SOURCE: Lindsay, Clarence B. “The Unrealized City in Sherwood Anderson's Windy McPherson's Son and Marching Men.” Midwestern Miscellany 23 (1995): 17-27.

In the following essay, Lindsay argues that Anderson's “urban” fiction fails to realize its intended impact.

My inquiry into the unrealized city in Sherwood Anderson's fiction stems from two separate sources. (In respect to Anderson's treatment of the city I will be limiting my remarks to Anderson's first two novels, Windy McPherson's Son published in 1916 and Marching Men published in 1917.) Some years ago when reviewing a collection of short fiction, I found myself nettled, unreasonably perhaps, by several dust jacket statements praising the stories' sense of place. Although I was convinced that these particular stories had little sense of anything, let alone place, I found it a difficult issue to engage. While it's easy enough to imagine elements that might be present in a successfully achieved sense of place...