SOURCE: Anderson, David D. “Sherwood Anderson in Fiction.” Midamerica 16 (1989): 80-93.

In the following essay, Anderson examines the self-portraits throughout Sherwood Anderson's fiction.

That Sherwood Anderson was his own favorite fictional character is obvious to anyone familiar with the facts of his life and the substance of his fiction. So fascinated was he with the almost mythological unfolding of twin patterns of escape in his life—the first, in Horatio Alger, Jr. fashion, from a rustic poverty-ridden childhood to middle-class respectability and affluence, and the second from the service of Mammon to the service of Calliope—that the protagonists of many of his short fictions and almost all of his novels reflect, literally, symbolically, or both, Anderson's journey from Clyde, Ohio, newsboy to Elyria, Ohio, company president, respectable marriage, and membership in the country club. His early life was an American dream realized through practicing the virtue instilled in...