Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A classic American book
Sherwood Anderson's one great book contains the moving stories of the odd characters of one small American Midwest tone. His exact and lyrical pictures of this world gave new meaning to the depiction of the everyday in American Literature. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Sherwood Anderson, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 8378 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
In the restaurant the young man began talking of himself. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. His father had died while he was yet in school and had left him a modest fortune, upon the income of which he lived with his mother. He did no work and was enormously proud of the fact. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
They got to the entrance to the apartment building and stepped into a dark hallway. Then quite suddenly and apparently without thought the man took a knife out of his pocket. "Suppose that man who darted into the alleyway had intended to kill us," he thought. Opening the knife he whirled about and struck at his wife. He struck twice, a dozen times-- madly. There was a scream and his wife's body fell. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank on the western shore of the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town - called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing" - was almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived. They were chronically dis-couraged, and the merchants and artisans of the town were in the same state. The merchants, who ran their stores - poor tumble-down ramshackle affairs - on the credit system, could not get pay for the goods they handed out over their counters and the artisans, the shoemakers, carpenters and harnessmakers, could not get pay for the work they did. Only the town's two saloons prospered. The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as the men of the town and the farmers who drove into town felt that without drink life was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of getting drunk. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

no title
" The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far from the old sweet things."
This quote from the book sums up its core philosophy very nicely.Surely this is Anderson's best book, also depressing, but not as much as "Winesburg, Ohio", and quite sweet in its depiction of a life now lost.Anderson must have deeply loved the country and its farms to have described it so wondrously.And his skill in depicting even the most minute of characters is quite remarkable.This ability to draw out of the smallest things such vivid detail, is really outstanding.I liked this book very much and would almost wish to return to those "old sweet things".He really abhored the machine age and, as in "Winesburg", all his people, especially Clara and Hugh, are abysmal at trying to connect with their fellow human beings.Created with a lot of suspense.

Excellent tale of America's transition to industrialism!
If you thought that Winesburg Ohio was good, then you'll absolutely love Poor White.It has a similar feel as Winesburg, except this story revolves around two main characters, Hugh McVey and Clara Butterworth.Poor Whitetells of how the spread of industrialism affected the agrarian towns of theMidwest.

An important document of America's changing landscape.
Sherwood Anderson captures America's change from agrarian to industrial, with insightful and poetic writing. This is a perfect companion to Anderson's best-known work (Winesburg, Ohio) as well as to the many non-fiction books on the same topic (The Machine in the Garden, etc.). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Stories that interrelate in surprising, often brilliant ways
When I discovered this book, I was already writing a story cycle of my own, The Acorn Stories. Winesburg, Ohio became a strong influence on that book, and also led me to write New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio. In Sherwood Anderson's acclaimed story cycle, a small town finds itself entering the twentieth century with loneliness and confusion. The same industrialism that Anderson would explore so well in his novel Poor White also asserts itself constantly here, turning a beautiful landscape into a sometimes desecrated one.

The young reporter George Willard appears in most of the stories, providing a connection for people who feel they lack connection and a voice for people who feel they lack a voice. Though many readers consider this book a bleak and disjointed novel, I consider it a collection of stories that interrelate in surprising, often brilliant ways. As for the bleak part, please also look at the many moments of comfort, the many sparks of inspiration.

I eventually lost track of how many times I read Winesburg, Ohio. I just know I'll read it again.

a benevolent look at the grotesque nature of human beings
This book from 1919 really deserves to be read more often and by more people.It is a collection of 23 linked short stories, and is prefaced by a very strange frame narration called "The Book of the Grotesque."Anderson's basic premise is that any time a person clings to a notion of truth, he or she becomes grotesque.This is an interesting rallying cry for cultural relativism, particularly given the time period in which it was written.The stories themselves, which tend to have a quiet, almost meditative tone reflective of small town life in the midwest, are subtle.They usually concern only one or two people in the town of Winesburg, and usually depict a point where the character goes wrong, usually because of stubbornly clinging to a misguided belief or idea.The stories are further linked by the young man George Willard, who for a while serves as the town's newspaper reporter.Highly recommended! ... Read more

Book Description
Sherwood Anderson, an important American novelist and short-story writer of the early twentieth century, is probably best known for his novel Winesburg, Ohio. His realistic and nonformulaic writing style would influence the next generation of authors, most notably Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.

Walter Rideout’s Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America is a seminal work that reintroduces us to this important, yet recently neglected, American writer, giving him long overdue attention. This second volume of the monumental two-volume work covers Anderson’s life after his move in the mid-1920s to “Ripshin,” his house near Marion, Virginia (where Volume 1 ended.) The second volume covers his return to business pursuits; his extensive travels in the South touring factories, which resulted in his political involvement in labor struggles and several books on the topic; and finally his unexpected death in 1941.

No other existing Anderson biography, the most recent of which was published nearly twenty years ago, is as thoroughly researched, so extensively based on primary sources and interviews with a range of Anderson’s friends and family members, or as complete in its vision of the man and the writer. Rideout uncovers much new information about events and people in Anderson’s life and provides a new perspective on many of his works. This two-volume biography presents Anderson’s many remarkable attributes more clearly than ever before, while astutely placing his life and writings in the broader social, political, and artistic movements of his times. ... Read more

Book Description
Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America is the definitive biography of this major American writer of novels and short stories, whose work includes the modern classic Winesburg, Ohio. In the first volume of this monumental two-volume work, Walter Rideout chronicles the life of Anderson from his birth and his early business career through his beginnings as a writer and finally to his move in the mid-1920s to “Ripshin,” his house near Marion, Virginia. The second volume will cover Anderson’s return to business pursuits, his extensive travels in the South touring factories, which resulted in his political involvement in labor struggles and several books on the topic, and finally his unexpected death in 1941.
No other existing Anderson biography, the most recent of which was published nearly twenty years ago, is as thoroughly researched, so extensively based on primary sources and interviews with a range of Anderson friends and family members, or as complete in its vision of the man and the writer. The result is an unparalleled biography—one that locates the private man, while astutely placing his life and writings in a broader social and political context.
... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (5)

Short Stories Must Be Finely Crafted
Anytime we get a chance to read something by one of Hemingway and Faulkner's mentors, it's bound to be a unique treat, but this book will surprise you if you haven't read Anderson before.His delicate use of pathos and delicious sense of humor feel so contemporary. We Loved "The Egg" especially as it seemed to capture the American entreprenurial spirit and its often discouraging results with an especially humorous irony. Faulkner was right--short stories require more of a writer, as every word must forward the author's intent, and Anderson's success here proves that, like Hemingway, he may have been a better short story writer than novelist.

GrandDaddy ofmodern American short fiction
Sherwood's ghost and his readers may not like the ugly pullet on the cover, but inside is a collection of wonderful writing and story-telling.If you write fiction, read it and learn.

Read "I'm a Fool" and see if Salinger was really so innovative after all.

Sherwood Anderson should be more well-known
I love reading short stories, and I think this is the best collection of stories I've ever read.I hope I get these titles right: I think especially notable are A Death In The Woods, The Corn Planting, Brother Death, The Other Woman, and The Masterpiece.There's not a bad story in here, and there are like 30 stories.I find Anderson's simple prose to be enchanting.His characterization is his strongest point; eighty years ago, he wrote characters to whom I can relate and understand today.

How do you define failure and success in life?
Sherwood Anderson knew the definition of such matters. In 'The Egg' (great story!), he uses allegory storytelling and an egg to create the definition of success in failure in rural America. The 'EGG' is representational ofpossibilities and oppurtunities, and creating that gilded goal so many lookfor, and in the story, sometimes lose focus of. A must read!

Read this book
Read this book. Sherwood Anderson was very good at what he did. The characters are real and covertly full of frustrations that would be difficult to write. The Egg itself is a wonderful story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Significant Authority on the Subject
Although I've never actually read this work, I can assure you as a student once instructed by Dr. Dunne at Central Connecticut State University, that he posesses an enormous amount of knowledge aboutAnderson's writings and their many contexts. You will not be disappointed! ... Read more