舍伍德·安德森

舍伍德·安德森（Sherwood Anderson，1876年9月13日—1941年3月8日），美国小说家。他的代表作是短篇小说集《俄亥俄州的温士堡镇》（又译《小城畸人》）。欧内斯特·海明威、威廉·福克纳、约翰·斯坦贝克、杰罗姆·大卫·塞林格以及阿摩斯·奥兹等作家都受到他的影响。

作品

舍伍德·安德森的第一部小说《饶舌的麦克佛逊的儿子》在1916年发表，三年之后，他发表了他第二部主要作品《前进的人》。他是以1919年发表的《俄亥俄州的温士堡镇》小说集成名的，这部小说集由互相关联的短篇组成。安德森自己认为《俄亥俄州的温士堡镇》中的第一篇小说《手》是他写的第一篇“真正”的小说。

1920年，他发表了《穷白人》。 1923年，他发表了《多种婚姻》，作者在之后的小说里也贯彻了这部小说里的主题。有一些人对这部小说提出异议，但大部分评论家对其持正面评价。比如菲茨杰拉德认为《多种婚姻》是安德森最好的一部小说。

1924年之后，安德森搬到了朋塔巴大厅住，他加入了在新奥尔良的杰克逊广场的文人圈子。在那里，他和他的妻子碰到了威廉·福克纳，卡尔·桑德堡，埃德蒙德·威尔逊等文学名人。1925，他根据他在新奥尔良的经历写了《阴沉的笑》，但海明威在《春潮（The Torrents of Spring）》里批评了这部小说。

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, his only bestseller was Dark Laughter (1925), a novel inspired by Anderson's time in the American army in Cuba, his residing in New Orleans during the 1920s, his employment as a factory worker and in advertising, and his life in the small-town midwest. Dark Laughter remains of contemporary interest with its Joyce-influenced shifting points of view.

Early life

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). He was the third of seven children born to Emma Jane (née Smith) and former Union soldier and harness-maker Irwin McLain Anderson. Considered reasonably well-off financially, Anderson's father was seen as an up-and-comer by his Camden contemporaries, but the family left town just before Sherwood's first birthday. Reasons for the departure are uncertain; most biographers note rumors of debts incurred by either Irwin or his brother Benjamin. The Andersons headed north to Caledonia by way of a brief stay in a village of a few hundred called Independence (now Butler). Four or five years were spent in Caledonia, years that formed Anderson's earliest memories. This period later inspired his semi-autobiographical novel Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926). In Caledonia Anderson's father began drinking excessively, which led to financial difficulties, eventually causing the family to leave the town.

With each move, Irwin Anderson's prospects dimmed; while in Camden he was the proprietor of a successful shop and could employ an assistant, but by the time the Andersons finally settled down in Clyde, Ohio, in 1884, Irwin could get work only as a hired man to harness manufacturers. That job was short-lived, and for the rest of Sherwood Anderson's childhood, his father barely supported the family as an occasional sign-painter and paperhanger, while his mother took in washing to make ends meet. Partly as a result of these misfortunes, young Sherwood became adept at finding various odd jobs to help his family, earning the nickname "Jobby".

Though he was a decent student, Anderson's attendance at school declined as he began picking up work, and he finally left school for good at age 14 after about nine months of high school. From the time he began to cut school to the time he left town, Anderson worked as a "newsboy, errand boy, waterboy, cow-driver, stable groom, and perhaps printer's devil, not to mention assistant to Irwin Anderson, Sign Painter", in addition to assembling bicycles for the Elmore Manufacturing Company. Even in his teens, Anderson's talent for selling was evident, a talent he would later draw on in a successful career in advertising. As a newsboy he was said to have convinced a tired farmer in a saloon to buy two copies of the same evening paper.

In addition to participating in local events and spending time with his friends, Anderson was a voracious reader. Though there were only a few books in the Anderson home, the youth read widely by borrowing from the school library (there was not a public library in Clyde until 1903) and the personal libraries of a school superintendent and of John Tichenor, a local artist, who responded to Anderson's interest.