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Summary: Winesburg - First Impressions can be Deceiving
Review: This is a sneaky book, which is why I can understand that it's greatness has passed some of us by. I was required to read it for a class a number of years ago, and approached it uninspired but bound by duty. I do not tend to enjoy John Steinbeck and his counterparts and made a judgement that the novel would be of a similar genre. However, Anderson surprised me with his subtlety of handling by way of both character and plot(s). This is definately an author that allows you to soak in the depth of the personalities that he portrays. I read it again recently and enjoyed it just as much. I continue to lend my copy out with the "trust me" nod and get consistently surprised and happy responses from the new readers.
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Summary: Poignant and Powerful
Review: My father gave me this book when I was thirteen or fourteen and said it was one of his favorites, maybe his very favorite fictional piece. I read it then and actually liked it, although I realize now that probably half of it went over my head. I read it now and am blown away by the emotion it brings out in me. This book is, as many people have insisted, a set of character sketches, loosely intertwined and collected by George Willard, the young reporter of Winesburg. Each story, taken on its own, is a powerful piece of descriptive writing. Perhaps (as some have said) the book is outdated, a period piece. Perhaps it's a bit sentimental, a bit flippant. But the fact remains that, whether or not these stories show the inner workings of the human soul, they are fiction at its best: beautifully written, they make you think, and they evoke true emotion because the characters and their struggles are so real. Read these stories to see good fiction at work.
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Summary: A nice piece of sentimental fiction.
Review: Anderson was a master of short fiction and he shows it in this volume, a series of interwoven stories depicting life in Middle America. It is a period piece. Over-exaggerated characters are colorful on the inside rather than out and express the isolation they feel effectively. Of course most of the characters, at least potentially, are too extraordinary for their environment, but I suppose that's more exciting than a reverse exaggeration of Midwest halfwits, which is more likely to be documented.
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Summary: Sad, hopeful, WONDERFUL!
Review: If you are a fan of Flannery O'Connor, this book is not to be missed. It is a collection of stories that focus on the town's grotesques, and what O'Connor fan doesn't like a grotesque? Anderson's use of the English language also provides a regional lyricism that is truely magical. I don't know anyone to whom I wouldn't recommend this book
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Summary: un libro especial para mi
Review: se que debo volver a leer esta serie de cuentos entrelazados de nuevo y de nuevo, como se que debo volver sobre el camino andado a ver que se me ha perdido. este libro, lleno de pequenas historias y de maniaticos simpaticos que lo rodean, muestra sin embargo una bella inocencia y una bella prosa que hace a uno sentirse bien. el joven narrador anda a traves del pueblo y al final parte lleno de historias a hacer la suya propia. por favor no se lo pierdan es buenisimo LUIS MENDEZ
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Summary: HOW MANY TIMES WILL YOU READ THIS CLASSIC?
Review: three, four, five times. maybe more. "winesburg, ohio" is a transcendent reading experience. the equivalent, perhaps, of peering through a magnificent kaleidoscope and watching the colors and patterns turn one way, then the other. by turns funny, sad, but mostly tragic, anderson takes us on a guided tour of a small mid-western town. each vignette, weighing in at merely ten pages apiece, is a jewel of understatement. the language, simple and poetic, is a dream. beyond a dream. and it packs a heartache as real as anything you'll find in a book 5 times its size. the real marvel, however, is when you flip to the beginning and start all over again.
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Summary: When the Farm yields to the Factory.
Review: The story of George is one of a young man seeking transcendence from the sickened atmosphere around him - namely his hometown, Winesburg. It is a tiny, backward town, where the ideals of personal liberty and identity, of truth and understanding, have been squashed and malformed. Though greatly exaggerated, Winesburg bears elements that we should all recognize in our own homes, and this is, I think, more a criticism of post-agrarian American society than the "celebration of urban life" that this book has been purported to be.Anderson's writing is consummately elegant, even when it dips into a sexuality ill explored at the time. His characters, too, are most believable, whether you are intended to love them or despise them, and are always quite capable of evoking those emotions, regardless. George, most of all, is wonderfully human, and we rise up with him during his triumphs, and down during his failures. It is a wonderful book.
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Summary: Needed: A Little Seltzer Down the Pants
Review: Anderson has woven together a group of interesting vingnettes about people we would not spend the time to get to know in real life. They are boring, depressing, and unimaginative. He ties them together very loosely on three fronts: They live in or near Winesburg, Ohio; They are mostly passing acquaintances of a cub reporter on the local paper; They are literature's Sad Sacks. But, in a very few paragraphs, Anderson gives enough information to make me want to know more about these people, and therefore makes a compelling, fast read. This book would be a good medicine for a diabetic, but deadly to a manic depressive. It deserves its place in classic literature. (Reviewed by Tom Bruce)
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Summary: Great Example of Revolt Against the Village
Review: Winesburg is a great novel depicting the genre of Revolt agaist the village. Anderson makes you feel as if you are young George Willard, the main character in the novel.
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Summary: "It's A Disappointing Life"
Review: Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg Ohio" is a poignant and evocative look behind the face of small town America early in this century. The message in this book is not "It's A Wonderful Life", but rather that "It's A Disappointing Life". The writing is eloquent yet simple and conveys the quiet yearnings of the human soul that we all feel from time to time. There is an air of melancholy to the book as the inhabitants are shown to be almost uniformly incapable of expressing their deepest longings, as their dreams are at first deferred, then sadly and ultimately denied. If ever a town needed Jimmy Stewart this is it. Along with James Joyce's "The Dubliners"(1914), and Jean Toomer's "Cane"(1923), "Winesburg Ohio" (1919) forms a trilogy of beautifully written short stories/novellas about a particular city or region. A modern day equivalent would be "Drown", Junot Diaz's stories of Dominicans in the Dominican Republic and New York. And while, Joyce, Toomer, and Diaz are more innovative with language and form than Anderson, all four of these insightful works give you revealing character studies of the inhabitants as they go about their daily, ordinary lives, and make you reflect on your own hopes, dreams, and realities.
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