Rating: 
Summary: It's for reading and not for torture? Are you sure?
Review: Winesburg, Ohio may be well written, but that doesn't matter because it's not about anything. Anderson's concept for the book seems to be that the seemingly insignificant lives of the Everyman are beautiful in their simplicity. What does that mean? It means he wrote a boring book. It's a book about nothing, and that was his intention, which makes it not worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Sad but Hopeful
Review: A cycle of short stories concerning residents of a small Ohio town in the 1890s. The characters don't feel in any way part of life in the town around them. They don't get what they want and they don't know what they want. They're isolated and disconnected by their inability to express themselves.In "Sophistication," the second-to-last story, 18-year-old George Willard, the town's newspaper reporter, gets a vision of why it's so difficult for people to get hold of something to live their lives by: "He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun." It's a sad book, but with an undercurrent of hope for life in the modern world. I should also mention that the book was considered morbidly sexual at the time it was published, if you're the type who likes that sort of thing...
Rating: 
Summary: Ascent (or Descent?) into Adulthood
Review: Loosely based on the town of Clyde, Ohio, "Winesburg, Ohio" is Sherwood Anderson's story about young George Willard and his ascent into manhood. Willard lives in Winesburg with his father Tom and his sickly mother Elizabeth at the New Willard House, a run-down hotel on Main Street. Anderson tells George's story via a series of short stories which focus on the town's many interesting citizens. There is Wing Biddlebaum, a former school teacher who fled to his aunt's home in Winesburg after he was chased out of his job in Pennsylvania when a student made a false accusation against him; there is Helen White, the well-respected banker's daughter who has caught George's eye; there is Elmer Cowley, the son of the town merchant who is upset with everyone in town thinking him and his family are strange. There are many other stories that Anderson tells which all involve young George and his growth as a man. As a slice of small town America, "Winesburg, Ohio" is not very real. There may be this number of odd ducks in a town populated by 1800 souls; but, to make them the centerpiece of a story supposedly detailing the life of the town is to distort what that life truly is. Of course a book filled with dull stories of dull individuals would not be interesting reading no matter how honest or well written it is. While Anderson has created a very compelling story of a young man's growth to adulthood and has also captured, through the many short stories of the townsfolk, the many ways in which that life can go astray, Anderson unfortunately contributes to the falacious notion that small town America is populated by nothing but reprobates, braggarts, dunderheads, and malcontents. Books like "Winesburg, Ohio" advance the idea that eveyone who lives in a small town is either miserable or too stupid to know that they should be miserable. Having grown up in a very small town (approx. pop. 450) I can truthfully say that this is not a realistic representation of small town life. However, I give "Winesburg, Ohio" three stars simply for Anderson's poignant description of what it feels like for one to realize that you have become an adult.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent Portraiture
Review: Winesburg, Ohio preceded Main Street by one year, but was predated by the Spoon River Anthology. Hand in hand with Masters and Lewis, Anderson gained immortality with this stunning exposure of the stifling American hamlet. The book is really more a short story collection than a novel, though the piecemeal narrative is strung together by the presence of George Willard, a young man soon to depart for Columbus in search of newspaper work. The vignettes are true miracles of simplicity and force; characters such as Wings Biddelbaum, the alleged child molesting school teacher, and Enoch Johnson, a mentally unstable young man who "lost his voices" while living in New York and who is now "all alone", are drawn in sharp relief against the prosy drabness in their capsule of a town. Perhaps less remarkable and eristic today than it was in the early part of this century, Winesburg, Ohio still deserves merit and attention among this or any other generation of readers.
Rating: 
Summary: Portraits of the Human Condition -- American Style
Review: Many writers in American literature have tried to gather the conscience of America by traveling across the landscape of the country to pinpoint something truly American. Sherwood Anderson does so by placing his story (or stories) in one single, Midwestern town called Winesburg, Ohio. The stories that present the personalities of the residents of Winesburg are quite eloquently written. The characters of Winesburg are odd, horrific, lonely, young, old, and beautifully human. The time period may have past, but Anderson's characters continue their lives by something Anderson has captured from American culture.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Waste Your Time. I Did.
Review: I just finished this book and I have to say that I honestly didn't think it was very good. I've read different things about this book for years, and everyone talks like this is some landmark piece of American prose, but I don't get it. The stories are rambling and sloppy and often pointless. The writing seems very amateurish. I got tired of hearing about how every young man in the book felt this yearning to leave Winesburg and see "Life". I mean, isn't that the biggest cliche of small town life that there is. And he kept hitting that same note over and over and over and over again, like a nail being driven into my skull. With all the acclaim this book has gotten, it's safe to say that the Devil has the deed to Anderson's soul safely filed away somewhere. This book reminded me a little of Saroyan's The Human Comedy. Both books are quirky and they both have an odd way of sounding as if their characters come from children's books. I wasn't too crazy about The Human Comedy either, but it's like a Shakesperian masterpiece compared to this. The Human Comedy's quirkiness is charming, while Winesburg's quirkiness just makes the book seem inept. The Human comedy is much more tightly organized and better written and it's loosely connected episodes almost, almost, form a narrative structure. If you really want to read about life in an American small town, then please, read The Human Comedy or Lake Wobegon Days, or even Rose Wilder Lane's Old Home Town. There's nothing that you'll get out of this book that you can't get from any of these others. In the introduction to my edition, Irving Howe talks about how much this book inspired him when he was a teenager and opened up new depths of emotion and blah, blah, blah. I find this a little hard to believe. When I was 16 I read Kerouac's On the Road and I was swept away, so I know the kind of experience he's talking about. But I feel very sorry for anyone who claims that this book sent their young heart fluttering. I can imagine someone young reading Victor Hugo or Dickens or Thomas Wolfe or Gone With The Wind and feeling that the flame of their life has been lit. But not Winesburg. Please, please no, not Winesburg. This book is like a box of wet matches and broken sticks.
Rating:
Summary: Love, love, love, love, love this book.
Review: I read this book in my college American Literature class on my way to an English minor. Its still one of my favorite books of all time. In these times where fragmented identities or a disconnect between the surface and the actual is prevalent in our daily lives, I believe literature such as this contains more and more meaning. Please read it.
Rating:
Summary: Ascent (or Descent?) into Adulthood
Review: Loosely based on the town of Clyde, Ohio, "Winesburg, Ohio" is Sherwood Anderson's story about young George Willard and his ascent into manhood. Willard lives in Winesburg with his father Tom and his sickly mother Elizabeth at the New Willard House, a run-down hotel on Main Street. Anderson tells George's story via a series of short stories which focus on the town's many interesting citizens. There is Wing Biddlebaum, a former school teacher who fled to his aunt's home in Winesburg after he was chased out of his job in Pennsylvania when a student made a false accusation against him; there is Helen White, the well-respected banker's daughter who has caught George's eye; there is Elmer Cowley, the son of the town merchant who is upset with everyone in town thinking him and his family are strange. There are many other stories that Anderson tells which all involve young George and his growth as a man. As a slice of small town America, "Winesburg, Ohio" is not very real. There may be this number of odd ducks in a town populated by 1800 souls; but, to make them the centerpiece of a story supposedly detailing the life of the town is to distort what that life truly is. Of course a book filled with dull stories of dull individuals would not be interesting reading no matter how honest or well written it is. While Anderson has created a very compelling story of a young man's growth to adulthood and has also captured, through the many short stories of the townsfolk, the many ways in which that life can go astray, Anderson unfortunately contributes to the falacious notion that small town America is populated by nothing but reprobates, braggarts, dunderheads, and malcontents. Books like "Winesburg, Ohio" advance the idea that eveyone who lives in a small town is either miserable or too stupid to know that they should be miserable. Having grown up in a very small town (approx. pop. 450) I can truthfully say that this is not a realistic representation of small town life. However, I give "Winesburg, Ohio" three stars simply for Anderson's poignant description of what it feels like for one to realize that you have become an adult.
Rating:
Summary: Patchwork of Passions and Delusions
Review: Abnderson's collection of short stories presents a gradually cohesive story cycle about some curious residents of fictitious Winesburg, Ohio in the early 20th century. Like a literary repertory company, various characters appear in spotlight, then reappear in shadows or the wings of life. Readers never know who will turn up in what is supposed to be another character's tale. The faces on main street seem vaguely familiar, since people do not live in a social vacuum. Many tales include flashbacks about events and emotions which are just now being revealed. Curiously, many of the odd characters (which Anderson terms "Grotesques" because they are emotional cripples) turn to young George Willard, a reporter for the local paper--perhaps the author's alter-ego. Sensing his willingness to listen and his genuine compassion for his fellow men, they slip out of their discomfort zones briefly to share a hidden portion of their lives. Subconsciously they feel that George can be entrusted with their secrets--passions and dreams which no one in town ever suspected. This young man proves a magnet for the grotesques of Winesburg, since he offers an unspoken promise of future validation of their universal failures and frustrations. He serves as the keeper of secrets, without passing judgment. One's first impression is that the book is pessimistic, even morbid, since the author depicts the loneliness and futility of the human condition. Yet there remains a quiet, underlying hope for the future, as the older generations trust youth to sort out the warped threads of fate and foiled ambition. Is this a fair burden to place on a young man just starting out, expecting him to reweave a finer tapestry? Must he preserve their private goals, even if the world regards the dreamers as queer? Are young people condemned to leave their home town, in order to achieve happiness, success and a sense of self worth? With the focus on George's final days in Winesburg, the last three stories bind and complete this literary composite of a rural, mid western town. Vintage village vignettes, from an author who influenced many more famous American writers.
Rating:
Summary: Boring and forgettable
Review: It's been nearly three weeks since I finished this book and I remember very little about it. I found it truly unremarkable. It's on the Modern Library Top 100 list - quite high on the list, in fact - and it has been said that many of the great American post-war writers owe a huge debt to Anderson for laying the groundwork for this type of writing. I just don't see it. Anderson tries to take boring, unsympathetic characters and demonstrate the beauty of their boring, unsympathetic lives. His prose is meant to achieve a certain level of elegance in its simplicity, but instead it simply comes across as soporific. Winesburg, Ohio is a town that is supposed to represent any small town in middle America, and the stories in this collection deal with the everyday lives of its inhabitants. Each story feels like it has the potential to be something better than it is, but they all fall short. Anderson achieves his goal of creating very human characters, but if his intention was also to create inspiring or sympathetic characters he has failed in this regard. Instead of portraying their humanity through their goodness or their strengths, he focuses on their flaws and their sins. And this left me feeling unfulfilled, as if there was a whole other side to the story that had been inexplicably removed.
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