well familiar with the career of Anderson and the story behind his seminal work; perhaps less so with Bradbury and his work. Best known as a science-fiction writer, the latter is also misperceived as a talented optimist, given to infusing his short stories and novels with a latent sense of traditional Judaeo-Christian ethics. While a sense of wonder and evidence of a moral imagination pervade his work, evidence of his latent Christian humanism, Bradbury is under no illusions as to the reality of human depravity and death, with his horror fiction and the novel Fahrenheit 451 being especially vivid in this respect. In a revealing letter to Russell Kirk, Bradbury once wrote that every person has “a private keep somewhere in the upper part of the head where, from time to time, of midnights, the beast can be heard raving. To control that, to the end of life, to stay contemplative, sane, good-humored, is our entire work, in the midst of cities that tempt us to inhumanity, and passions that threaten to drive through the skin with invisible spikes.”⁴

This reference to the raving beast indicates a view of the human condition in which something akin to the doctrine of original sin is operative. (Anderson himself believed less in sin than in downturns in luck or chance, which he depicted in such short stories as “Hands,” the tale of a gentle schoolteacher’s downfall, and “I’m a Fool”–from the collection Horses and Men–which recounts a likable stableboy’s unexpected humiliation.) Bradbury describes even his relatively sunny work Dandelion Wine as a “celebration . . . of death as well as life, dark as well as light, old as well as young, smart and dumb combined, sheer joy as well as complete terror. . . .”⁵ Indeed there are recurrent hints and outright accounts of fear and impending loss scattered throughout this account of one summer, the summer of 1928, in the life of twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding.

Any comparison of the two works must focus inevitably upon its two central characters, George Willard and Douglas. Like George in Winesburg, Douglas is a product of his hometown and very much involved with the everyday goings-on among the townspeople. As would be expected of a twelve-year-old in a middle-class town, Douglas has a certain gosh-golly enthusiasm toward life–an enthusiasm absent from large sections of Winesburg–which is expressed in conversations with his younger brother, Tom, and with his neighborhood friends. (Explaining to Tom his plan to keep track of the truths he learns over the summer, he says, “Any time this next three months you see something done over and over, tell me. Think about it, and tell me that. Come Labor Day, we’ll add up the summer and see what we got!”) As the summer progresses, his coltish view of the world is tempered by the realities of the losses he experiences.

Both George and Douglas are at once active participants in town life and listeners to the opinions and life stories of the townspeople. Where George, the older of the two at age eighteen, experiences sexual initiation with Louise Trunnion (in “Nobody Knows”), attempts to fight with the bartender Ed Handby for the possession of Belle Carpenter (in “An Awakening”), and hears the stories of Wing Biddlebaum (in “Hands”), among others, Douglas takes the final ride on the Green Town trolley on its final day of service before its replacement by bus service, plays the games Kick-the-can and Statues with his friends in the evening, helps his grandfather make dandelion wine, and listens to tales told by Colonel Freeleigh (a Civil War veteran) and old Miss Helen Loomis. (In each book, veterans of the Civil War are still among the living, though fading and dying out, with Anderson’s “Book of the Grotesque” and “Godliness” concerning veterans of that conflict, while Colonel Freeleigh appears in two stories in Dandelion Wine.) Douglas, being very much a boy of his era, is a bit too young to be interested in girls yet, while George, on the verge of adulthood, wants very much to woo the banker’s daughter, Helen White (in “Sophistication,” especially) and strike out into the world to make something of himself.

Of the two boys, George Willard is especially given to talking to himself, an act that isn’t necessarily a sign of craziness, as some people believe. Rather, it’s often a habit exercised by people who believe that they are not listened to, or that the thoughts closest to them cannot be shared with anyone else because there is no sympathetic “other” with whom to share. Among people to whom “the secret loneliness we inherited at birth” is especially vivid, talking to oneself is common. (It is perhaps a common trait of writers, who must constantly rummage in solitude through the wardrobe of the imagination, picking through what to say and in what manner, preparing to hold up to a scornful world their closest thoughts and evidence of their best skill.) Douglas doesn’t talk to himself as much as does George, as he has a younger brother in whom he confides; but, like George, he records his thoughts on paper, spending the summer recording his insights as to the nature of life and his place in it.

What he learns, long before Labor Day, is sobering. Just as poor, half-mad Alice Hindman learns of Winesburg (in “Adventure”), Douglas Spaulding learns that some people must live and die alone, even in Green Town. Even he must die someday, as he records after much reluctant thought and stubborn effort in his notebook. This point marks the dawning of his own sophistication, as it did for George in the story “Sophistication.” There is a wistfulness about this and the other stories of Doug’s summer, as there is in Winesburg, Ohio; for the summer of 1928 in Green Town was a summer of endings and barely comprehended beginnings, of death but no clearly corresponding rebirth, of grief coupled with hope. It was the summer of the last trolley ride, of his great-grandmother’s death, of the deaths of Colonel Freeleigh and Miss Loomis, of the end of the Lonely One’s career as a deadly town mystery, of the end of Douglas’s friendship with his best friend, John Huff. It was a time when even the elderly storefront loafers in downtown Green Town would “savor the very bacteria in their porcelain mouths that would some day stop them cold.” It was the last summer when Douglas’s mind romped like that of a young god, convinced that the world about him was a pleasant treasure house of comfort and adventure among beloved people who will never die. (The novel, in fact, begins with Douglas awakening at dawn on the first day of summer, standing before his bedroom window in the cupola upstairs in his grandparents’ home, and then pretending to “command” all the town’s human activity into motion for the day, one action at a time. Likewise, Dandelion Wine ends with the boy standing in the same cupola “directing” the step-by-step end to all human activity at the end of the evening at summer’s twilight.)

The story of Douglas and his companions, in Dandelion Wine, is narrated in a fairly conventional, omniscient third-person manner, interspersed with interior monologues. The narrative style of Winesburg is similar in some respects, though Anderson’s work more strongly “retains the language, the pace, and one might even say the gestures of a man talking unhurriedly to his friends.”⁶ Bradbury has called Dandelion Wine, like Winesburg, a “book-of-stories-pretending-to-be-a-novel,” and his words are true, with some qualification. In each work, the stories are interrelated just enough so that there is a thread of thematic continuity and some spill-over in subject matter, though most of them could be published separately as stories in their own right. As to spill-over, consider, for example, the case of the story “The Teacher,” in which the Reverend Curtis Hartman rushes into George Willard’s presence to declare the schoolteacher Kate Swift “an instrument of God bearing a message of truth,” an insight he had discovered as the principal character in an earlier story, “The Strength of God.” In Bradbury, there is a similar case in regard to a serial murderer, a man called “the Lonely One,” who is discussed in several stories throughout the book. (The stories in Bradbury’s book are untitled; therefore I refer to no story titles in discussing Dandelion Wine. Several of these stories, however, have been anthologized in collections over the years, notably the story concerning the death of Douglas’s great-grandmother, “Good-by, Grandma,” and the principal story concerning the Lonely One, “The Whole Town’s Sleeping.”)

There are several “lonely ones” in the Winesburg stories, also, though they are not killers. In the story “Loneliness,” for example, Enoch Robinson possesses a sensitive mind unused to the rough-and-tumble of everyday life, and has pared down his circle of intimates to include only psychological projections of understanding beings–and even these have departed. George Willard visits him once, and upon departing hears Enoch’s voice behind his closed door, whimpering and complaining. “I’m alone, all alone here,” said the voice. “It was warm and friendly in my room but now I’m all alone.” Nobody in Dandelion Wine is in Enoch’s state by the novel’s end; but even Douglas’s happy young brother, Tom, knows that there are times of fear and doubt when the human state, even in small-town America, can only be described as “Alone in the universe.”

There were a million small towns like this all over the world. Each as dark, as lonely, each as removed, as full of shuddering and wonder. The reedy playing of minor-key violins was the small towns’ music, with no lights, but many shadows. Oh, the vast swelling loneliness of them. The secret damp ravines of them. Life was a horror lived in them at night, when at all sides sanity, marriage, children, happiness, were threatened by an ogre called Death.⁷

Grim words, these, coming from Bradbury the “optimist.” But as he has written elsewhere, “I don’t write these stories, they write me. Which causes me to live with a boundless enthusiasm for writing and life that some misinterpret as optimism.”⁸ Exceptional optimism was never a complaint against Sherwood Anderson; he, after all, was the author of a story whose title, “Out of Nowhere into Nothing,” parodies the opening lines of a well-known “baby poem” by the nineteenth-century Scottish fantasist George MacDonald (“Where did you come from, baby dear? / Out of the Everywhere into here”). Anderson held to a vision that could best be described as bittersweet optimism: a belief that while death marks the end of all human endeavor, and there is nothing of eternal life beyond the grave, life is good and embraceable nonetheless. “One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes,” offers the narrator of “Sophistication.”

In answer to this, and in closing, I must quote a very telling passage from Bradbury’s introduction to Dandelion Wine, written in 1974. The author writes:

A final memory.

Fire balloons.

You rarely see them these days, though in some countries, I hear, they are still made and filled with warm breath from a small straw fire hung beneath.

But in 1925 Illinois, we still had them, and one of the last memories I have of my grandfather is the last hour of a Fourth of July night forty-eight years ago when Grandpa and I walked out on the lawn and lit a small fire and filled the pear-shaped red-white-and-blue paper balloon with hot air, and held the flickering bright-angel presence in our hands a final moment in front of a porch lined with uncles and aunts and cousins and mothers and fathers, and then, very softly, let the thing that was life and light and mystery go out of our fingers up on the summer air and away over the beginning-to-sleep houses, among the stars, as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself.

I see my grandfather there looking up at that strange drifting light, thinking his own still thoughts. I see me, my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done, I knew there would never be another night like this.

No one said anything. We all just looked up at the sky and we breathed out and in and we all thought the same things, but nobody said. Someone finally had to say, though, didn’t they? And that one is me.⁹

This moment of epiphany, a moment “in which time and the timeless intersect” (in T. S. Eliot’s phrase), is common to both Bradbury and Anderson–and indeed the above passage might have been written by Anderson. In the belief system of each, it is the writer who must “say,” for by his recounting the stories and by his spinning new tales, death is for a time held off as the imagination is nourished and the breath of life is affirmed. This is part of what makes life precious, whatever one’s theology or philosophy: entering into communion with understanding others, sharing in their lives and stories while knowing that, like Ray Winters in “The Untold Lie,” we must all in time disappear “into the darkness of the fields.” Properly understood, then, the watchword of both of these literary craftsmen might be the words which form Anderson’s epitaph: “Life, not death, is the great adventure.”¹⁰

Notes

1. 1. Kreeft, “Death as an Enemy,” in Love is Stronger Than Death, Ignatius Books, 1992, pp. 9-10.
2. 2. Bradbury, “Green Town, Somewhere on Mars; Mars, Somewhere in Egypt,” in The Martian Chronicles, Avon Books, 1997, p. viii.
3. 3. Bradbury, Martian Chronicles, p. x.
4. 4. Kirk, “The World of Ray Bradbury,” in Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormity in Literature and Politics, Sherwood Sugden, 1984, p. 118.
5. 5. Bradbury, “Just This Side of Byzantium: An Introduction,” in Dandelion Wine, Bantam Books, rev. ed., 1976, p. xii. All allusions to Dandelion Wine refer to this edition.
6. 6. Malcolm Cowley, introduction to Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson, Penguin, 1976, p. 6. All allusions to Winesburg, Ohio refer to this edition.
7. 7. Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, 43.
8. 8. Bradbury, Quicker Than the Eye, Avon Books, 258.
9. 9. Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, xiii.
10. 10. For the purposes of this essay, I have found the following readings especially helpful: Walter B. Rideout, “The Simplicity of Winesburg, Ohio,” Shenandoah 13 (Spring 1962): 20-31; and S. K. Winther, “The Aura of Loneliness in Sherwood Anderson,” Modern Fiction Studies 5 (Summer 1959): 145-52.