The renowned author, Sherwood Anderson, met a peculiar end after accidentally swallowing a toothpick while on a cruise.
Anderson, an acclaimed American writer known for his tumultuous personal life including a nervous breakdown and four marriages, died in 1941 under bizarre circumstances that seem more like fiction than reality.
At the age of 64, he was enjoying a leisurely cruise to South America with his fourth wife when the unfortunate incident occurred. While sipping a martini at a party, Anderson unknowingly swallowed a small wooden toothpick hidden in his olive.
In the days that followed, he began to suffer from increasing pain as the ship continued its journey south. He was eventually evacuated from the ship in Panama and rushed to hospital, but it was tragically too late.
Doctors made the grim discovery that the sharp piece of toothpick had punctured his intestines, leading to a lethal infection known as peritonitis. Anderson passed away shortly after arriving in Panama, marking one of the most unusual deaths in literary history, reports the Mirror.
Born in Ohio in 1876, Anderson’s life was filled with drama even before his strange demise. He had been a successful businessman until a nervous breakdown in 1912 led him to abandon his office and wander aimlessly on the streets, asking passersby who he was.
This breakdown marked the end of his business career but also the beginning of his writing journey.
From that point onwards, Anderson devoted himself entirely to writing fiction. His revolutionary 1919 short story collection Winesburg, Ohio portrayed life in small-town America and influenced an entire generation of authors – including Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck.
Anderson once quipped that he possessed “a heart that always needed editing”, which may account for his pattern of repeated marriages.
His first wife, Cornelia Lane, hailed from an affluent background and bore him three children. However, whilst he constructed his commercial empire, she allegedly grew weary of his unpredictable temperament and frequent absences.
They ultimately separated and he wed free-spirited artist Tennessee Mitchell – experiencing a “passionate, stormy and exhausting” union which proved short-lived.
His subsequent wife Elizabeth Prall was a New York bestseller, yet Anderson’s wandering disposition resurfaced, accompanied by whispers of dalliances with other women. His fourth and ultimate spouse Eleanor Copenhaver was 23 years his junior, but remained by his side until his passing in 1941.
When medical professionals conducted the post-mortem examination, they discovered the minuscule toothpick still lodged in his intestinal wall – a fragment of wood that had killed one of America’s finest literary talents. His epitaph captures everything: “Life, not death, is the great adventure.”
For Sherwood Anderson, those words became tragically prophetic.
