i believe in the imaginative life and love to talk

© Mary Snyder Behrens

Above Mary Snyder Behrens, Edo Wan (1988). Textile collage with machine stitching. 38h x 45w. Private collection.

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These are the concluding words in Sherwood Anderson’s foreward to his autobiography, as published in Ray Lewis White, ed., Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs: A Critical Edition, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969, p.29—

I am an imaginative man. I believe in the imaginative life, its importance and would like to write of that. My readers, therefore, those who go long with me, will have to be patient…

…I shall tell the tale as though you, the reader, were a personal friend. We are walking together, let’s say, on a country road. The road follows a stream and the day is pleasant. We are unhurried. We stop at times to sit on a rock beside the stream. We arise and walk again and I talk.

I keep talking, love to talk. I am telling you that this thing happened to me, that that thing happened.

Do you wish I would stop talking, let you talk? Why then, dear reader, go write your own book.