Winesburg, Ohio
Winesburg, Ohio
By: Sherwood Anderson
A ground-breaking collection of 20 linked stories that reveal the personalities and the internal secret lives of the inhabitants of a small Ohio town and surrounding farmlands and is considered one of the first works of American modernism. “Nothing quite like it has ever been done in America,” wrote H. L. Mencken. “It is so vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own.”
Title information
In its time of original publication in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio was innovative in its use of the short-story cycle within the novel format. The linchpin character in the stories is George Willard. He grows up and leaves Winesburg during the chronological arc of the tales. The stories themselves are not in a linear time order. Because of this, you may want to reread and map out the connections in each story. George is there, in some way, in each person's tale. Yet, each person is isolated by a truth that they cannot escape, release, or fully express, rendering them "grotesque." Where is the hope and possibility in this sort of entrapment? It is in acceptance. Some things are just ineffable, and no matter how gifted we may be in describing them, they elude us. Anderson discovered a way to write about his own life without making it all about him and thereby distilled a heady draught of human nature into these tales. It is a masterwork of early modernist literature and among the top 500 all-time best works of classic literature.
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) was born in Camden, Ohio and for his first 36 years lived a varied but conventional life. Then he divorced his wife, moved to Chicago and began writing. His best known work, Winesburg, Ohio, was published in 1919. He wrote novels, criticism, plays and poetry, edited two newspapers and associated with many of the major literary figures of his age.
