Sherwood Anderson, 1876-1941

excerpt from Sherwood Anderson's autobiography: A Story Teller's Story

Sherwood Anderson is perhaps best known as a writer of short stories.  However, as David D. Anderson states in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, “In form, Winesburg, Ohio is perhaps most accurately called a short story sequence, a form developed by Anderson in this and later collections [The Triumph of the Egg] but Anderson later referred to the collection as a novel in a form invented by himself; although he called each of the individual sections a short story” (11).  In the same article, Sherwood Anderson himself is quoted, “What I wanted is a new looseness and in Winesburg I have made my own form.  There were individual tales but all about lives in some way connected” (11).  The collection of short stories is reminiscent of another work, as Frank Magill states in Critical Survey of Short Fiction, “The comparison to Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology is obvious, both works purport to reveal the secret lives of small town Americans living in the Middle West” (869).   As Magill indicates, Winesburg does have the setting of the Midwest.  In all actuality, many of Anderson’s works are set in the Midwest.  Not only is the Midwest the setting of many of his works but as DA Anderson states, “…he had found, too, his language, the easy rhythms of the American heartland” (7).  In association with the setting of the Midwest, Sherwood Anderson wrote about farming and the land.   He not only wrote about farming but the transition to industrialism.  In The Story Teller’s Story, Anderson’s autobiography, he writes “…an explosion at the mysterious hour of dawn, far down in the bowels of Mother Earth.  Old Mother Earth to be given an emetic of a stirring sort.  Forth would flow wealth, factories, the very New Age itself” (87). Conceding with this point, Irving Howe states in the article, “An American as Artist” in Twentieth Century Literary Criticism Volume I , “Unquestionably durable is Anderson’s testimony on the most dramatic social development in American life, the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society” (45).  In the article “Midwestern Fable in his Alms for Oblivion” in Twentieth Century Literary Criticism Volume I, Sherwood Anderson had some dislike for industry per Edward Dahlberg, “That is why he hated the machine, which can make the hands stupid and morose.  A workman turning a wheel all day long in a factory will lose patience with ordinary life” (56).   Anderson states in A Story Teller’s Story, “…all standardization is necessarily a standardization in impotence…Surely, individuality is ruinous to an age of standardization” (195-196). Anderson wrote about many of the changes that were occurring in the United States of his day. 

A literary device that Sherwood Anderson often used are what are referred to as grotesques, which NTC’s Dictionary of Literary Terms by Kathleen Morner and Ralph Rausch, defines as “…a kind of character, and to a subject matter, all characterized by exaggeration and distortion of the natural or the expected” (93).  Grotesques are mentioned in his work “The Egg”.    In that short story, a chicken farmer jars and preserves chickens that are deformed and calls them “grotesques.”  In “The Egg”, the farmer himself is a grotesque --Sherwood Anderson parallels the two, “Grotesques are born out of eggs as out of people…the grotesques were valuable...people, like to look at strange and wonderful things” (30-31).   Further elaboration of Sherwood Anderson’s idea of a grotesque is in the first story in Winesburg, which is entitled “The Book of the Grotesque”.  Sherwood Anderson describes a grotesque as “…in the beginning…there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth.  Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts…people came along and snatched the truths…It was the truths that made the people grotesques…the moment one…tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood” (5-6).  As DA Anderson states, “The Triumph of the Egg is about people, each of whom contains within his or her shell a human essence, but like the egg in the title story, each retains its secret inviolate.” (20).  This quote per DA Anderson not only applies to The Egg and Winesburg, but a theme that is common in Sherwood Anderson’s works--the breaking down of the wall (or shell) to allow release of one’s inner self.    As quoted from Sherwood Anderson in "After the Genteel Tradition" in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Volume I, this idea is further supported by Robert Morss Lovett, who states “A recurring theme … is the effort of the character to break down the wall which confines the individual in isolation from this general life which he shares with his fellows” (41).   The theme of breaking down the wall was very important to Anderson who dedicated Winesburg to his mother, “To the memory of my mother, EMMA SMITH ANDERSON, whose keen observations on the life about her first awoke in me the hunger to see beneath the surface of lives, this book is dedicated”. 

Much of what Sherwood Anderson wrote about paralleled his own life.  Ironically, considering all of his negativism about industry, per Kim Townsend from the American National Biography, he owned two companies—a mail-order company and a roofing company.  However, he escaped that wall, “Anderson made himself into a very different kind of man…he walked out of his office and wandered through the countryside in a ‘fugue state’, coming to his senses four days later…For several years he had been trying to write… [he joined] a group of artists and writers in what he would later call his ‘robin’s egg renaissance’.  The next year he published his first story” (Townsend 484). Per the article, Sherwood Anderson from Spokesman: Modern Writers and American Life from Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Volume I, T.K. Whipple bestows much weight to Anderson’s influence; “His work…has quite as much social as literary importance.  No other poet, novelist, or dramatist is so fully conscious of the American situation…His picture of human starvation and frustration...his suggestions concerning the way to a better and fuller life---all combine to lend him a unique significance” (40).    Sherwood Anderson broke out of his grotesque shell of a standard life to allow his readers into his creative soul. 

Bibliography

Anderson, David A,  "Sherwood Anderson", American Short-Story Writers, 1910-1945, First Series, Dictionary of Literary Biography: Volume Eighty-Six. Kimbel, Bobby Ellen (Editor), A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book, Gale Research Incorporated, Detroit, Michigan. 1989. (3-30).

This survey written by David D. Anderson, while quite lengthy, but was very informative. Printed in 1989, the information contained was useful.  It was well organized and covered all major aspects of Anderson's work and life.

Anderson, Sherwood, A Story Teller's Story, American Reprint Company, Post Office Box 1200, Mattituck, New York, 11952.

Anderson, Sherwood, Winesburg, Ohio, Bantam Classic Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York. 1995.

Bryfonski, Dedria and Mendelson, Phyllis Carmel (Editors), TwentiethCentury Literary Criticism Volume I, Gael Research Company, Book Tower, Detroit, Michigan.1978. (34-65).

These excerpts as were very helpful in the analysis of Sherwood Anderson's works and was being printed in 1978, was fairly timely.

Magill, Frank N (Editor), Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Authors (A-Dah), Volume 3,  Salem Press, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 1981. (867-874).

Magill, Frank N. (Editor), Magill's Survey of American Literature, Volume I, (Abbey- Cormer), Marshall Cavnedish Corporation, North Billmore, New York. 1991.  (61-68).

Morner Kathleen and Rausch Ralph, NTC's Dictionary of Literary Terms, NTC Publishing Group,Chicago, Illinois. 1987. (93).
 

Study Questions

1. Describe parallels between Sherwood Anderson and his father as described in Anderson's autobiography, "The Story Teller's Story". 
2. Describe the figurative language used about hands in the short story called "Hands" from "Winesburg, Ohio". 
3. "Grotesques" is a literary term which can mean a psychological or physical exaggeration in a character or setting.  Elaborate on Anderson's use of grotesques in "The Egg" and whether it is a psychological or physical exaggeration. 
4. Describe the Midwest as evidenced in Sherwood Anderson's works, including the setting, the characters and the speech. 
5. Discuss the walls that confine the "grotesques" from "Winesburg, Ohio" and elaborate on how George Willard was able to escape the walls. 

Major Works

• Windy McPherson's Son
•  Winesburg, Ohio 
• Poor White
•  The Triumph of the Egg 
• Horses and Men
• Many Marriages
• A Story Teller's Story
• Dark Laughter
• Tar, A Midwest Boyhood
• Beyond Desire
• Death in the Woods

Careers

• advertising solicitor
• mail-order business owner
• manufacturing company owner
• author

Family

• Father Irwin M. Anderson (storyteller)
• Mother Emma Sith Anderson (to whom Winesburg, Ohio is dedicated)
• First wife Cornelia Lane 
• Second wife Tennessee Mitchell
• Third wife Elizabeth Prall
• Fourth wife Eleanor Copenhaver

Homes

• Camden, Ohio
• Clyde, Ohio
• Chicago, Illinois
• Cuba
• Springfield, Ohio 
• Chicago, Illinois
• Elyria, Ohio
• Chicago, Illinois
• New Orleans, Louisiana
• Marion, Virginia
• Colon, Panama

Chronology

Links

 Winesburg Photo Album