Synopses & Reviews
Sherwood Anderson, an important American novelist and short-story writer of the early twentieth century, is probably best known for his novel
Winesburg, Ohio. His realistic and nonformulaic writing style would influence the next generation of authors, most notably Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.
Walter Rideout’s Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America is a seminal work that reintroduces us to this important, yet recently neglected, American writer, giving him long overdue attention. This second volume of the monumental two-volume work covers Anderson’s life after his move in the mid-1920s to “Ripshin,” his house near Marion, Virginia (where Volume 1 ended.) The second volume covers his return to business pursuits; his extensive travels in the South touring factories, which resulted in his political involvement in labor struggles and several books on the topic; and finally his unexpected death in 1941.
No other existing Anderson biography, the most recent of which was published nearly twenty years ago, is as thoroughly researched, so extensively based on primary sources and interviews with a range of Anderson’s friends and family members, or as complete in its vision of the man and the writer. Rideout uncovers much new information about events and people in Anderson’s life and provides a new perspective on many of his works. This two-volume biography presents Anderson’s many remarkable attributes more clearly than ever before, while astutely placing his life and writings in the broader social, political, and artistic movements of his times.
Outstanding Book, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine
Winner, Biography Award, Society of Midland Authors
Review
Praise for Volume 1:
This will surely be the definitive biography of Anderson for beyond the foreseeable future. A perusal of the endnotes shows that some of Rideouts interviews and research go back 50 years. It is difficult to believe that anyone else will put this much labor into Andersons life. Indeed, this book is not just praiseworthy as a superb portrayal of its subject. It is a testamenteven a throwbackto the sort of dedicated, painstaking literary scholarship that is rarely seen anymore in our technophilic age."Roger K. Miller, Chicago Sun-Times
Review
"The ultimate biographical work on Anderson."Welford D. Taylor, University of Richmond
Synopsis
Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America is the definitive biography of this major American writer of novels and short stories, whose work includes the modern classic Winesburg, Ohio. In the first volume of this monumental two-volume work, Walter Rideout chronicles the life of Anderson from his birth and his early business career through his beginnings as a writer and finally to his move in the mid-1920s to Ripshin, his house near Marion, Virginia. The second volume will cover Anderson's return to business pursuits, his extensive travels in the South touring factories, which resulted in his political involvement in labor struggles and several books on the topic, and finally his unexpected death in 1941.
No other existing Anderson biography, the most recent of which was published nearly twenty years ago, is as thoroughly researched, so extensively based on primary sources and interviews with a range of Anderson friends and family members, or as complete in its vision of the man and the writer. The result is an unparalleled biography--one that locates the private man, while astutely placing his life and writings in a broader social and political context.
Synopsis
A North African port city that was home to as many Europeans as Moroccans, postwar Tangier was truly an international zone, a place where the familiar boundaries of language, culture, nationality, and sexuality blurred, and anything seemed possible. In the 1950s and 1960s three leading American writers settled in Tangier, where they were able to find critical new ways of living and writing on the margins of society. A subtle literary portrait of Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, and Alfred Chester, Colonial Affairs is also a complex and perceptive account of the ways colonialism and sexuality structure each other, particularly as reflected in the literature written in postwar Tangier.
About the Author
Walter B. Rideout is professor emeritus of English at the University of WisconsinMadison, coeditor of Letters of Sherwood Anderson, and author of The Radical Novel in the United States, 19001954, for which he received the Robert F. Ferguson Award of the Friends of Literature.