English practice 29

The following paragraphs may or may not be in the most logical order. Each paragraph is numbered in brackets, and question 59 will ask you to choose where Paragraph 2 should most logically be placed.

Sherwood Anderson the Pioneer

[1]

Sherwood Anderson saw his first novel, Windy McPherson's Son, published in 1916, but it was not until 1919 with the publication of his masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio that Anderson was pushed to the forefront of it⁴⁶ in American literature. The latter book, something between a short-story collection and a novel, helping⁴⁷ to inaugurate an age of a truly homespun American Modernism.

[2]

As other writers began to supplant him in the popular imagination, Anderson tireless⁴⁸ continued his literary experimentation until his death in 1941. In the contemporary popular imagination, Anderson's influence often appears to be⁴⁹ diminishing. But it takes only a few pages of Winesburg, Ohio or many of his other short stories, articles, and novels to see that Anderson is still very much with us today and that much of what we understand about ourselves as Americans was made clear to us only by the pen of the advertising man from Ohio.

[3]

Sherwood Anderson would be seen by a new generation of American writers as the first author to take a real step until⁵⁰ creating a type of literature that was in tune with something previously only associated with Europe. Anderson was able to fuse⁵¹ his sense of the passing of the Industrial Age in America with a type of uniquely American expression that sought to replace previous literary conventions with more local expressions of fragmentation and alienation.

[4]

With Winesburg, Ohio, Anderson inspired⁵² a younger group of writers, among whose ranks were Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, to embrace their American experiences and to express them in ways separate from those being expressed by European writers or American expatriates, as American writers living abroad were known.⁵³ When Winesburg, Ohio finally appeared in 1919, its general reception was positive, but limited⁵⁴ to those who were able to find copies of the book. Anderson's later books, such as Dark Laughter, would go on to sell many more copies.⁵⁵

[5]

In the 1920s, Anderson wrote some direct responses to the more explicit examples of literary Modernism in Europe. In the 1930s, Anderson wrote Beyond Desire But Anderson's most important contributions in the 1920s and 1930s are best felt indirectly through the works of the various writers⁵⁷ he inspired. Anderson was among the first to explore the troubled relationship between the city and the rural town, the direct style to which we so often apply the name, "American,"⁵⁸ and the idea that deeply intellectual concerns can be relevant to everyday people as much as they can to academics. Even today, Anderson's initial treatment of these themes remains an important starting point for anyone interested in American culture.