“Death in the Woods” and the Artist's Self in Sherwood Anderson

Extract

Sherwood Anderson's autobiographical works attest his continuing absorption with the incidents and the form of his short story “Death in the Woods.” In his Memoirs he says that he tried to write the story “a dozen times over as many years.” It appears in a tentative early version in Tar. Many of its episodes are used in a seldom-read fragment entitled “Father Abraham,” which supposedly developed the life of Lincoln; indeed, the story's materials occupy a dominant position in that strange, often autobiographical work. Elsewhere in his Memoirs (pp. 310–312), he relates the incident of the dogs' death ritual as having happened to himself. We may doubt the literal truth of that account, since Anderson himself repeatedly questions whether the event was fact or dream; in any case, however, the story was filled, for Anderson, with great personal and artistic significance.