Five:
E Pluribus Unum:
With reference to the creation of Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson stated in his Me卿i>s that, as “the novel form does not fit an American writer,” he had invented his own form of a “new looseness” in the Wines-
The Americanness of the Short Story Composite burg book. In a note he pointed to a parallel between the composition of his narrative and that of a much larger structure. 44Do we not live in a great, loose land of many states,” he wrote, “and yet all of these states together do make something, a land, a country. I submit that the form of my Wines- burg tales …may offer a suggestion to other writers.” 1
Ever since colonial times Americans, as well as visitors to the new continent, have been concerned with establishing a ''dominant value profileM2 for America，and if a link between this national “ethos” and the short story composite could be convincingly suggested, it would follow that this form
The aim of this chapter is to investigate whether Anderson's suggestion, in fact, is a valid one. whether there is a degree of correspondence between the form of narrative that Anderson employed, the short story composite, and what over the years has been constructed as an American identity. of narrative could be held forth as more “American” than other literary genres. And if, in tum, the short story composite could be projected as yet another expression of a more general American cultural pattern, constructed or not, we might expect a larger number of short story composites to be written in the United States than in any other country.