SHERWOOD ANDERSON, WRITING AFTER A BREAKDOWN

Today, The Grandma has been reading some books written by one of her favourite writers,  the American novelist Sherwood Anderson, who was born on a day like today in 1876.

Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876-March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and Elyria, Ohio.

In 1912, Anderson had a nervous breakdown that led him to abandon his business and family to become a writer.

At the time, he moved to Chicago and was eventually married three additional times. His most enduring work is the short-story sequence Winesburg, Ohio, which launched his career. Throughout the 1920s, Anderson published several short story collections, novels, memoirs, books of essays, and a book of poetry. Though his books sold reasonably well, Dark Laughter (1925), a novel inspired by Anderson's time in New Orleans during the 1920s, was his only bestseller.

Sherwood Berton Anderson was born on September 13, 1876, at 142 S. Lafayette Street in Camden, Ohio, a farming town with a population of around 650, according to the 1870 census.

Anderson suffered the breakdown that has remained paramount in the myth or legend of his life.

On Thursday, November 28, 1912, Anderson came to his office in a slightly nervous state. But even before returning home, Anderson began his lifelong practice of reinterpreting the story of his breakdown.

While diagnoses for the four days of Anderson's wanderings have ranged from amnesia to lost identity to nervous breakdown, his condition is generally characterized today as a fugue state. Anderson himself described the episode as escaping from his materialistic existence, and was admired for his action by many young male writers who chose to be inspired by him.

Anderson's first novel, Windy McPherson's Son, was published in 1916 as part of a three-book deal with John Lane. This book, along with his second novel, Marching Men (1917), are usually considered his apprentice novels because they came before Anderson found fame with Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and are generally considered inferior in quality to works that followed.

In 1920, he published Poor White, which was rather successful.

In 1923, Anderson published Many Marriages; in it he explored the new sexual freedom, a theme which he continued in Dark Laughter and later writing. Dark Laughter had its detractors, but the reviews were, on the whole, positive. F. Scott Fitzgerald considered Many Marriages to be Anderson's finest novel.

In his later years, Anderson lived on his Ripshin Farm in Troutdale, Virginia, which he purchased in 1927 for use during summers. While living there, he contributed to a country newspaper, columns that were collected and published posthumously.

Just weeks before his death, Anderson started on a radio script for The Free Company, a group of which Anderson was a founding member in early 1941. The Free Company consisted of a group of prominent writers and Hollywood and stage stars which is presenting a series of thirteen radio plays dealing with Civil Liberties over the Columbia Broadcasting System. Anderson drafted the story titled Above Suspicion, but died before finishing the radio play. Members of the company completed the script, and produced it May 4, 1941, in tribute to his memory.

Anderson died on March 8, 1941, at the age of 64, taken ill during a cruise to South America. His epitaph reads, Life, Not Death, Is the Great Adventure.

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That in the beginning when the world
was young there were a great many thoughts
but no such thing as truth.
Man made the truths himself and each truth
was a composite of a great many vague thoughts.
All about in the world were truths
and they were all beautiful.

Sherwood Anderson