Books: The Writer as Victim

SHERWOOD ANDERSON (271 pp.)—Irving Howe—Sloane ($3.50).

SHERWOOD ANDERSON, HIS LIFE AND WORK (360 pp.)—James Schevill—University of Denver ($4).

Like most serious writers, Sherwood Anderson spent a lot of time and words trying to explain himself to other people and to himself. Like most such efforts, the results were imperfect. In Tar, A Story Teller's Story and Memoirs, he fumbled earnestly to understand what made him tick as boy, man, husband (four times), peripatetic adman and writer.

He became preoccupied with the problem of himself even in his letters: "This I do know—that the only thing that saves me from being a plain son-of-a-bitch is...