Sherwood (Berton) Anderson - Biography, Quotations

Writer, born in Camden, Ohio, USA. He was raised in the small town of Clyde, Ohio. From age 14 his education was erratic, and after a succession of jobs he moved to Chicago. He served in the Spanish-American War (1898–9), then attended an academy in Springfield, OH. In 1900 he began working as a copywriter, then established his own mail-order company in Cleveland (1906). From his early years he despised business ethics and resented his dependence on business earnings. In 1912, suffering from an amnesic nervous breakdown, he walked out on his family and his job managing a paint factory. After his recovery he resumed his Chicago advertising work (1913–22), and after publishing two novels (1916, 1917) with the help of Theodore Dreiser and Carl Sandburg, he wrote Winesburg, Ohio (1919), the collection of stories that is considered his masterpiece. Later works include his finest novel, Poor White (1920), a further collection of stories The Triumph of the Egg (1921), and the novels Many Marriages (1923) and Dark Laughter (1925). He won the first Dial literary award (1921), and private patronage after 1922 enabled him to move to a farm in Marion, VA, where he bought and edited two local newspapers (1927–9). Although his standing among fellow writers remained high, the literary quality of his work declined greatly. Much of his late work, both journalistic and fictional, concerned Southern industrial conditions, and his roving reportage on the Depression was collected in Puzzled America (1935).

Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American writer, mainly of short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio.

Biography

He was born in Camden, Ohio, the third of Erwin M. Partly as a result of these events, Anderson was eager to take on odd jobs to help his family, earning him the nickname "Jobby", leaving school at 14.

He moved to Chicago near his brother Karl's home.

He fathered three children while living in Cleveland, Ohio, and later Elyria, where he managed a mail-order business and paint manufacturing firms.

In 1914, he divorced Cornelia Lane and married Tennessee Mitchell. That same year, his first novel, Windy McPherson's Son, was published.

Although his short stories, especially those mentioned, were very successful, he felt the need to write novels. In 1920, he published Poor White, a rather successful novel. He wrote various novels before divorcing Mitchell in 1922 and marrying Elizabeth Prall, two years later.

In 1923, Anderson published Many Marriages, the themes of which he would carry over into much of his later writing. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, considered Many Marriages Anderson's finest novel.

Beginning in 1924, Anderson lived in the historic Pontalba Apartments (540-B St. Peter Street) adjoining Jackson Square in New Orleans. Of Faulkner, in fact, he wrote his ambiguous and moving short story "A Meeting South," and, in 1925, wrote Dark Laughter, a novel rooted in his New Orleans experience. Although the book is now out of print (and was satirized by Ernest Hemingway in his novel The Torrents of Spring), it would be Anderson's only best-seller.

Anderson's third marriage also failed, and Anderson married Eleanor Copenhaver in the late 1920s.

He dedicated his 1932 novel Beyond Desire to Copenhaver. Although he was much less influential in this final writing period, many of Anderson's more significant lines of prose were present in these works, which were generally considered sub-par compared to his others.

He died in Panama of peritonitis after swallowing a toothpick at a party, aged 64.

Anderson's final home, known as Ripshin, still stands in Troutdale, Virginia, and may be toured by appointment.

Quotations

"Realism in so far as it means reality to life is always bad art."

"That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth.

"Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified."

"Few know the sweetness of the twisted apples."

"My freedom sleeps in a mulberry bush.