The Ohio ad man who walked out of his office, wrote Winesburg, Ohio, and sent the young Hemingway to Paris with letters of introduction.
Sherwood Anderson came to literature the long way: born in small-town Ohio in 1876, he was a paint-company manager and advertising man until his late thirties, when he famously walked out of his office mid-sentence and chose writing. Winesburg, Ohio (1919) — a cycle of linked stories about the night-time confessions of a small town — arrived like plain speech in a parlor of rhetoric, and the younger generation heard it instantly.
He mattered to Paris without ever living there. In Chicago in 1921 he befriended an unknown Ernest Hemingway and did him the greatest favour of his life: letters of introduction to Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach, which opened the doors of literary Paris before Hemingway had published a book. Anderson's own visits — staying in a little Left Bank hotel in the shadow of the Odéon, walking daily through the Luxembourg Gardens — were recorded warmly by Sisley Huddleston, who found him arguing that European elegance concealed a poverty crueller than anything in his native villages.
The pupils outgrew the teacher loudly — Hemingway parodied him in The Torrents of Spring (1926), and Faulkner, whose first novel Anderson had walked to a publisher, mocked him too — but both said versions of the same thing later: he was the father of their generation of American writers. He kept writing and traveling until his death in 1941, en route to South America.
Born in Camden, Ohio, 13 September — third of seven, raised through the small towns that became the material.
The famous walkout: president of an Elyria paint company, he stops mid-dictation, walks out of the office, and surfaces days later in Cleveland, dazed — a breakdown he retold ever after as a conversion.
Winesburg, Ohio — the linked 'grotesques' that quietly rewired the American short story.
Paris with Paul Rosenfeld — calls at 27 rue de Fleurus; back in Chicago, meets an unknown twenty-two-year-old named Hemingway and writes him the letters of introduction that opened literary Paris.
Dark Laughter — his one bestseller.
The pupil declares independence: Hemingway's The Torrents of Spring parodies him at book length. Anderson took it better than most masters would have.
Buys both weekly newspapers in Marion, Virginia — Republican and Democrat — and edits the pair of them himself.
Dies at Colón, Panama, 8 March, en route to South America — peritonitis from a swallowed toothpick at a farewell party; an exit his own stories might have written.
It’s no good. One of my books was, in fact, published in England a few years ago, but it was kept a deadly secret. Nobody knows of it except myself, the publisher, and God.
But ‘Winesburg, Ohio’ sold only a few thousand copies, and ‘A Story-Teller’s Story’ not many more.
Met · 1921
Chicago, 1921: the established author befriended the young reporter and wrote the letters of introduction — to Stein, to Beach — that opened literary Paris. Hemingway repaid the debt with a parody novel; the friendship did not survive the joke.
Met · 1921
Anderson arrived in Paris in 1921 already an admirer and became one of the few writers Stein counted a true friend — the Autobiography sets him apart, and his preface to her Geography and Plays repaid the esteem.
Met · 1921
Anderson was one of the household's favorite guests from his first 1921 visit — the Autobiography counts him among the few writers both women considered a real friend.
The first model: the plain Midwestern sentences and buried feeling Hemingway learned from in Chicago — a debt he repaid, characteristically, by parodying it in The Torrents of Spring to break the apprenticeship in public.
The linked-story cycle that started the American century — read 'The Book of the Grotesque' first and the town opens from there. Public domain, and free to read.
Small-town Ohio after dark — the linked stories that taught American fiction to speak plainly, from the writer who sent Hemingway to Paris.
A farm town in Ohio turns into a factory town inside twenty years, and the man whose machines did it cannot manage a conversation. Sherwood Anderson's novel of 1920.
An American writer (1876–1941), best known for Winesburg, Ohio. An Ohio advertising man who walked out of his office to write, he became an early model for a generation of plainer American prose.
Winesburg, Ohio (1919), a cycle of linked short stories about a small town. Its plain sentences and buried feeling influenced younger writers, Hemingway among them.
Anderson befriended the young Hemingway in Chicago in 1921 and wrote the letters of introduction — to Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach — that opened literary Paris to him. Hemingway later parodied Anderson's style in The Torrents of Spring, and the friendship did not survive the joke.
Yes. He visited in 1921 already an admirer of Gertrude Stein, and became one of the few writers she and Alice B. Toklas counted a true friend.
Yes — his plain Midwestern sentences were an early influence Hemingway learned from in Chicago, a debt Hemingway acknowledged even as he broke from it in public.
Influenced
The first model: the plain Midwestern sentences and buried feeling Hemingway learned from in Chicago — a debt he repaid, characteristically, by parodying it in The Torrents of Spring to break the apprenticeship in public.
Met · 1921
Chicago, 1921: the established author befriended the young reporter and wrote the letters of introduction — to Stein, to Beach — that opened literary Paris. Hemingway repaid the debt with a parody novel; the friendship did not survive the joke.
Met · 1921
Anderson arrived in Paris in 1921 already an admirer and became one of the few writers Stein counted a true friend — the Autobiography sets him apart, and his preface to her Geography and Plays repaid the esteem.
Met · 1921
Anderson was one of the household's favorite guests from his first 1921 visit — the Autobiography counts him among the few writers both women considered a real friend.