Overview
- The American writer, 64, unknowingly swallowed a toothpick lodged in a martini olive during a party on a voyage to South America with his fourth wife.
- His abdominal pain intensified over several days before he was evacuated in Panama and taken to a hospital.
- A post-mortem found a toothpick fragment embedded in his intestinal wall, confirming the fatal infection.
- Anderson’s 1919 collection Winesburg, Ohio shaped modern American fiction and influenced Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck.
- Biographical accounts highlight a 1912 nervous breakdown that ended his business career and launched his writing, along with four marriages.