Anderson, Sherwood (1876-1941)

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Anderson, Sherwood (1876-1941)

Although Sherwood Anderson had a relatively brief literary career, publishing his first novel when he was forty years old, he has left an indelible mark on American literature. His critique of modern society and avant-garde prose served as a model for younger writers of the so-called "Lost Generation," who for a time venerated Anderson for his rather dramatic departure from mainstream family and corporate life for one of nonconformity and cultural rebellion. He is considered today one of the most important figures in twentieth century American fiction—one who combined turn-of-the-century realism with an almost poetic introspection into the frailties and uncertainties of modern man.

Such a career seemed unlikely for Anderson initially. Born in Camden, Ohio, in 1876, he came of age in the small Ohio town of Clyde before attending Wittenberg Academy in Springfield, Ohio. As a boy, Anderson was known around town for his dreams of someday shedding his modest surroundings to make a fortune in the business world—not unusual for a boy growing up in the late nineteenth century—but in his case such entrepreneurial spirit earned him the nickname "jobby" among his peers for his willingness to take on any and all types of employment to earn a dollar. In 1900, he put his plans into action by moving to Chicago and taking a job in advertising. He married, began a family, then moved to Elyria, Ohio, to become president of a company specializing in roofing materials.

Yet while Anderson pursued his fortune, his desire to write began to conflict with his career. He had developed an appreciation for letters while in college and considered himself talented enough to become a successful author, but had decided that his business plans were more important. In Chicago, he had in some ways enjoyed the best of both worlds—his work in advertising had allowed him to combine artistic creativity and business acumen; life in Ohio seemed stultifying and colorless in comparison. Over time, his frustration became more than he could bear, and in 1912, at the age of thirty-six, Anderson experienced a mental breakdown which left him wandering the streets of Cleveland in a disoriented state for days. Following this crisis, he left his wife and three children and moved back to Chicago to begin a new life as a writer. With a few manuscripts in hand, he made contact with publisher Floyd Dell, who saw potential in Anderson's writing and introduced him to members of Chicago's literary crowd such as Carl Sandburg and Margaret Anderson.

Dell also gave Anderson his first opportunity to see his writing in print, initially in the literary journal Little Review and later in the Masses, a radical magazine of which Dell served as an editor. Soon he was publishing short stories and poems in the noted journal Seven Arts, published by Waldo Frank, Frank Oppenheim, and Van Wyck Brooks. His first book, Windy McPherson's Son (1916), was a autobiographical account of a young man who escapes his empty life in a small Iowa town by moving to the city, makes a fortune as a robber baron, yet continues to yearn for fulfillment in what he views as a sterile and emotionally barren existence. Critics applauded the book for its critical examination of mainstream, corporate America; it was also a precursor to other works of the genre such as Sinclair Lewis's Main Street.

With the publication of his first book, Anderson established himself firmly in Chicago's literary scene. However, it was his third book, Winesburg, Ohio (1919), that catapulted him into national notoriety. A series of character sketches, most of which appeared in the Masses and Seven Arts, Winesburg, Ohio describes the experiences of individuals in a small midwestern town—"grotesques," as he called them, who base their lives on the existence of exclusive truth yet who live in a world devoid of such. To exacerbate the frustrated lives of his characters, he gave each one a physical or emotional deformity, preventing any of them from having positive relations with the outside world, and making the book both a critique of small town life and the modern age generally. Attracted to writers such as Gertrude Stein, who experimented with unconventional structure and style, Anderson used a disoriented prose to illustrate the precarious lives of his characters.

Critics and writers alike hailed Winesburg, Ohio as a pioneering work of American literature, and the book influenced a generation of writers attracted both to Anderson's style and his themes. The novel was the first of several works of fiction which stressed the theme of society as a "wasteland," such as works by T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. Fitzgerald and Hemingway, along with William Faulkner, also sought to emulate Anderson's avant-garde style in their own works. For a short time, a number of young writers looked up to Anderson, whose age and experience, along with his unconventional lifestyle, served as a model for anyone who sought to critique and rebel against the norms of modern society.

Anderson's popularity proved fleeting, however. He published a few other novels, including Poor White (1920) and The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions from American Life in Tales and Poems (1921), but none enjoyed the success of his earlier works. Critics have paid considerable attention to his numerous autobiographical works, most notably Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926) and A Story Teller's Story (1924), for their unconventional methodology. Believing that an individual's vision of himself, even if rooted in imagination, is more important than verifiable facts, he warned readers that at times he intentionally sacrificed factual accuracy for psychological disclosure, a device which has contributed to considerable confusion regarding his early life. Despite his rather rapid decline in popularity, and also despite the numerous critiques of his works appearing in later years which show that at times his talents were perhaps overrated, Anderson's influence on younger writers of his time establishes him as a central figure in twentieth-century fiction.

—Jeffrey W. Coker