Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) 舍伍德·安德森
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Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
舍伍德·安德森
Writer whose prose style, derived from everyday speech,
influenced American short story writing between World Wars I and
II. Anderson made his name as a leading naturalistic writer with
his masterwork, Winesburg, Ohio (1919), a picture of life in a
typical small Midwestern town, as seen through the eyes of its
inhabitants. Anderson's episodic bildungsroman has been compared
often to Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River
Anthology.
'The you
ng man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams.
One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp.
With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed
his eyes and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a
long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out of the
car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there
had become but a background on which to paint his dreams of his
manhood.' (from Winesburg, Ohio)
Sherwood Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio, the son of Irwin and
Emma Smith Anderson. His parents led a transient life, moving from
one place to another after work. His father had served in the Union
Army but eventually ended up keeping a small harness-repair shop
and then working as a house-and-barn painter, though calling
himself a 'sign-writer.' Anderson attended school only
intermittently, while helping to support the family by working as a
newsboy, housepainter, stock handler, and stable groom. At the age
of 17 Anderson moved to Chicago. There he attended business classes
at night, and spent his days as a warehouse laborer. In 1895 he
joined the National Guard. During the Spanish-American war Anderson
fought in Cuba. 'I prefer yellow fever in Cuba to living in cold
storage in Chicago,' he wrote to his brother Karl. After the war
Anderson returned to Ohio, for a final year of schooling at
Wittenberg College, Springfield.
For the next few years Anderson moved restlessly around Ohio.
From 1904 his life calmed down for some time with marriage to
Cornelia Lane, a college-educated woman of prosperous family, and
with work as a paint manufacturer in Elyria. All his free time
Anderson spent with writing. In November of 1912, he walked out of
his office and left a note to Cornelia: 'There is a bridge over a
river with cross-ties before it. When I come to that I will be all
right. I will write all day in the sun and the wind will blow
through my hair.' During the emotional collapse he wandered, dazed,
four days around Cleveland, and went to Chicago
too.
Later Anderson claimed, that his wife was unsympathetic to
his attempts at writing. However, most likely Cornelia's attitude
was encouraging, overall，she held advanced beliefs, was interested in
literature, attended concerts, and contributed a paper on 'Social
Conditions in Russia' for the Fortnightly Club. Anderson took a job
as a copy-writer at the Taylor-Critchfield Advertising Company,
visiting his family on weekends. In Chicago he joined the so-called
Chicago Group, which included such writers as Theodore Dreiser and
Carl Sandburg. After divorce, Anderson
spent a summer at Camp Owlyout, a colony for avant-garde women,
with Tennessee Mitchell, a sculptor and musician, who had ended her
relationship with Edgar Lee Masters. Occasionally Anderson danced
with Tennesse and the other women when they assembled on the dance
ground wearing Grecian robes. They married in 1916 but lived in
separate apartments in Chicago a good part of their married
lives.
Anderson's two
first novels were Windy McPherson's Son (1916) and Marching Men
(1917), both containing the psychological themes of inner lives of
Midwestern villages, the pursuit of success and disillusionment.
His third novel, Winesburg, Ohio, was 'half individual tales, half
long novel form', as the author himself described it. It consisted
of twenty-three thematically related sketches and stories. Written
in a simple, realistic language illuminated by a muted lyricism,
Anderson dramatized crucial episodes in the lives of his
characters. 'My own vocabulary was small,' Anderson once said. 'I
had no Latin and no Greek, no French. When I wanted to arrive at
anything like delicate shades of meaning in my writing I had to do
it with my own very limited vocabulary.' Many of the tales have
moral lessons weaved into them. The narrative is united by the
appearance of George Willard, a young reporter, who is in revolt
against the narrowness of the small-town life and who acts as a
counterpoint to the other people of the town.
Anderson's book
was rejected by several publishers. One of them handed him a copy
of a novel by an Anglo-American author, saying 'Read this and learn
how to write.' The individual tales of Winesburg, Ohio, and
Anderson's other collections of short stories, The Triumph of the
Egg (1920), Horses and Men (1932), and Death in the Woods (1933),
directed the American short story away from the neatly plotted
tales of O. Henry and his imitators. Anderson's emphasis was on the
development of his characters, their motivation, and psychological
process. In his Memoirs (1942) he said that he had thought that the
novel form, being brought in does not fit an American
writer.
In 1921 Anderson received the first Dial Award for his
contribution to American literature. He traveled widely in Europe.
While in Paris he met Gertrude Stein, whose work he much admired.
'She is an American woman of the old sort, one who cares for the
handmade goodies and who scorns the factory-made foods, and in her
own great kitchen she is making something with her materials,
something sweet to the tongue and fragrant to the nostrils.' After
Anderson returned back to the United States, he settled in New
Orleans, where he shared an apartment with William Faulkner.
Anderson helped Faulkner to publish his first novel, Soldier's Pay
(1926).
After separating from Tennessee Mitchell, Anderson married in
1923 Elizabeth Prall, who had worked as a bookstore manager in New
York; also Anderson's third marriage broke down but with Eleanor
Copenhaver, a social worker, he managed to maintain a stable family
life. Their love letters were published in 1991. Anderson's letters
between 1916 and 1933 to his mistress and friend, Marietta D.
Finley, a manuscript reader for the Bobbs-Merrill Company in
Indiana, were collected in Letters to Bab (1985). Marietta,
or 'Bab' as he called her, dutifully kept his letters and typed
them up with a carbon copy, but Anderson destroyed
hers.
Anderson's novel Dark Laughter (1925)
became a bestseller. In the story the disillusioned protagonist
travels down the Mississippi imagining the kind of book Mark Twain
might now write. From New Orleans Anderson moved to New York for
some time, and from there finally to Marion, Virginia, where he
built a country house, and worked as a farmer and journalist. He
traveled again in Europe and wrote to his son John, a young
painter: 'I've a notion that, in America, you will be less bothered
with homosexuality inclined men. However the arts have always been
a refuge for such men. They are, as I think you have guessed, the
less vigorous men. There is some distinct challenge of life they do
not want to meet, and can't meet.' In 1927 he bought both of
Marion's weekly newspapers, one Republican, one Democrat, and
edited them for two years. Anderson wrote columns under the pen
name Buck Fever. To earn extra income he continued his series of
lectures throughout the country.
When Anderson separated from Elizabeth Prall in 1929, he gave
the editionship of the newspapers to his son Robert. Commissioned
by Today magazine, Anderson studied the labour conditions during
the Depression and published his articles in Puzzled America
(1935). With encouragement from Eleanor, Anderson began compile
notes for his memoirs. Anderson's newspaper pieces were
collected in Hello Towns (1929), Return to Winesburg (1967) and The
Buck Fever Papers (1971).
Anderson was among the earliest
American writers, who responded to Freud's theories, and his best
works influenced almost every important American writer of the next
generation. He also encouraged William Faulkner and Ernest
Hemingway in their writing aspirations, although they eventually
turned against him. Hemingway parodied Anderson's style in The
Torrents of Spring (1926). Stein declared that Anderson was 'a much
more original writer' than Hemingway.
Anderson died of peritonitis on an
unofficial good-will tour to South America, at Christobal, Canal
Zone, on March 8, in 1941. He had swallowed in New York a
three-inch toothpick in the olive of one of his martins, and
boarded then the Grace Line's Santa Maria bound to Panama. Anderson
fell seriously ill on the ship. At his autopsy it was found that
the toothpick had projected through the lower part of the colon
into the abdominal cavity. Anderson was buried at Round Hill
Cemetery in Marion.
After his death, Anderson's reputation soon declined, but in the
1970s, scholars and critics found a new interest in his work.
During his lifetime Anderson wrote two autobiographical works, A
Story Teller's Story (1924) and semi-fictional Tar: A Midwest
Childhood (1926). His Memoirs and Letters (1953) were published
posthumously, as the more definitive The Memoirs of Sherwood
Anderson (1969). In A Story Teller's Story the author explained why
he disregarded dates in his autobiographies: 'I think it was Joseph
Conrad who said that a writer only began to live after he began to
write. It pleased me to think I was after all but ten years old.
Plenty of time ahead for such a one. Time to look about, plenty of
time to look about.'
For further reading: Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America,
Volume 1 by Walter B. Rideout (2006); Sherwood Anderson: An
American Career by John Earl Bassett (2005); Sherwood Anderson and
the American Short Story by P.A. Abraham (1994); A Reader's Guide
to the Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson by Judy Jo Small (1994);
A Study of the Short Fiction by R.A. Papinchak (1992);Winesburg,
Ohio: An Exploration by Ray Lewis White (1990); A Story Teller and
a City by Kenny J. Williams (1988); Sherwood Anderson by K.
Townsend (1987); Sherwood Anderson: Centennial Studies, ed. by H.
Campbell and C. Modlin (1976); Sherwood Anderson: Dimensions of His
Literary Art, ed. by D. Anderson (1976); Sherwood Anderson: Essays
in Criticism, ed. by W. Rideout (1974); The Road to Winesburg by W.
Sutton (1972); Sherwood Anderson by D. Anderson (1967); Sherwood
Anderson by B. Weber (1964); Sherwood Anderson by R. Burbank
(1964); Sherwood Anderson: A Bibliography by E. Sheehy and K. Lohf
(1960); Sherwood Anderson by J. Schevill (1951); Sherwood Anderson
by I. Howe (1951)
Selected works:
WINDY MCPHERSON'S SON, 1916 (rev. ed., 1921)
MARCHING MEN, 1917
MID-AMERICAN CHANTS, 1918
WINESBURG, OHIO:
A GROUP OF TALES OF OHIO SMALL TOWN LIFE, 1919
-
Pikkukaupunki (suom. Leena-Maija Reunanen, 1955) / Pikku kaupunki
(Leena-Maija Reunanen, 1967)
-
TV drama in 1973, dir. by Ralph Senensky, starring Jean Peters,
Joseph Bottoms, Timothy Bottoms, Albert Salmi; Chicago Heights,
2009, prod. 923 Films, dir. by Daniel Nearing, cast: Mercedes Kane,
Brian Harris, Benny Stewart, Barbara Hogu, Tovah Hicks, Jason
Coleman
POOR WHITE: A NOVEL, 1920
THE TRIUMP OF THE EGG: A BOOK OF IMPRESSIONS FROM AMERICAN LIFE,
1920 (with Tennessee Mitchell, photographs by
Eugene Hutchinson)
HORSES AND MEN: TALES, LONG ANF SHORT, FROM OUR AMERICAN LIFE,
1923
MANY MARRIAGES, 1923
A
STORY TELLER'S STORY: THE TALE OF AN AMERICAN WRITER'S JOURNEY
THROUGH HIS OWN IMAGINATIVE WORLD AND THROUGH THE WORLD OF FACTS,
WITH MANY OF HIS EXPERIENCES AND IMPRESSIONS AMONG OTHER
WRITERS--TOLD IN MANY NOTES--IN FOUR BOOKS--AND AN EPILOGUE,
1924
DARK LAUGHTER, 1925
-
Musta naurua (suom. Toini Aaltonen, 1943)
HANDS, AND OTHER STORIES, 1925
THE MODERN WRITER, 1925
NOTEBOOK. SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S NOTEBOOK, CONTAINING ARTICLES
WRITTEN DURING THE AUTHOR'S LIFE AS A STORY TELLER, AND NOTES OF
HIS IMPRESSIONS FROM LIFE SCATTERED THROUGH THE BOOK,
1926
TAR, A MIDWEST CHILDHOOD, 1926
A
NEW TESTAMENT, 1927
HELLO TOWNS, 1929
ALICE AND THE
LOST NOVEL, 1929
NEARER THE GRASS ROOTS, 1929
THE AMERICAN COUNTY FAIR, 1930
PERHAPS WOMEN, 1931
BEYOND DESIRE, 1932
DEATH IN THE WOODS AND OTHER STORIES, 1933
NO SWANK, 1934
PUZZLED AMERICA, 1935
KIR BRANDON: A PORTRAIT, 1936
PLAYS: WINESBURG AND OTHERS, 1937
FIVE POEMS, 1939
A
WRITER'S CONCEPTION OF REALISM. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED ON JANUARY 20,
1939, AT OLIVET COLLEGE, 1939
HOME TOWN, 1940
(photographs by Farm Security Photographers)
SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S MEMOIRS, 1942 (edited by Paul
Rosenfeld)
THE SHERWOOD ANDERSON READER, 1947 (edited by Paul
Rosenfeld)
THE PORTABLE SHERWOOD ANDERSON, 1949 (edited by Horace
Gregory)
LETTERS OF SHERWOOD ANDERSON, 1953
SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S SHORT STORIES, 1962 (edited by Maxwell
Geismar)
RETURN TO WINESBURG: SELECTIONS FROM FOUR YEARS OF WRITING FOR A
COUNTRY NEWSPAPER, 1967 (edited by Ray Lewis
White)
SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S MEMOIRS: A CRITICAL EDITION, 1969 (edited by
Ray Lewis White)
THE BUCK FEVER PAPERS, 1971 (edited by Welford Dunaway
Taylor)
SHERWOOD ANDERSON / GERTRUDE STEIN: CORRESPONDANCE AND PERSONAL
ESSAYS, 1972 (edited by Ray Lewis White)
THE 'WRITER'S BOOK', 1975 (a critical edition by Martha Mulroy
Curry)
FRANCE AND SHERWOOD ANDERSON: PARIS NOTEBOOK, 1921,
1976
SHERWOOD ANDERSON, THE WRITER AT HIS CRAFT, 1979 (edited by Jack
Salzman, David D. Anderson, and Kichinosuke
Ohashi)
TELLER'S TALES, 1983 (selection and introduction by Frank
Gado)
SELECTED LETTERS, 1984 (edited by Charles E.
Modlin)
LETTERS TO BAB: SHERWOOD ANDERSON TO MARIETTA D. FINLEY,
1916-33, 1985 (edited by William A. Sutton)
THE SHERWOOD ANDERSON DIARIES, 1936-1941 (edited by Hilbert H.
Campbell)
SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S LOVE LETTERS TO ELANOR COPERHAVER ANDERSON,
1989 (edited by Charles E. Modlin)
SHERWOOD ANDERSON: EARLY WRITINGS, 1989 (edited by Ray Lewis
White)
SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S SECRET LOVE LETTERS: FOR ELEANOR, A LETTER A
DAY, 1991 (edited with an introduction by Ray Lewis
White)
CERTAIN THINGS LAST: THE SELECTED SHORT STORIES OF SHERWOOD
ANDERSON, 1992 (edited and introduced by Charles E.
Modlin)
SOUTHERN ODYSSEY: SELECTED WRITINGS OF SHERWOOD ANDERSON, 1997
(edited by Welford Dunaway Taylor and Charles E.
Modlin)
AMERICAN SPRING SONG: THE SELECTED POEMS OF SHERWOOD ANDERSON,
2007 (edited by Stuart Downs)
