cover image Rough and Rowdy Ways: The Life and Hard Times of Edward Anderson

Rough and Rowdy Ways: The Life and Hard Times of Edward Anderson

Patrick Bennett. Texas A&M University Press, $24.95 (191pp) ISBN 978-0-89096-352-4

This life of Anderson (1905-1969) is by a teacher at McMurry College, Abilene, Tex., where the little-remembered author grew up; Bennett augments his assiduous research with interviews with the writer's widow Anne and others who knew him. Anderson, on the move continuously from his youth onward, worked on newspapers across the country while trying to succeed as a novelist. In 1935, Hungry Men was published to acclaim as a strong, experiential story about the Depression; his second book, Thieves Like Us , added to Anderson's fame and led to a short disappointing stint as a Hollywood screen writer. There is almost too much detail here, some of it insignificant, like Anne worrying about ``bringing over a case of the grippe that did not materialize.'' But Bennett shows us Anderson in the round, as a spendthrift, heavy drinker, faithless to family and friends. Photos. (October)