Sherwood Anderson Remembered

In 1912, Sherwood Anderson suffered the mental and artistic break that has since become a firmly embedded legend in American literary history. A successful businessman in Ohio, he began to speak incoherently while dictating a letter at his desk and walked out of his office, to be found four days later and a hundred miles away, disoriented and exhausted. Within weeks, he had quit his former life, moved to Chicago, and become the writer who would produce, among other works, Winesburg, Ohio, the landmark collection of stories which transformed American literature by disregarding the norms of realism and naturalism and foregrounding the lyrical voices of the isolated in a distinctive, modern way.

Anderson served as a mentor to writers like Faulkner and Hemingway early in their careers and befriended a remarkable number of American writers, among them, Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht, John Dos Passos, James T. Farrell, Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, and Anita Loos.

Anderson was notoriously elusive, and autobiographical accounts of his breakdown and life vary wildly. Sherwood Anderson Remembered offers an intimate account of Anderson and the impressions he made on his contemporaries. The anecdotes collected in this volume constitute some of the best and most vivid assessments of his personality and work available. Together they create a richly detailed account of an individual who left an indelible mark on those touched by his presence and his words.