I'm a Fool
{{short description|1922 short story by Sherwood Anderson}}
{{about||the 1956 Slim Whitman song|I'm a Fool (song)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
"I'm a Fool" is a short story by American writer Sherwood Anderson. It was first published in the February 1922 issue of The DialAnderson (1922), 119-129 (followed the next month by the London Mercury), and later, in 1923 as the first story in Anderson's short-story collection Horses and Men. Of that collection, William Faulkner wrote that "...I think, next to Heart of Darkness by Conrad that the first story, 'I'm a Fool,' is the best short story I ever read."[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3524/is_n3_v46/ai_n28631401/?tag=content;col1 Cohen (1993)]. Accessed 21 June 2012.
The story is narrated in first person point of view and the setting is Ohio, where Sherwood Anderson was born.
Adaptations
An adaptation of the story was performed by Orson Welles and Nancy Gates on the September 29, 1941, broadcast of CBS Radio's The Orson Welles Show.{{cite web |url=https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/items/show/2030 |title=Orson Welles Show: The Interlopers / Song of Solomon / I'm a Fool |date=September 29, 1941 |website=Orson Welles on the Air, 1938–1946 |publisher=Indiana University Bloomington |access-date=2018-07-23 }}
James Dean, Natalie Wood and Eddie Albert starred in a live TV play on the series General Electric Theater, hosted by Ronald Reagan.
In 1977, Noel Black made a 38-minute movie based on Anderson's story, keeping its title, i.e., "I'm a Fool". In this movie, Ron Howard starred as the groom and Amy Irving played the role of the pretty girl Miss Lucy Wessen.{{cite web|work=The New York Times|title=Noel Black, 77, Dies; Directed Dark Comedy Cult Hit|author=Daniel E. Slotnik|date=August 1, 2014|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/movies/noel-black-77-director-of-films-and-tv-dramas-dies.html?_r=0}}
References
{{reflist}}
=Sources=
- Anderson Sherwood (1922). "I'm a Fool". [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015031076550?urlappend=%3Bseq=141 The Dial] 72(2): 119-129.
- Cohen, Philip (1993). "'This hand holds genius': three unpublished Faulkner letters". Mississippi Quarterly 46(3): 479-83.
External links
- {{Internet Archive film clip|id=ImAFoolgeTheater|description=the GE Theater adaptation}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20130716155350/http://www.moonstar.com/~acpjr/Blackboard/Common/Stories/Fool.html The Full Text of the Story]
{{Sherwood Anderson}}
Category:American short stories
Category:Short stories adapted into films
Category:Short stories by Sherwood Anderson
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