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Shervud AndersonAmerican writer
Date of Birth: 13.09.1876
Country:  USA |
Content:
Biography of Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American writer who achieved his greatest literary triumph at the age of 45. By the time he turned 50, any literary critic or rival writer considered themselves entitled to walk all over Anderson's reputation. As a contemporary of Jack London and a contemporary of the belated American fashion for literary naturalism, Anderson was a typical self-taught writer without roots but with a desperate desire to write in a way that no one had done before in America. Along this path, he fell into all the traps that were set for him. His collection of stories, "Winesburg, Ohio," received critical acclaim but also effective anti-advertising: it was ceremoniously burned in the city of Salem, a stronghold of New England puritans. His books "Triumph of the Egg" and "Dark Laughter," which were released shortly after, revealed Anderson's rapid descent into self-repetition and the mass production of success. His novel "Marching Men," in which Anderson attempted to join the general movement of American literature, was a complete failure: elements of psychoanalysis and poorly understood Freudianism, applied to the description of the labor movement, gave birth to a sexually-industrial text that instantly became the object of parody.
A Talent for Artistic Expression
Sherwood Anderson was talented and original, but he belonged to the type of people that Americans call "neither top nor bottom," meaning neither successful nor complete failures, but without a taste of damnation - rather, he was a type of artistic nature, an artistic temperament. Anderson was indeed a dandy, he loved light wool coats, blue and light blue suits, red ties, and enjoyed telling extraordinary stories about himself. Memoirists accurately wrote about his dark, deep eyes, which he liked to give a dreamy expression, and about the naive sentimentality that broke through in this truth-telling writer. Anderson's younger contemporaries treated him unkindly - they ridiculed and rejected him. It was not ingratitude, but rather the semi-childish cruelty of young, strong boys towards an aging patron, a naive desire to shake off the hypnosis of authority and the feeling of dependence. Almost giving up literature, Anderson died shortly before America's entry into World War II. He never received full recognition - there are no prophets in his American homeland either.
