SOURCE: “Psychological Stasis or Artistic Process: The Narrator Problem in Sherwood Anderson's ‘Death in the Woods,’” in The Old Northwest, Vol. 15, No. 1–2, Spring/Summer, 1990, pp. 29–41.

In the following essay, Miller traces the genealogy of “Death in the Woods” through an examination of relevant documents, noting that the final version of the story relies upon oral narration and the ordering of events as epiphany.

The recent discovery of still another fragmentary version of Sherwood Anderson's “Death in the Woods” corroborates Anderson's assertion in his Memoirs that it was a story he “tried to write at least a dozen times over many years.”¹ “The Egg” may have been his own favorite story, but “Death in the Woods” has the richest documented genealogy of all his stories, and no other more incisively reveals both his characteristic technique and his characteristic artistic vision. Its inclusion in so many anthologies reflects editorial wisdom...