Certain Things Last

Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941)
From Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories

Interesting Links
Sherwood Anderson’s letter of advice to his teenage son (Brain Pickings)

Anderson’s letter of resignation from his job at an advertising agency (Letters of Note)

Previous Story of the Week selections by Anderson
• “The Egg”
• “The Untold Lie”

Buy the book
Sherwood Anderson:
Collected Stories
Winesburg, Ohio • The Triumph of the Egg • Horses and Men • Death in the Woods • uncollected stories • 900 pages
List price: $35.00
Web store price: $31.50
Also available as an eBook

Detail from Chicago Street Scene, undated oil on canvas by American artist William Clusmann (1859–1927). Image courtesy of M. Christine Schwartz Collection.

Although “Certain Things Last” was probably written by Sherwood Anderson in the 1920s, it remained unpublished until it was rescued from his papers and included as the title story in a collection of his stories in 1992—five decades after his death. The late Charles E. Modlin, the editor of that collection (and, at the time, one of the trustees of the Sherwood Anderson Literary Estate Trust), singled out the story in an introduction:

Anderson criticized the writers of popular fiction that pandered to the public’s desire for adventure, romance, or moral uplift. . . . He maintained instead that fiction should take on a natural form that, instead of distorting life, captures it honestly. While art is distinct from real life, “the imagination must constantly feed upon reality or starve.” This is the essential point in “Certain Things Last” . . .

The novelist Ben Marcus recently elaborated on the uniqueness of Anderson’s fiction and, in particular, this story:

What makes Sherwood Anderson’s stories so special (when you read the stories in Winesburg, Ohio, for instance) is the way he extracts from the ordinary something so uncanny, so sublime, so extraordinary . . . and that defines him as a writer. It’s his ability to work with the plain encounter and to record the way it feels simply to be a person in the world. In “Certain Things Last,” he’s giving, in a sense, the most candid, honest, and searching interview a writer could give. . . . It’s an amazing example of metafiction—in other words, “fiction about fiction,” that reveals the process of the writer: a writer talking about craft.

* * *

Free audio: This selection is accompanied by a streaming audio version, read by the acclaimed author Ben Marcus.

* * *

For a year now I have been thinking of writing a certain book. “Well, tomorrow I’ll get at it,” I’ve been saying to myself. Every night when I get into bed I think about the book. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection is used by permission.
To photocopy and distribute this selection for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center.