Blooms Literary Themes - THE GROTESQUE.pdf - ymerleksi - home

The American and European Grotesquefounded on agrarian frontier ideals that persist doggedly amidst therealities of a secret technology that runs our country.As a pioneer into the mythology of American Grotesque, SherwoodAnderson has never received just recognition for his discoveries. In myfirst biography of Anderson, published in 1951, I suggested the needfor an anthology of Anderson’s work that would show the full range ofhis concept of grotesque. Alas, this has never happened. Even so astutea poet and critic as Horace Gregory in his editions of The PortableSherwood Anderson has failed to show the significance of the grotesquein Anderson’s fiction.In Winesburg, Ohio, which Anderson called originally The Bookof the Grotesque, he defines grotesque with the Emersonian insightthat “the moment one of the people took one of the truths tohimself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he becamea grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.” Ifwe apply this to American politics as a test, we find several recentpresidents stressing proudly that they work fourteen hours a day atthe job. Evidently on the surface we are reassured by the idea of animmensely hard-working president, although the minute we begin toconsider this seriously we realize how grotesque it is that anyone canclaim to work fourteen hours a day with any real quality. Anderson’sreal insight, then, is to show how American Grotesque masqueradesas a rigid defense of truth. The style of grotesque in Anderson’s termsis an idiomatic American irony developed out of Mark Twain andother frontier writers. In this connection it is important to note thatthe writer in the opening “Book of the Grotesque” section in Winesburgis a symbolic, Mark Twain-like figure with his white mustache,cigars, and Joan of Arc fantasies hovering in his memories. Andersonfelt deeply how Mark Twain’s life and work embodied a clear senseof American Grotesque. If Anderson were alive today he would viewwith amazement how his vision of the grotesque has emerged fromthe Vietnam disaster in the far more bitter style of a playwright likeDavid Rabe, a novelist like Robert Stone in Dog Soldiers, and otheryoung writers who are emerging.Criticism of Anderson has been limited too much to Americansources and relationships. This has prevented us from seeing how theironic American aspects of grotesque are connected with EuropeanEpic and Absurdist styles. No mention has been made of the singular