Sherwood Anderson was very original in his style. He experimented with his writing much like a scientist with chemicals. When he found something he liked, he would often use it a great deal and worked his methods to their full potential. When it came to telling stories Anderson stayed simple. "The diction and syntax were consciously unliterary" (Benet pg 37) is a description of one of the many ways Anderson wrote. In using simple, uneducated language, he added to the realism of not only the story's characters, but also the situations in which they were put in. For example, in the story "I"m A Fool" the narrator speaks in slang, bad grammar, and also quite crudely. Some might say this takes away from the seriousness of the events happening and underlying messages of the piece. Anderson was not trying to do this. He was merely developing the character and making him believable by using the language a real person of that sort would use. Credibility was not the only thing Anderson was aiming for. "With [the style] Anderson was capable of exploring unusual psychological depths" (Benet pg 37). This means that Anderson was not only trying to trick the reader into accepting the character as real, but also take the reader into the deep mind of the character to help them to better understand the seemingly uncomplicated, but truly complex, individual. Anderson was once described as "a scorner of neatly plotted stories, [and] most at home in works controlled by the rhythms and voice of the teller of tales" (Benet pg 37). "Gee whizz, gosh amighty" (Anderson) is just a taste of the versatile diction Anderson used. "Repetitive verbiage" (Rideout pg 2) was another aspect contributing to Anderson's literary style. In repeating phrases, such as the narrator's never-ending statement that he's "[such] a fool" (Anderson), the writer can not only illustrate the character's true feelings towards certain circumstances, but also reveal the intensity of those feelings.
