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"Those who are to
follow the arts should have a training in what is called poverty. Given a
comfortable middle-class start in life, the artist is almost sure to end
up being a belly-acher, constantly complaining because the public does not
rush forward at once to proclaim him."
--excerpt from Sherwood Anderson's autobiography: A Story Teller's Story
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Sherwood Anderson 1876 - 1941 |
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Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio, the son of a saddle and harness maker.
His education was irregular, and he worked various jobs to help support
the family. When Anderson was seventeen, he joined the Army, serving in
Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Following his duty in the Army, he
was a factory manager in an Ohio plant, but dissatisfied, he walked out
one day and moved to Chicago where his brother, a painter, lived. In
Chicago he met the "Chicago group" of writers that included Carl Sandburg.
It was this group that encouraged Anderson’s writing. In 1921 he moved to
New York where he wrote for several periodicals. It was that year, 1921, that Anderson made one of his two trips to Paris. He and his wife went with Paul Rosenfeld, the benefactor of the trip. He was forty-five years old then, and although he was not a best seller, he did have a solid literary reputation, having published his two most famous works, Winesburg, Ohio in 1919 and Poor White in 1920. Anderson did not consider himself an expatriate at all, but rather found that the trip strengthened his already held views. He mistrusted literary groups and movements, more especially writers who preferred talking to writing. There were two important results of this Paris trip, however. One was that he wrote A Story Teller’s Story, and the second was that he met Gertrude Stein. The two were to have a long and close friendship. He often wrote in praise of her work. He also gave Stein credit for "rebuilding…the city of words." (DLB 4, p. 11) Anderson never viewed Stein as an expatriate, but as a wanderer, an American writer "attempting to do something for the writers of…English speech."(DLB 4, p.13) In 1925 Anderson bought a farm in Grays County, Virginia. There he edited two weekly papers. He made a second trip to Paris in 1926-1927; it was very disagreeable to him. His health was not good and he complained about other ill-tempered Americans there. He died March 8, 1941, while on a South American cruise. Sources used: Cox, Leland H. Jr. "Sherwood Anderson," Dictionary of Literary Biography (1980 ed.), IV, 10-13. "Sherwood Anderson," Encyclopedia Americana (2001 ed.), I, 809-810.
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