Notes Out of a Man's Life

Some Impressions by an Author Who Goes About and Looks at the Show

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

EDITOR'S NOTE:—This revelatory and informal article is a chapter from Sherwood Anderson's new book about himself soon to be issued by the publishing house of Boni and Liveright, under the title of Sherwood Anderson's Notebook. Mr. Anderson asserts, in a letter, that he intends this autobiographic work to be an assortment of notes "that sometimes expand into tales, impressions of American cities, streets, and houses—of so-called notable people— others just seen"—a story-teller's notebook by an American who goes about and looks observantly at the passing show as presented in the American scene

THIS book has become my confessional. Formerly I tried in another book—unpublished—to make what I called a Testament.

I tried to do it in song but the song broke. The making of a testament, or rather a confession, is a kind of relief.

When I go into a church I find myself unable to kneel before a priest or a preacher. As the need of a symbol has been strong in me I have tried other things. I have been in secret, a river-worshiper, a moon and sun-worshiper, a mountain-worshiper. Often I have followed a child through the streets.

Once when I had been drinking and had met a so-called fallen woman I did something that nearly led to my arrest. The woman did not understand my mood. Why should she understand? This was in Chicago. I tried to talk with her, to tell her something of my young man's impulses, of the confusion in me. But she could not understand. She had been cheated, buffeted, beaten.

When I left her, I saw children playing in the streets.

That day I got drunk and in the afternoon went into a park. Seeing a child with its mother I followed.

At last I ran to the child and falling on my knees tried to apologize.

It was not understood. People thought me insane. Kneeling before the child I muttered a few words about life, the sources of life and how they were befouled.

The mother, being frightened, screamed— the child stared at me.

l escaped through bushes and running a long way got into a street car.

I had to laugh at myself and you will laugh. It doesn't bother me—not now.

At last after seeking many confessionals I came to paper. I am humble before these sheets. They are clean.

I write my testaments upon them. It is all I can do.

II

MANY men I know who are without leisure constantly cry out for it, not knowing the responsibilities of leisure. Responsibilities to whom? To oneself, alas.

How many men have told me they wanted leisure to write poetry.

Great God!

The amount of physical labor needed to make a man widely known as a poet of merit is infinitesimal. All the actual physical labor of writing done by the greatest and most prolific of poets could be done by any average newspaper man during any average week of work.

Leisure achieved ends in what? "I have this time on my hands now. What shall I do with it?"

"I shall walk about, seeing men at work, talking to men."

"But why am I not at work?"

To the man of sensibilities there is too much time left to think of self.

I myself go about playing at life. I am a young boy, a vagrant picked up by the police. I am in a cell with drunken Negro women, with white women, prostitutes, thieves.

Now I am standing before a judge. "What excuse have you for being alive, for cluttering the streets?"

"But occasionally I tell tales, have them printed in books."

"What of that. Does not every one tell tales? It is an excuse for not being $t work?

"Men live by carving wood, pounding iron, steering ships, plowing the ground, building houses. When they are not so employed they sometimes sing, tell tales. I am a judge and it is my business to pass judgment. I pronounce you a guilty man."

"Oh judge, you are quite right. I am a vagrant, a no-account.

"But you see, judge, there are no houses being built. Men do not carve wood, shape iron, steer ships. All that is at an end. It is done by radio now."

The judge is as puzzled by life as I am. He also is a vagrant. Something has got out of the hands of men.

For ages now men have cried out for leisure. One of these days the impatient gods will punish men by giving it to them.

Ill

A BOOK or story, when you are writing it, must get to the place where reading what you have already written excites you to write more.

If you come to a day when you cannot write, do not try. If you force yourself, what you write at such times will poison all the future pages. If you do write at such times throw all away.

Every writer should say to himself every morning, "I do not have to write. I can be a tramp."

When a story gets to the place where reading over what you have written excites you to write more it has done what I call "come alive."

It will go now if you let it. Be patient. Go talk to men. Go fishing or swimming. When your fingers itch run home to your desk and write again.

I write down rules like this because I break them so often and when 'I do break them I feel such a fool.

IV

When I am not writing, all my instincts lead me to go where men are working with their hands. Formerly I also worked with my hands, touched to some purpose wood, iron, brass, bricks, stone, the earth. That one should get money by writing, painting, making music is in some way false.

I love rich delicate fabrics and carpets, love to touch such things with my fingers but why should I possess them?

As an outcast in the world of men, working my way from place to place I was uncomfortable but happy.

In the south, where I now live it seems to me the Negroes, who do all the hard work, are the sweetest people.

I cannot approach the Negro, cannot speak intimately with him. Such an attempt on my part would arouse the suspicions of both the whites and blacks.

I stand aside, make myself as much as I can a part of the wharfs, the streets, the fields where these men and women work.

Others feel as I feel. A southern woman writer, of what is called a distinguished family down here, whispered to me across a dinner table. "What, if you were not yourself would you like to be?" I had asked her, making conversation.

"Above all things I should like to be a Negro woman," she said.

I talked to a southern man, the son of a planter. For a long time he had been at work on a novel. It was smart and clever. That was not what he wanted it to be. "If there is ever an art produced in the American South it must come from the Negro," he said.

I dress in as fine linen as I can afford, wear bright ties, loud socks, carry a cane. The Negroes on the docks among whom I spend so much of my time like me so. I can see the looks of approval pass from eye to eye. We have something in common. Together we love bright, gaudy colors, strong food, the earth, the sky, the river. We love song and laughter, night, drink, lust.

It is hopeless for me to dream of becoming an aristocrat. When I have much money in my pockets I feel like apologizing to every man and woman I meet. The wealthy never make me envious. 1 am sorry for them.

V

I REMEMBER a morning spent in the home of a rich man. That was just after I had done what is called "raising myself from the ranks of labor."

I had been reading George Moore, Oscar Wilde, Henry James,—had decided I would devote myself to becoming delicate-minded, an aristocrat.

I was in the house of the rich man and it was evening. I remember his wife's dress, how lovely it was. I kept wanting to touch it. She had full lips, eyes like wild flowers seen along a path in the forest and long slender fingers on which were finely wrought rings.

We talked of books. The woman had a kind of admiration for me because I wrote books that had been published. How foolish'of her. Her husband had shrewd, hard eyes and was a collector of first editions.

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After we had dined several people came in and there was more talk. I talked foolishly, trying to appear clever. At last the evening passed and I was shown to a room. I had never slept in such a room before. Sleep would not come.

I thought of the woman's eyes, of her husband's eyes. After sitting for a long time by a window I got up and ran about the room touching everything with my fingers.

I touched the bed hangings, the chairs, the carpet, the window curtains. Many single things in the room had cost more money than I had been able to earn by years of labor with my hands.

That did not matter. I did not feel at home, did not feel comfortable. When all the house was asleep I tiptoed into a hallway. A servant caught me creeping along a hallway. I stammered some poor excuse, that I wanted to go into the grounds for a walk.

Outside the grounds were lovely but there was a high iron fence and I was still uncomfortable. I climbed the fence and just as I reached the top looked back toward the house. Through a window I saw the woman standing in her night dress in a room. She had been weeping. It was an unhappy household. Had that driven me away?

Leaping down from the fence I walked for a long way in a dusty road. I had left my bag with my few belongings. Beside the road was a railroad and in a creek some men were fishing. They had set out night lines and had built a fire. They were drinking and* as I passed broke out into a song. It was one o'clock.

That is all. Nothing else happened. I got on a train and went to another town where I slept in a workingman's hotel. The furniture was ugly and I did not like that but I had got back among people to whom I belonged.

I belong to men who work with their hands, to Negroes, to poor women, the wives of workers, heavy with child, with work-weary faces. Often I think them more lovely than any aristocrat, any man or woman of leisure I have ever seen. That they do not understand what I feel and do not know their own beauty when it flashes forth does not matter. I belong to them whether they will have me or not.

As to the rich man and his wife, I met them once in another house .and they acted strangely. The man was angry and the woman embarrassed. She had still her own kind of impersonal beauty but it did not touch me. We were left alone together for a moment and she wanted to speak of what happened. "You know how to be cruel, how to punish people," she said suddenly, but I thought she had missed the point and I did not answer.

Surely cruelty had not been my intent.

A working man's wife would have understood better—perhaps.