January 16, 2006
A New Look at Sherwood Anderson
Clark President John Bassett's Book Reintroduces Uniquely American Author
Worcester,
Mass. - Clark University President John Bassett recently published "Sherwood
Anderson: An American Career" (Susquehanna University Press 2005). The
book is the first critical introduction to this important American writer in
almost 30 years.
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) has become one of the less well-known
American authors. In the book, Bassett re-evaluates Anderson's Winesburg,
Ohio and other novels and short stories, revealing their importance to American
literature.
Anderson was not just an American writer, Bassett says, but a
true Midwestern voice, a "puzzled observer" providing "penetrating
little pictures" of a country in rapid and self-conscious transition. "Anderson's
strength as a writer was his ability to capture a momentary glimpse of the lonely
individual affected by change in his world-change that he cannot understand
or control."
From the publisher: "The book pays more attention to his
non-fictional, autobiographical, and journalistic writing than do previous studies.
Drawing on unpublished manuscripts from the Newberry Library Anderson Papers,
Bassett is able to shed new light on Anderson's prolific career.
"In particular, Bassett focuses on Anderson's attempts
to cope with the cultural changes caused by mechanization, standardization,
urbanization, and conformity, a theme that takes on significance during our
time as well as the author's. Bassett reveals how Anderson tried to recapture
the vitality he felt was taken away by these cultural forces in various characters,
but was never able to fully accomplish this in more than an abstract sense.
This book argues that what Anderson did well few have done better, and that
in today's uncertainties that come from enormous advances in science and technology,
political and religious upheavals, demographic shifts, and unsettling ethical
challenges, Anderson's poignant impressions of the lonely soul and displaced
worker will take on new meanings and significance."
Bassett became Clark University president in 2000. As Professor
of English, he remains connected to the classroom, currently teaching a course
in Modern Poetry. He was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University
and taught at North Carolina State and Wayne State University. A native of Washington,
D.C., Bassett has a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and a B.A. from Ohio
Wesleyan. He has written widely on William Faulkner, Mark Twain, William Dean
Howells, Thomas Wolfe, the Harlem Renaissance, and Southern literature. His
previous books include Defining Southern Literature: Perspectives and Assessments,
1831-1952 (editor) (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) and Harlem in Review:
Critical Reactions to Black American Writers 1917-1939 (Susquehanna University
Press).
To learn more about "Sherwood Anderson: An American Career,"
visit Susquehanna University Press online at <<http://www.susqu.edu/su_press/>>.