Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life

Very good book outlining a small city in Ohio such as Clyde! Author did a fine job illustrating what this city did during the late 1800's and early 1900's. Easy to read and enjoyable to read!

For someone who grew up in a small town (pop. 1000) in southern Indiana, I immediately drew a connection with Winesburg. Anderson's portrayal of the local residents leads people to believe that small town life can have the same problems as city life.

Stories in this book are all set in a small midwest town in Ohio. We all have our preconceptions about midwestern people, their attitudes, sensibilities and way of life. Author digs deep into their lives and psyche. By the time you finish this book, you will pretty much know about every member of this small community. People we learn about are lonely, damaged, with no prospects. They are molded by their upbringing and their first experiences in love and marriage. They all have regrets, yet they are too weak to break away and start new. It is up to young generations to try their lives outside of confines of a small city and whether or not they succeed no one will know until much, much later. These are deep stories and they will get you thinking about them for a long time after you are finished reading. An absolute classic of short american story literature.

There was one particular scene (Chapter entitled 'Drink') toward the end of the novel that for me truly exemplifies one of the main points of this American masterpiece. In this poignant scene, a poor old woman and her orphaned, young grandson Tom are riding along in a train headed toward Winesburg. They were leaving Cincinnati in hopes to build a new life. The old woman grew up in Winesburg and was so gung ho about going back to her old town that as the train pressed on, she began to tell Tom how 'he would enjoy his life working in the fields and shooting wild things in the woods there.' She was delighted and excited about living in a small, close-knit community again. However, when the train finally arrived in Winesburg her excitement and delight turned to confusion, disappointment, and fear. For now, the once tiny village had now grown (in the past fifty years) into a large, flourishing town. She was so shocked upon her arrival that she didn't even want to get off of the train. She then turned to her grandson and said, "It isn't what I thought. It may be hard for you here." I remember when I read this passage above, for my heart began to ache. I knew exactly what she was thinking and I could feel her pain! This novel is essentially made up of a group of short stories about the townsfolk of Winesburg, Ohio in the early 1900's. However, it could be any town anywhere in America and it could take place at anytime, including today. All of the citizens, although completely unique and different from one another, each share one thing in common - they are all lost and searching for something that will bring meaning into their lonely lives. However, no matter what the "Saturday Evening Post" might tell you, life in small-town America isn't all that grand - especially if you are a man like our main protagonist George Willard. A man, like many of the other characters he comes in contact with in the novel, who secretly yearns to escape the narrow-mindedness of the mediocrity which reigns supreme in small-town, USA. However, the real conundrum is this - while George and the others are looking for a way out of the madness, they are also all searching and hankering for a sense of community and belonging. They wish to connect, they can't connect, they then become lonely and disillusioned and stir crazy. Eventually, like so many other people in their same situation, they feel trapped. Dean Koontz may sum it up best when he perceptively points out in his 'Afterword' of the novel, "these characters are repressed by their culture but equally by their inability to deal with their ambivalence, an indecisiveness that reduces them to bundles of potential energy without hope of expression." I can't recommend this one enough. It's too bad Anderson's classic will pretty much go down in history as a one-hit wonder (although he has written many excellent short stories). I really, really loved his style of writing and apparently he influenced such Am

In the context of today's tell-all society, the kinds of human revelations and insights that Sherwood Anderson wove into the Winesburg stories may seem tame and even pedestrian. But at the time, few good writers were even attempting to penetrate into the "real life" experience of ordinary Americans. His efforts so many years ago are all the more valuable today, however, since it provides us a glimpse of what life was *really* like for some people in much-romanticized "small town America." This novel is really a collection of loosely interrelated short stories, or perhaps even a series of character sketches, but so what? The value here is in the individual images and insights that Anderson provides, not in any emergent "plot."The glimpses into the inner lives of ordinary Americans and the fine descriptions of place, mood, and events that Anderson provides in this work still speak to some readers, at least, today. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.