The Novelist
Sherwood Anderson
Thenovelist is about to begin the writing of a novel. For a year he will be at the task and what a year he will have! He is going to write the story of Virginia Borden, daughter of Fan Borden, a Missouri river raftsman. There in his little room he sits, a small, hunched-up figure with a pencil in his hand. He has never learned to run a type-writer and so he will write the words slowly and painfully, one after another on the white paper.
What a multitude of words! For hours he will sit perfectly still, writing madly and throwing the sheets about. That is a happy time. The madness has possession of him. People will come in at the door and sit about, talking and laughing. Sometimes he jumps out of his chair and walks up and down. He lights and relights his pipe. Overcome with weariness he goes forth to walk. When he walks he carries a heavy walking stick and goes muttering along.
The novelist tries to shake off his madness but he does not succeed. In a store he buys cheap writing tablets and, sitting on a stone near where some men are building a house, begins again to write. He talks aloud and occasionally fingers a lock of hair that falls down over his eyes. He lets his pipe go out and relights it nervously.
Days pass. It is raining and again the novelist works in his room. After a long evening he throws all he has written away.
What is the secret of the madness of the writer? He is a small man and has a torn ear. A part of his ear has been carried away by the explosion of a gun. Above the ear there is a spot, as large as a child’s hand, where no hair grows.
The novelist is a clerk in a store in Wabash Avenue in Chicago. When he was a quite young man he began to clerk in the store and for a time promised to be successful. He sold goods, and there was something in his smile that won its way into all hearts. How he liked the people who came into the store and how the people liked him!
In the store now the novelist does not promise to be successful. There is a kind of conspiracy in the store. Although he tries earnestly he continues to make mistakes and all of his fellows conspire to forgive and conceal his mistakes. Sometimes when he has muddled things badly they are impatient and the manager of the store, a huge, fat fellow with thin grey hair, takes him into a room and begins to scold.
The two men sit by a window and look down into Wabash Avenue. It is snowing and people hurry along with bowed heads. So much do thenovelist and the fat grey-haired man like each other that the scolding does not last. They begin to talk and the hours pass. Presently it is time to close the store for the night and the two go down a flight of stairs to the street.
On the cornerstand the novelist and the store-manager, still talking. Presently they go together to dine. The manager of the store looks at his watch and it is eight o’clock. He remembers a dinner engagement with his wife and hurries away. On the street car he blames himself for his carelessness. “I should not have tried to reprimand the fellow,” he says, and laughs.
It is night and the novelist works in his room. The night is cold and he opens a window. There is, in his closet, a torn woolen jacket given him by a friend, and he wraps the jacket about him. It has stopped snowing and the stars are in the sky.
The talk with the store-manager has inflamed the mind of the novelist. Again he writes furiously. What he is now writing will not fit into the life-story of Virginia Borden but, for the moment, he thinks that it will and he is happy. Tomorrow he will throw all away, but that will not destroy his happiness.
Who is this Virginia Borden of whom the novelist writes and why does he write of her? He does not know that he will get money for his story and he is growing old. What a foolish affair. Presently there may be a new manager in the store and the novelist will lose his place. Once in a while he thinks of that and then he smiles.
The novelist is not to be won from his purpose. Virginia Borden is a woman who lived in Chicago. The novelist has seen and talked with her. Like the store-manager she forgot herself talking to him. She forgot the torn ear and the bald spot where no hair grew and the skin was snow white. To talk with the novelist was like talking aloud to herself. It was delightful. For a year she knew him and then went away to live with a brother in Colorado where she was thrown from a horse and killed.
When she lived in Chicago many people knew Virginia Borden. They saw her going here and there in the streets. Once she was married to a man who was leader of an orchestra in a theater but the marriage was not a success. Nothing that Virginia Borden did in the city was successful.
The novelist is to write the life-story of Virginia Borden. As he begins the task a great humbleness comes over him. Tears come into his eyes. He is afraid and trembles.
In the woman who talked and talked with him the novelist has seen many strange, beautiful, unexpected little turns of mind. He knows that in Virginia Borden there was spirit that, but for the muddle of life, might have become a great flame.
It is the dream of the novelist that he will make men understand thespirit of the woman they saw in the streets. He wants to tell the store-manager of her and the little wiry man who has a desk next to his own. In the Wabash Avenue store there is a woman who sits on a high stool with her back to the novelist. He wants to tell her of Virginia Borden, to make her see the reality of the woman who failed, to make all see that such a woman once lived and went about among the women of Chicago.
As the novelist writes events grow in his mind. His mind is forever active and he is continually making up stories about himself. As the Virginia Borden whom men saw was a caricature of the Virginia Borden who lived in the mind of the novelist, so he knows that he is himself but a shadow of something very real.
And so the novelist puts himself into the book. In the book he is a large, square-shouldered man with tiny eyes. He is one who came to Chicago from a village in Poland and was leader of an orchestra in a theatre. As the orchestra leader the novelist married Virginia Borden and lived in a house with her.
You see the novelist wants to explain himself also. He is a lover and so vividly does he love that he has the courage to love even himself. And so it is the lover that sits writing and the madness of the writer is the madness of the lover. As he writes he is making love. Surely all can understand that!
Because sexual love is the most useful and common type of excitement we are apt to think it necessary to life, when the truth is that it is excitement itself which is life’s essential.—Rebecca West.
Because sexual love is the most useful and common type of excitement we are apt to think it necessary to life, when the truth is that it is excitement itself which is life’s essential.—Rebecca West.