Southern Odyssey: Selected Writings by Sherwood Anderson - Hardcover

Anderson, Sherwood

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082031899X ISBN 13: 9780820318998

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 1997

Synopsis

Southern Odyssey contains the best of Sherwood Anderson's writings about the region where he spent the last sixteen years of his life. In more than forty selections of journalism and fiction, Anderson explores the people and problems of the South.

The pieces collected here present Anderson's perceptive vision of the South, combining his love for the region with the fresh observations of an outsider. His work reflects a range of issues that engaged all southerners at a crucial time in their history―the Great Depression, the influence of the New Deal, the painful transition from agriculture to mechanization, the struggle of labor to unionize, and the elemental divisions of race―always with an eye toward the human side of things.

Anderson's impressions and convictions concerning his southern experience encompassed more than its troubles, however. He also wrote of the splendor of a Shenandoah spring and the strength of character of the native people. Southern Odyssey is more than a personal record―it is a gallery of southern portraits, drawn in the style that distinguishes Anderson's prose at its best.

About this title

About the Author:

Sherwood Anderson (Author)
SHERWOOD ANDERSON (1876–1941) was a novelist, short-story writer, poet, dramatist, memoirist, and essayist. His best-known works include Winesburg, Ohio; Poor White; and Tar: A Midwest Childhood.

Welford Dunaway Taylor (Editor)
WELFORD DUNAWAY TAYLOR is Bostwick Professor of English at the University of Richmond.

Charles E. Modlin (Editor)
CHARLES E. MODLIN is a professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Anderson's writing on the South (where he lived late in his life), much of it obscure or previously unpublished, illuminates the writer more than the region. The selected fiction, essays, memoirs, and journalism, edited by Taylor (English/Univ. of Richmond) and Modlin (English/Virginia Polytechnic Inst.), offer insight into the artistic modus operandi of the author of Winesburg, Ohio and showcase the native Midwesterner's distrust of intellectualism. In ``How I Ran a Small-Town Newspaper,'' Anderson offers a prescription for journalism that represents a fair summation of his fictional technique: ``We . . . have too much the inclination toward what I think of as `big thinking' when what we really want and need is more color, more interest taken in just our own daily lives.'' Anderson practiced a uniquely lighthearted, creative brand of small-town journalism (inventing a fictional staff of reporters, including the famous Buck Fever) while challenging such hallowed southern givens as the purity of white womanhood and the opposition to all things northern. He himself engaged the big issues of the day--industrialization, unionization, and Depression hardship- -infrequently and only so far as they affected the daily lives of workers. The bulk of the material consists of humorous sketches and newspaper and magazine articles that are more impressionistic than objective. Anderson alternately romanticized the South (waxing lyrical about the dignity of poor whites and blacks, the beauty of southern nights) and defended the little folks--mill workers, tobacco farmers, hill people--he thought exploited by big business. Still, his outlook is basically optimistic, his approach evenhanded. As moderator of the famous 1930 debate between John Crowe Ransom (leader of the Agrarian movement) and Stringfellow Barr (a Virginia Quarterly editor who advocated industrialism), Anderson tellingly characterized himself as ``a little worm . . . in the fair apple of progress.'' A notable, if uneven, addition to the Anderson legacy. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 082031899X
• ISBN 13: 9780820318998
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280
• Editor: Taylor Welford Dunaway, Modlin Charles E.