Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 35

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woman." Rumors about the woman abounded, with one story
connecting her with a gang of robbers. Another rumor said she was
being kept by a rich man who lived in another city. "To the young
boys of the town," Anderson noted, "she has become a symbol of
something strange and enticing, out of some mysterious world of sin. It
is said that in her house there are luxurious carpets and expensive
furniture, that she wears jewels that have cost thousands of dollars.
The woman stays for a time and then disappears as mysteriously as
she came. She also remains in the town's imagination a figure of
romance" (p. 87).
Unlike Wilson and Dreiser, Anderson remained optimistic
about the America he discovered. Not only was American
individualism able to survive in the social and economic wreckage,
but the catastrophe, from Anderson's perspective, had strengthened a
sense of community in rural America. Individualism was highly
valued in the small towns, but not, Anderson pointed out, at the
expense of others. He illustrated this sense of maintaining community
order and dignity in a discussion about what it took to survive a long,
harsh winter during the Depression:
Winter is, in a curious way, the test time for the people
of the towns, the test of men's and women's ability to
live together. There is that brother-in-law with whom
you had a quarrel. You and he made it up. You have
quarrels with other men, even sometimes with the
wife. You have to forget it, start over again. It is the
only way you can make life livable when you must go on
with the same people day after day, during the long
winter months (p. 73).
Ultimately, Anderson abhorred the living conditions he
discovered in rural America of the Thirties, but he was heartened to
find both a conunitment to individualistic expression and a sense of
community worth. Just as Anderson found small-town Americans to be
born romanticists, so too did his reportage reflect a romantic
interpretation of America.
Agee's interpretation of the Depression experien ce also
underscored the striving for individualistic expression and
maintaining human dignity in time of crisis, but avoided Anderson's