Sherwood Anderson's place is unquestionably among the three or four titans of American letters. He is already in interval part of the history of American literature. Dark Laughter is the story of virile America, and in particular, the Middle West, the Ohio River Valley, the Mississippi, and New Orlean. An intense story is superimposed upon a background of dark laughter - the mysterious, detached, strange laughter of the Negro, the earth, and the river. While not exclusively concerned with racial problems, Dark Laughter has a definite theme of racial conflict. Conflict of any nature arises out of difference. Anderson sees the basic difference between white and black as arising out of the varying ability of each race to adapt to a situation; he sees the inherent difference between the Negro and the Caucasian as one of personality. Anderson presents social and racial conflict on a personal and psychological level. Social adjustment fails between the races because the white man fails
Dark Laughter, Sherwood Anderson's best selling novel, is influenced by Joyce's Ulysses. It deals with the new sexual freedom of the 1920s and provides a unique fictional window into that era.