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

From the opening

THE TALES AND THE PERSONS THE BOOK OF THE GROTESQUE HANDS, concerning Wing Biddlebaum PAPER PILLS, concerning Doctor Reefy MOTHER, concerning Elizabeth Willard THE PHILOSOPHER, concerning Doctor Parcival NOBODY KNOWS, concerning Louise Trunnion GODLINESS (Parts I), concerning Jesse Bentley GODLINESS (Parts II), concerning Jesse Bentley SURRENDER (Part III), concerning Louise Bentley TERROR (Part IV), concerning David Hardy A MAN OF IDEAS, concerning Joe Welling ADVENTURE, concerning Alice Hindman RESPECTABILITY, concerning Wash Williams THE THINKER, concerning Seth Richmond TANDY, concerning Tandy Hard THE STRENGTH OF GOD, concerning the Reverend Curtis Hartman THE TEACHER, concerning Kate Swift LONELINESS, concerning Enoch Robinson AN AWAKENING, concerning Belle Carpenter “QUEER,” concerning Elmer Cowley THE UNTOLD LIE, concerning Ray Pearson DRINK, concerning Tom Foster DEATH, concerning Doctor Reefy and Elizabeth Willard SOPHISTICATION, concerning Helen White DEPARTURE, concerning George Willard

I must have been no more than fifteen or sixteen years old when I first chanced upon Winesburg, Ohio. Gripped by these stories and sketches of Sherwood Anderson’s small-town “grotesques,” I felt that he was opening for me new depths of experience, touching upon half-buried truths which nothing in my young life had prepared me for. A New York City boy who never saw the crops grow or spent time in the small towns that lay sprinkled across America, I found myself overwhelmed by the scenes of wasted life, wasted love—was this the “real” America?—that Anderson sketched in Winesburg. In those days only one other book seemed to offer so powerful a revelation, and that was Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.

Several years later, as I was about to go overseas as a soldier, I spent my last week-end pass on a somewhat quixotic journey to Clyde, Ohio, the town upon which Winesburg was partly modeled. Clyde looked, I suppose, not very different from most other American towns, and the few of its residents I tried to engage in talk about Anderson seemed quite uninterested. This indifference would not have surprised him; it certainly should not surprise anyone who reads his book.

A short sample. Read the whole book

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