Dark Laughter was Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...

's 1925

1925 in literature

The year 1925 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* April: F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway meet in the Dingo Bar on rue Delambre, in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France shortly after the publication of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and shortly before...

 novel which took up much the same theme as his 1923 novel Many Marriages

Many Marriages

Many Marriages is a 1923 Sherwood Anderson novel, largely plotless and considered by many to be the beginning of his decline as a writer. The novel did have its champions, however, F. Scott Fitzgerald among them....

, though he read James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

's Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

in between. The influence of Ulysses is clear in Dark Laughter. While Winesburg, Ohio

Winesburg, Ohio (novel)

Winesburg, Ohio is a 1919 short story cycle by the American author Sherwood Anderson. The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard, from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man...

is Anderson's best known work today, Dark Laughter was the only bestseller of Anderson's lifetime. It has been out of print since the early 1960s and some contemporary critics consider the novel a failure (among them Kim Townsend, the author of the most recent biography of Anderson, published in 1985)--a failure due, in large part, to what many today consider racist and sexist language and themes.

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 parodied Dark Laughter in his early short work The Torrents of Spring

The Torrents of Spring

The Torrents of Spring is a novella written by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1926. Hemingway's first long work, it was written as a parody of Sherwood Anderson...

. Hemingway's novella mocks the pretensions of Anderson's style and characters, and the parody ended the friendship between the young Hemingway and Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

, his former mentor

Mentor

In Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcimus or Anchialus. In his old age Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who placed Mentor and Odysseus' foster-brother Eumaeus in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus' palace, when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.When Athena visited Telemachus she...

.