is represented as pure nature, "essential genius," acting out its fated
processes in a world of futile or corrupting inhibitions. But Mr.
Masters has less skill at portraying the sheer genius of an individual
than at arraigning the inhibitions of the individual's society. When he
steps down from his watch-tower of irony he can hate as no other
American poet does. His hates, however, do not always pass into poetry;
they too frequently remain hard, sullen masses of animosity not fused
with his narrative but standing out from it and adding an unmistakable
personal rhythm to the rough beat of his verse. So, too, do his heaps of
turgid learning and his scientific speculations often remain undigested.
A good many of his characters are cut to fit the narrative plan, not
chosen from reality to make up the narrative. The total effect is often
crude and heavy; and yet beneath these uncompleted surfaces are the
sinews of enormous power: a greedy gusto for life, a wide imaginative
experience, tumultuous uprushes; of emotion and expression, an acute if
undisciplined intelligence, great masses of the veritable stuff of
existence out of which great novels are made.

_Sherwood Anderson_

_Spoon River Anthology_ has called forth a smaller number of deliberate
imitations than might have been expected, and even they have utilized
its method with a difference. Sherwood Anderson, for example, in
_Winesburg, Ohio_ speaks in accents and rhythms obstinately his own,
though his book is, in effect, the _Anthology_ "transprosed." Instead of
inventing Winesburg immediately after Spoon River became famous he began
his career more regularly, with the novels _Windy McPherson's Son_ and
_Marching Men_, in which he employed what has become the formula of
revolt for recent naturalism. In both stories a superior youth, of
rebellious energy and somewhat inarticulate ambition, detaches himself
in disgust from his native village and makes his way to the city in
search of that wealth which is the only thing the village has ever
taught him to desire though it is unable to gratify his desires itself;
and in both the youth, turned man, finds himself sickening with his
prize in his hands and looks about him for some clue to the meaning of
the mad world in which he has succeeded without satisfaction. Sam
McPherson, after a futile excursion through the proletariat in search of
the peace which he has heard accompanies honest toil, settles down to
the task of bri