Sherwood Anderson / Gertrude Stein

Dust jacket notes: "One of the strangest literary friendships was that between Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein. The fact that these two dissimilar writers were close friends and that the friendship was somehow important to the course of American literary history is known, but no one has documented before its depth and importance. Whatever the basis of this friendship, it has become part of the folklore of American literary history that the relationship was indeed significant. Anderson always claimed that Gertrude Stein's writing influenced his own literary style. Miss Stein always claimed to have great affection and appreciation for Sherwood Anderson. Both authors claimed to have influenced the course of American writing - through their own publications and through having taught the basics of fiction to such younger writers as Ernest Hemingway. There are few enough facts available to document these claims of friendship and influence. After all, what sort of friendship could be expected between a sophisticated, highly educated esthete like Gertrude Stein and a comparatively uneducated, naive, midwestern ex-businessman like Sherwood Anderson? They had perhaps half a dozen meetings in the twenty years of their relationship, but from 1921 when they met in Paris until Anderson's death in 1941, each frequently expressed the deepest admiration and respect for the other's work. Together they have greatly influenced American literature and American literary history."