Posts Tagged ‘Sherwood Anderson’
The Travail of His Soul: Sherwood Anderson and Elyria, Ohio–Part Three of a Series
A solitary figure walks along a railroad in late November of 1912. He is a slim, handsome, dark haired man of thirty-six. His dress shoes are scuffed and muddied; his tie is askew. He walks fixedly ahead, stopping here and there to look around him or up at the sun peeking from the edges of…
Read MoreA Salesman Who Got Control Of A Factory: Sherwood Anderson in Elyria, Ohio (Part II of a Series)
I eased my car beneath a railroad overpass, slowed down outside a chain link fence and stopped. A few scattered raindrops fell, and the occasional rubbery grind of the windshield wipers punctuated the engine’s steady purr. Before me loomed the bulk of the BASF chemical factory in Elyria, Ohio. There’s nothing here to indicate this…
Read MoreA High School Teaching Plan for “Winesburg, Ohio”
Recently I completed some coursework to renew my license to teach English language arts to grades seven through twelve in the state of Ohio. One of the courses I completed was on teaching American fiction, which involved assignments centered on two books. The books I chose were Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Willa Cather’s My Antonia.…
Read More“Winesburg, Ohio” at 100
In the fall of 1915, Sherwood Anderson was working as a copywriter in Chicago and living in a rented room that overlooked the Loop. Anderson enjoyed the view from his window and had moved his bed closer to it so he could see the vista of Chicago below him—the great Midwestern city where he had…
Read More1918: Some Books From A Century Ago
1918. On November 11 of this year the First World War finally came to an end. Millions had died in the conflict that began in August of 1914, and large sections of France and Belgium were nothing but wasteland after years of battle. But the end of the conflict was welcome news across the globe.…
Read MoreThe Undeveloped Man: Sherwood Anderson in Elyria, Ohio–Part One of a Series
Thanksgiving Day—November 28, 1912. In St. Louis, Missouri, Holy Cross and St. Louis University square off on the football field, while elsewhere in the city 4,000 pounds of turkey are provided to the city’s poor. Back east in New York City, Governor John Dix pardons Albert Patrick, one of the two men who in 1900…
Read More“Autumn” from Sherwood Anderson’s “Home Town”
Autumn—the mellow golden time of falling leaves, cider, apples, and pumpkins. The year’s decline and a farewell to summer’s heat and languor. Long hazy days, the time of “mist and mellow fruitfulness.” In the great Midwest the trees are in color and the corn and soy are harvested, leaving bare fields full of stubble to…
Read More“Winter” from Sherwood Anderson’s “Home Town”
Winter: the quiet time. A season of stillness after the autumn and the holidays. A time for snow, for cold, for long hours indoors as we await the spring’s return. Sometimes it’s raw and rainy. At other times the earth is blanketed with silence and snowfall, and some winters are mild, sometimes mild enough that…
Read More“Summer” From Sherwood Anderson’s “Home Town”
Summertime. The good ol’ summertime. Time for vacation, barbecues, long hours by the water. Corn on the cob and homegrown tomatoes, hot dogs and hamburgers, root beer and iced tea. The sounds of lawnmowers, kids splashing in the pool, a crowd at a baseball game. In my part of the midwest–southwestern Ohio– it can start…
Read More“Spring” from Sherwood Anderson’s “Home Town”
Sherwood Anderson published a book called Home Town shortly before departing for Latin America in March of 1941 to write articles for Reader’s Digest about Latin American nations and people. He was also traveling as a kind of unofficial goodwill ambassador for the U.S. State Department as the threat of war intensified for the United States. It…
Read More