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Sherwood Anderson

(1876 - 1941)

An Apology for Crudity

I have believed for a long time that crudity is an inevitable quality in American literature. Try living with us, read our newspapers, listen to our conversations, and remember that we who write...

7 min read · Rating: G · Read story

An Awakening

Belle Carpenter had dark skin, grey eyes and thick lips, and worked in the millinery shop kept by Mrs. Nate McHugh. She occasionally walked out with George Willard, and let him kiss her to relieve...

17 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

Brothers

The old man told me that the actress was his sister-in-law, and that he loved a girl who worked in the office of the factory where he was. The three people sat in silence for an hour or two before...

18 min read · Rating: G · Read story

I'm A Fool

A hard jolt for me began when my mother cried and my sister stormed the house all during the week before I left. I got the place with Harry and Burt fine, and he taught me a lot of valuable...

25 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

Hands

Tender portrait of a man known as Wing Biddlebaum who's hands have played a particularly significant role in his life.

12 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

I Want to Know Why

Hanley Turner found a nigger we knew, Bildad, who liked horses and told us about things to eat and places to sleep. We went to the races with Bildad and kept still. A lot of men from home were at...

21 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

Motherhood

The wind rustled the dry leaves of a walnut tree on top of the hill, and a dog barked in the road before the house. A wagon came jolting and bumping over the frozen road, and a young man from a...

3 min read · Rating: G · Read story

Seeds

A small man with a beard was trying to cure people of illness by the method called psychoanalysis. I put the case in my own way and he shook me. A woman from Iowa took a room in a house on the...

15 min read · Rating: G · Read story

Paper Pills

Doctor Reefy was an old man with a white beard and huge nose and hands. After his wife's death he sat all day in his empty office close by a window covered with cobwebs. Doctor Reefy, who had worn...

6 min read · Rating: G · Read story

Senility

A well dressed man approached an old man sitting on the steps of a railroad station in a small Kentucky town. The old man became self-conscious and laughed, and then became reminiscent of his...

4 min read · Rating: G · Read story

The Door of the Trap

Winifred Walker understood some things clearly enough, but Hugh Walker didn't. He went home to his own house, held a fragmentary conversation with Winifred, and then pretended to read a book to...

22 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

The Dumb Man

There is a story about three men in a house in a street that I cannot tell, I have no words. If I could say the words I would sing the story. Three men are in a room in the house, one is young and...

3 min read · Rating: G · Read story