W.E.A. LITERATURE CLASS

Evening Star, Issue 24280, 22 August 1942, Page 3

W.E.A. LITERATURE CLASS

•' Sherwood Anderson died last year,” said Mrs Dunninghafn to the W.E.A. Literature Class, “but he is not strictly a contemporary writer. He belongs to the generation of Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair, pioneers of modern American fiction. Of these writers Sherwood Anderson had by far the greatest influence on his fellow writers. John Steinbeck and Erskine Caldwell derive from him to some extent. From him Hemingway learnt the use, of colloquial language as a literary form. From him -William Faulkner learnt the technique of subjective realism. What Sherwood Anderson innovated "has since been done so well by writers with greater intelligence and technical ability that he to-day seems a little out of date. “ Sherwood Anderson writes of the American Middle West—a frontier community in which the frontier days are over and new values have not developed. Culturally and spiritually this fertile land is a wilderness. In the small towns which ‘ Winesburg, Ohio,' epitomises, ‘ atrophied personalities stink to heaven.’ Almost all his stories were studies of frustrated characters. This short story sequence published in 1919, was a landmark in the history of American literature and the American short story. In reading Anderson’s tales of small-town life one is often reminded of New Zealand. It is easy to understand that he has been an influence on the work of Frank Savgeson.

" Anderson’s best novel is ‘ Poor White,’ the story of the transformation of a small town from the age of craftsmanship to modern industrialisation and of the development of a human being from a degenerate poor white boy to a technical inventor and a conscious thinking adult. ‘Dark Laughter’ wins him the title of ‘ The American D, H. Lawrence.’ It is an American version of ‘Lady Chaltcrley’s Lover,’ but Anderson has neither the technique nor the clear perception adequately to convey what Lawrence has expressed with consummate artistry.”