Winesburg, Ohio

Rating:
Summary: Winesburg, Ohio a classic
Review: I was recommended this book, and I absolutely loved it. It was a character driven book compiled of short, but inter-connected, stories revolving around one character. Each individual character was filled with beautiful prose and amazing detail that really brought each one to life, giving the reader an idea of what early 20th century small-town America was like.

Rating:
Summary: a beautiful series of character sketches
Review: This is a wonderful book. Quiet and unassuming, it profiles the humble lives of a number of unassuming characters in a small town, not as far as it thinks from the great cities of America. It is the early 1900s and everyone is far less cynical than in modern times. But fear, doubt, self-reflection and the questions of right and wrong haunt these people, sometimes forcing them into paralyzing inactivity or acts of irrational fear and rage.

Published in 1919, before most of the formative events of the last several generations, the experience of life contained herein seems eeriely timely, a portrait of human understanding that will likely never go out of style.

Rating:
Summary: insightful view into small-town depressed people 100 yrs ago
Review: it struck me that the characters featured in this collection were depressed (that is, stuck in their lives). the book's theme centered on their trying to break free of their depression, mainly through different ways of acting out, such as sex, romance, fantasy, geographical escape, social isolation, amassing money... some of the characters, however, had some spark of healthiness left in them, as evidenced by their desire to find a confidante and share their true stories.

i found this book worth reading for a few reasons:

1) i don't find too many books written nearly a hundred years ago (much less today!) that are so honest and frank about such personal subjects.

2) it gave me insight into the character of sherwood anderson. certainly he would not have been so fascinated with these characters' depression (and stuckness) had he not been afflicted by it as well. and it explains also why he understood them so well - he was one of them!

3) just plain old good american history, fresh and raw!

and my main criticism: it struck me that anderson's main (emotional) reason for writing this book was to help himself understand his own depression, but the one thing he didn't accomplish through writing this book was figuring out the answer to his problem. this book lacks redemptive value (and i don't mean religious). it's not a book that really moves in a direction - it just moves laterally. the new characters introduced by the end of the book are just as stuck as those introduced in the beginning. if you're looking for an answer to your depression you won't find it in winesburg, ohio.

Rating:
Summary: Defeats the 'Norman Rockwell" America!
Review: Though Anderson has been documented as having inconsistant, shakey work, Winesburg stands alone as his best work. Winesburg was a contriversal and unique 80 years ago as it is today among the great colleges of America. (Winesburg is required reading for many of the great colleges i.e. Evergreen, Reed)Using short stories to illustrate the suffering and pleight of the towns citizens, Anderson raises questions over morality, family, gender, and sexuality. Though the book would seem to be a textbook case of 'Americana' and the joys of living in a small, rural town, Anderson illustrates the bizzare and dark world of American towns at the turn of the century. Every citizen has skeletons in their closets and everyone has fears, passions, and insanity running through their blood.

There are many interesting ways to interperate Anderson's landmark work. While there have been many cases of the book being used in Harvard as examples of American literature of the turn of the century, colleges such as Evergreen have used it to inquire into the sexuality and gender issues that we face today, and the development of the American psyche.

Anderson's book will read like a book of his time, so if you are looking for a book the dictates American history from an Ivory tower 50 years from the future, this is not it. This is first hand history, and first rate literature. This is a complex, exciting, and disturbing look into the American midwest.

Rating:
Summary: A disquieting piece of Americana
Review: This great classic consists of a collection of short stories that very loosely form a novel. This slice of an early 20th century small town is nostalgic but far from comforting. Each story is about an individual residing in a little Midwestern town and as indicated by the introductory first chapter, the subjects are what the author describes as "grotesques." There is much sadness in their lives. Many have repressed anger and unfulfilled lives. There are a number who are sexually unfulfilled. A number of subjects are described as old yet chronologically, they are in early middle age, thus life has aged them before their time.

As we go through life, we see people but don't look beneath the surface. They seem to be carving out, normal, reasonably happy existences. The author, here, does in fact, look beneath the surface and we see couples who have normal looking marriages in fact trapped in a stultifying, disquieting relationship. We see people who are seemingly pillars of the community with repressed sexual demaons. Not every character in this book is a tragic figure. Rather, as we look beneath the surface, we find that a few live quietly heroic lives. But, for the most part, there is an undercurrent of sadness which provides a common chord through most of the stories. This book is nostalgic, yet disturbing and thought provoking.

A great contribution to American literature provided by Anderson is that he has initiated an evolution in short stories from tales with a plot to stories which paint pictures and provide a glimpse into the soul. These stories are not your typical O'Henry short stories with plots and twists but rather, more subtle portraits which ultimately form a sort of unified whole. I highly recommend this American classic.

Rating:
Summary: Deserves its place as a classic
Review: Sherwood Anderson's story cycle about small-town life blurs the lines between novel and short story, while using a narrative style that sometimes blurs the lines between past and present. In fact, this book captures a time when the agrarian past was falling to the industrial present. The characters are often charming, but their lives are often tragic. This book has influenced countless writers and deserves its place as one of the classics of American literature. (I am the author of New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio.)

Rating:
Summary: Characters
Review: Winesburg, Ohio is a story based on real characters in the early 1900's in a small northern Ohio town. If you enjoy in depth detail on characters you would enjoy this story. Every chapter is based on a new person which can get boring and confusing for some people seeking adventure. I read this book because I live close to where the story took place and thought it would be interesting to learn more about my area's history. I could relate with some of the places described in the story, which made me more interested and kept me reading. The characters described in the story are easy to relate people of my own acquaintance with; each character has their own unique story. The way that Sherwood Anderson writes makes you almost get inside of the characters' head to make you think like that character had thought. It took me a while to get the drift of the story but it seems most people will eventually get hooked on a certain character. I would not recommend this story for a person interested in reading more about action and adventure. Winesburg, Ohio is a great story for someone that would like to know how people in history had thought and that would like to experience Ohio in the early 1900's.

Rating:
Summary: What's the point?
Review: There is no plot, just a random series of events and facts. There is some character development. I know the characters in this book about as well as someone I might pass by on the sidewalk everyday, but never speak to. There is nothing to make me care about any of these characters, though, no emotion at all.

Rating:
Summary: Winesburgers
Review: Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" is a string of twenty-one connected stories (plus an introduction) that, like James Joyce's "Dubliners", links a community of people to a single place and time and explores common themes. Most of the stories are told from the vista of the recurring central character George Willard, the local newspaper reporter and a sort of alter ego of Anderson, who used his own rural hometown of Clyde, Ohio, as a model for Winesburg.

Rather than an idyllic portrayal of American small town life in the 1890's, these stories are about psychological isolation, loneliness, and sexual repression and frustration brought about by small town mores. These people are as sad and neurotic as any that might be found living in the big cities. Anderson calls them "grotesques," people who are warped by the sanctimoniousness of provincial piety and their own inhibitions. His nonchalant, ironic way of writing understates the peculiarity and the gloominess of the stories.

The stories are loaded with symbolism that is difficult to decipher. My favorite is probably the four-part "Godliness", which, in a satire of religious fervor, merges parodies of the biblical tales of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac and David's slaying of Goliath. But all the stories have interesting allusions of various degrees of subtlety. This work must have seemed quite groundbreaking in its depth, complexity, and boldness when it was first published in 1919.

Rating:
Summary: It all starts here
Review: All great 20th century American fiction owes a debt, no matter how far removed, to this book. It's one of those "classics" that English teachers routinely kill for their students by having them read it for the meaning and themes ("Now what was Anderson trying to say here?"), but forget that. Just read it for the prose, the sheer mastery of Anderson's art. This and Gertrude Stein were Hemingway's biggest influences. 'Nuff said.