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Sherwood Anderson: An American Career
By John E. Bassett.
Susquehanna University Press, 2006. 146 pp. $38.50
John E. Bassett's latest critical book, Sherwood Anderson: An American Career, which heralds itself as the first critical study of the modernist Ohio author in more than a quarter of a century, is a well-timed publication. The text is a worthy companion book to the recently released comprehensive biography of Anderson, Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America, by Walter B. Rideout. The release of these books provides testament to the potential resurgence of interest in the life and letters of Anderson. Though his Winesburg, Ohio (1919) is a classic, innovative work of fiction, critical and popular interest in him has declined in recent years; as Bassett says, his new book reflects an effort to reinvigorate discussion of an author who "has been disappearing from literary histories of America?'
Sherwood Anderson: An American Career is organized chronologically, providing summary overviews of the entirety of Anderson's canon. Bassett describes the book as "a concise introduction to [the writer's] career," written for a "broad range of Anderson readers?' The book adds significantly to Anderson studies, being influenced by the various theoretical frameworks that gained popularity in the past twenty-five years: post structuralism, New Historicism, feminist theory, and race and gender criticism. These are aspects of Anderson's writing that have not been fully explored, and Bassett gives readers an important, fresh perspective on the writer's literary legacy.
In addition, Bassett's investigation further elaborates on trends and themes already established in Anderson studies:it traces several personal and creative tensions in Anderson's life, "as well as his continual search for sources of a new vitality to replace what had been sapped, he felt, by mechanization, standardization, urbanization, and conformity?'
Concise and straightforward, this book by Bassett both (re)introduces Anderson to the common reader and provides important critical insight into Anderson's artistic sensibilities for a critical audience. Calling Anderson a "Midwestern Emersonian' Bassett observes the writer "developing deliberately an American, and specifically Midwestern, literary career:' about which Ohio readers will be interested to learn.
Sherwood Anderson: An American Career is organized chronologically, providing summary overviews of the entirety of Anderson's canon. Bassett describes the book as "a concise introduction to [the writer's] career," written for a "broad range of Anderson readers?' The book adds significantly to Anderson studies, being influenced by the various theoretical frameworks that gained popularity in the past twenty-five years: post structuralism, New Historicism, feminist theory, and race and gender criticism. These are aspects of Anderson's writing that have not been fully explored, and Bassett gives readers an important, fresh perspective on the writer's literary legacy.
In addition, Bassett's investigation further elaborates on trends and themes already established in Anderson studies:it traces several personal and creative tensions in Anderson's life, "as well as his continual search for sources of a new vitality to replace what had been sapped, he felt, by mechanization, standardization, urbanization, and conformity?'
Concise and straightforward, this book by Bassett both (re)introduces Anderson to the common reader and provides important critical insight into Anderson's artistic sensibilities for a critical audience. Calling Anderson a "Midwestern Emersonian' Bassett observes the writer "developing deliberately an American, and specifically Midwestern, literary career:' about which Ohio readers will be interested to learn.
Michael C. Ryan <Top>
SU Press (570)372-4175/fax (570)372-4021 | Email: SUPress | Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA 17870