[review] Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson, 1919)
I discovered Winesburg, Ohio in a small bookstore in Santorini, Greece in 2016. It is one of those books that I return to over and over again.
“Conceived as a sort of portrait gallery, the series of quietly intrepid narratives investigates the histories and psyches of its subjects, wherein lurk grotesque fantasies, absurd ambitions, pathological tendencies, terrible secrets, submerged—and erupting—passions. Some of them also have amazing faculties of poetry and grace.”
Through the eyes George Willard—a young writer searching for love, authenticity and a less stifling world—we learn about the idiosyncratic characters of this tight-knit community—their loneliness and frustrations, quirks and worries, some justified and some not. It is, Anderson writers, an “American town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself.”
Before becoming a writer in earnest, Anderson worked as a laborer, soldier, advertiser, and manufacturer of paint. He published Winesburg, Ohio at age 43 in 1919.
My favorite story is Sophistication, available online here. The story opens with the county fair: “Children, curled into little balls, slept on the straw scattered on wagon beds…The dust rolled away over the fields and the departing sun set it ablaze with colors.”
Enter George Willard, the newspaper man, who “was growing fast into manhood…[with] new thoughts…coming into his mind.”
I can’t summarize the story, since my words wouldn’t do it justice—and, as we learned yesterday from Tolstoy, the way to truth is long and indirect—but I can quote some lines.
There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. He is thinking of the future and the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him…With all his heart he wants to come close to some other human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the hand of another. If he prefers that the other be a woman, that is because he believes that a woman will be gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of all, understanding.
George thinks of Helen White, who he had shared a summer evening with years ago. She is back in town from university in the city, and fed up with the pompous, didactic atmosphere at school. At the same time he is thinking of her, she meanders through the fair thinking of him, sick of the city “theatres and the seeing of great crowds wandering in lighted thoroughfares.”
I really, really want to share how it ends but I can’t. Please forgive me, go read it, and send back what you think :)
