PAINTS LIFE TOO BLACK FOR REALISM

This most recent volume of Sherwood Anderson is a collection of nine stories, long and short, with a Foreword and a short eulogy of Theodore Dreiser. It is not enough to catalogue those tales with the complaisant adjective "realistic" and marvel at the sordidness that is occasionally revealed or the peculiar intimacy of the author with human mental processes and physical passions. Several of them may truthfully be accused of realism; but on the whole they are far from that; when the author sees the worst, which is not seldom, he paints it blacker than actuality could conceivably be; when he looks at the beautiful side of life he becomes entangled in a symbolism and altogether unrealism which is difficult to follow.

Some of these stories are not what is generally considered nice. Stories of suppressed eroticism, of girls gone wrong and that sort of thing, told with almost Biblical frankness, can hardly fall to startle one now and then with bald adherence to reality. Sometimes one is offended. But these are not the only themes. The most delightful parts of the book, from our own point of view are those concerned with horses and racing which the author appears to love so genuinely. His dedication to Dreiser shows better than anything else his appreciation of horses. "To Theodore Dreiser, in whose presence I have sometimes had the same refreshed feeling as when in the presence of a thoroughbred horse." Certainly if all human beings are as incoherent, as unbalanced, and as full of tangled fancies, lusts, insanities as most of his characters, the clear-headedness and implicity of character of the thoroughbred must be a soul-satisfying contrast. And it is not entirely certain that his apparent exaggeration of emotional complexities is really exaggeration or not.

Throughout the volume is perceptible a vague, directionless groping for something, which is never attained. Almost everyone is disappointed in the end; most of the stories end more or less in mid-air, after stirring up unrest and dissatisfaction in the mind of the sensitive reader. Mr. Anderson suffers acutely from the same Middle-West complex which troubles Mr. Sandburg and Mr. Masters and probably some others. It would be enlivening to hear what the Chicago Chamber of Commerce would say if it should ever come across some of his descriptions of Chicago scenes and life. They are like nightmares, huge distorted terrible things, yet minutely accurate in detail and impossible to lauga off even after the dream is over. But as we have said, there are passages of the rarest beauty, which has a strange, unearthly nature,--dreams again, and therefore capable of that magnificence attainable only when the imagination burst from the restraining influences of reason and "common sense." No problem is solved by Mr. Anderson; he propounds problems. He does not satisfy; he dissatisfies. Except for one story there is little humor, little lightness of touch. The intricacies of his humble characters are intensely human; their weakness are natural, their ultimate destructions inevitable. Consequently "Horses and Men" is not an inspiring book, except when it talks of horses. When it speaks of men, it deals with certain vital problems of life, and sifts them as honestly and as thoroughly as possible; conclusions are left to the reader.