III.

After the Orgy

It is morning; the revellers of last night have departed; the music of the phonograph and the voices of the cabaret singers are silent now. In the pale light of morning, frayed wisps of paper float up and down the street; from the brass handle of the saloon door a drenched veil is hanging; on the floor of the automobile lie scattered hair-pins. Ah, frail hair-pins, ah, tender veil, how slight you are beside my grief!

Silence and pale dawn, and empty emptiness. Ah, the last silence and the last heart-ache, and the last nickel, and the last green pickle lying on the last cold plate on the last free-lunch counter in the world! How sad it all is!

[Yes, how sad it all is that some minds have to jeer everything in the world, from Helen’s beauty to Bernhardt’s “wooden leg.”—_jh._]

The Iliad of America

_Daphne Carr, Columbia, Missouri_:

The first number of _Blast_ had among its veins of gold ore and volcanic deposit a certain precious spot: “American Art When It Appears Will be Immense.”

That is the way I feel about Sherwood Anderson’s Art as revealed in his first novel, _Windy McPherson’s Son_. Here is the beginning of our story telling art, primitive, to be sure, coarse, but a-quiver with that life whose pulsing reality we are forever eager to touch, to know.

Sherwood’s hero is the typically primitive hero—a brother to Aggamemnon and Charlemagne, the born leader, the maker of destinies. But Sam McPherson’s background is not the helmet plumes of the knights or the nodding heads of the Council of Elders. He is of our time, of our own middle West, with our well-known background of nodding corn tassels and steer-fattening farmers, with our stinking, deafening Chicago for a battleground. For he fights, furiously, and, like Achilles, for the love of fighting, but not, like Achilles, with the lives of men, but with their potential lives—foodstuffs—with their time, and their peace of mind, their happiness, their everything—summed up in money. And, for the love of the fight he wins. And then, because he is a white American with twenty centuries of Christianity behind him and not a pagan Aggamemnon to be satisfied with the mere winning, he turns aside from his victory and goes seeking an ideal.

So there is our hero, the forever worshiped König-man. But Sam McPherson is not the glorious part of the book, or the reason that our grandchildren, and probably our great-great grandchildren will still keep _Windy McPherson’s Son_ as living words.

Sherwood Anderson has dredged up from the mud of our prairies the same apalling rhythm of life that Æschylus found in the stone of the Acropolis. And even as Aeschylus built his rhythm in cedar-wood and overlaid it with ivory and gold and polished marble and carved it and set it with jewels balancing his ornaments to the nicety of a hair, and so finished his symphony to please the blue and white spirit of Hellas, so Sherwood Anderson has taken his discovery, re-built its same rhythmic proportions and scooping up grey gravel and sand and concrete rocks from his own prairie has built his symphony. Will we see the wonder of its form in spite of its grey surface? Can we feel the force, the genuineness of Sherwood’s discovery? Can we see the bareness of American reality and yet shut our eyes to that reality?

“Oh, then this Anderson is a realist”, you say. “We’re getting tired of them.”

No, he is not a realist. He does not cypher as the realists do, adding and subtracting cause and effects to reach a hypothetical absolute. Sherwood Anderson is a primitive, reflecting the immense movements of the life about him.

Yes, he is cinematagraphic.

He is the American epic, just appeared.

[I read clear through your spasm about Sherwood Anderson and wondered what was the matter with you until I came upon “He is cinematagraphic.” Then I saw you knew what you were talking about. You’ve got them all in, too—it’s as good as a Griffith show: Aggamemnon, Charlemagne, Achilles, Æschylus, etc.—_jh._]

[_Windy McPherson’s Son_ will never be “living words” for any age because it was done before Sherwood Anderson had learned to write. In some of his short stories, done quite recently, he has achieved that organization known as Form. But _Windy McPherson_ is as devoid of Form, and consequently of Art, as any of Theodore Dreiser’s catalogues. It stands as a faithful record of life, touched even with imagination, but quite untouched by that quality which makes a good story literature. As Rebecca West would say: it is simply another book coming out of America teaching the great lesson of style.—_M. C. A._]

Information

_Charles F. Roth, New York_:

That _Paderewski and Tagore_ in the November issue was a delight. But to be exact violin strings are not made of catgut, but of sheep sinews and skins. Can’t you hear the bleat of the sheep—the baah of the tender lamb at times? Can you imagine that such music as Kreisler or Maud Powell draw forth could come from a cat? No! But from a lamb. Ah yes!

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, CIRCULATION, ETC., REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF CONGRESS OF AUGUST 24, 1912.

Of THE LITTLE REVIEW, published monthly at Chicago, Ill., for October 1st, 1916.

State of Illinois, County of Cook—ss.

Before me, a Notary Public in and for the State and county aforesaid, personally appeared C. A. Zwaska, who, having been duly sworn according to law, deposes and says that he is the business manager of THE LITTLE REVIEW, and that the following is, to the best of his knowledge and belief, a true statement of the ownership, management (and if a daily paper, the circulation), etc., of the aforesaid publication for the date shown in the above caption, required by the Act of August 24, 1912, embodied in section 443, Postal Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse of this form, to wit:

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MARGARET C. ANDERSON.

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(SEAL)

MITCHELL DAWSON, Notary Public. (My commission expires December 20, 1917.)

The Consumer’s Company

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We had hoped to publish the prize poem in this issue, after having arranged to do so for the last four months. But the poems are stuck fast with one of the judges, from whom it has been impossible to extract a verdict.

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The February issue will contain the most inspired article ever written about Mary Garden, and will have a deep-purple label in her honor.

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Transcriber’s Notes

Advertisements were collected at the end of the text.

The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect correctly the headings in this issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW.

The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. Some idiosyncratic spelling was not changed: _Aggamemnon_, _cinematagraphic_. All other changes are shown here (before/after):

[p. 13]: ... said very thoughtfully, “Why doesn’t he come to us? have always been ... ... said very thoughtfully, “Why doesn’t he come to us? We have always been ...

[p. 27]: ... lie scattered hair-pins. Ah, frail hair-pins, ah, tender vail, how slight you are ... ... lie scattered hair-pins. Ah, frail hair-pins, ah, tender veil, how slight you are ...