Note 42 — Chapter VII · Sherwood Anderson or When the Dreamer Awakes

Is not this proletarian appeal the main sign of difference between the old and the new order of things in American literature? Passing from William Dean Howells to Sherwood Anderson is like descending the social ladder several rungs. No more well-to-do bourgeois, Laphams or Kentons. Now Middle Western literature takes us down to the ground floor and sometimes to the basement of democracy.