An uneven collection of short stories about early 20th century small-town Ohio, originally published in 1919. Some of the stories are forgettable, some strange, some are mournful and genuinely beautiful.
There's no "happily ever after" here, hardly any happiness at all in fact. Instead, there's confusion, suffering and loneliness. People don't know what they want, they lack the ability to express themselves or even understand themselves, they live lonely lives. It's a form of literary realism that I'd never have expected from this period or region.
Over the course of the story cycle the reader starts to see the mosaic the author gradually assembles, illustrating what life was like at this time and place. And by the end, you know the town, you know the people.
Which brings up a brief thought on what it means to have a voice as a writer. This author has one, even though objectively he isn't a great writer and his writing has obvious technical problems (one painful example is his use of nominalizations--the making of machinery, the writing of the note, the telling of the tale). Despite these defects, this author still has a beautiful voice, and his writing, however imperfect, conveys feeling directly to the reader.
The best and strongest story of the collection is "Sophistication." If you're short on time and want to choose just a handful of these stories, read "Hands," "Nobody Knows," "A Man of Ideas," "The Untold Lie," "Sophistication" and "Departure" in that order and you'll get a good sense of the work.
Notes:
Introduction by Ernest Boyd
This is an typical blowhard literary criticism-style introductory essay--but it does help the reader place Sherwood Anderson's work: Boyd groups Anderson's stories with "The New American Realism," describing this mini-literary genre as a rejection of the "success literature" and the brimming optimism of American culture at the time, trading it instead for cynicism and realism about people's loneliness, sadness and failures. Boyd draws a sort of literary hereditary line back from Anderson to previous realism pioneers like Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, and then attempts to draw a (somewhat implausible) literary line from these minor writers to major 19th century authors like Flaubert, Maupassant and Zola, who likewise rejected the morality of their time, rejected their era's conventions of story form and structure, and thus were "dismissed by the critical mandarins" because of it.
The Book of the Grotesque
"It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood."
Hands -- concerning Wing Biddlebaum
A story about a creepy, friendless resident of Winesburg, twenty years earlier chased from a Pennsylvania village after (possibly false) accusations of molesting boys. He gesticulates strangely and acts ashamed and embarrassed.
Paper Pills -- concerning Doctor Reefy
It's hard to know what to make of this story. A doctor has an idiosyncratic habit of writing down thoughts on scraps of paper and then stuffing them into his pockets where they form into little hard paper balls. He marries a young beautiful girl, she dies shortly afterward; the readers is then informed in backstory that she was in a family way, possibly raped, and then comes to the doctor and basically begins living with him. She miscarries this pregnancy during an illness, marries the doctor later that year, and then dies the next spring. [The reader will meet Doctor Reefy again in the equally odd story "Death" below.]
Mother -- concerning Elizabeth Willard
This story is about an effete woman, ill most of the time, filled with rage toward her husband, with weird vicarious dreams for her son. [We will meet Elizabeth Willard again too, along with Doctor Reefy, in "Death."]
The Philosopher -- concerning Doctor Parcival
A weak story about an unkempt and dirty town doctor who sees hardly any patients, but has money somehow, and who talks incessantly to the local newspaper reporter, George Willard--mostly about himself and his delusions of importance. The story ends with the doctor (wrongly, delusionally) believing the townspeople want to lynch him.
Nobody Knows -- concerning Louise Trunnion
George Willard has a secret (implied) sexual encounter with a working-class girl in town who has a bit of a reputation, but nobody knows about it. [Remember this book was published in 1919, you couldn't talk too openly about this stuff!]
Godliness (Parts I and II) -- concerning Jesse Bentley
The youngest son of a family takes over his father's farm after the deaths of his brothers in the Civil War. He quickly develops delusions of grandeur, and then prays to God--or more accurately, makes demands from God--for success, a still larger farm, and even a son. What he gets is a daughter, and his wife dies in childbirth.
In Part II we move on to the next generation: Jesse's daughter, Louise, is now married with a son, Jesse's grandson David; she's difficult, she drinks, she has a quarrelsome and temperamental relationship with her husband, a successful banker in Winesburg. Grandfather Jesse has his grandson come live on the farm with him.
Jesse continues to have delusions of grandeur, now he wants to make money faster than his farm will allow for, and he tries to impose these ambitions on his son-in-law. "Big things are going to be done in the country and there will be more money to be made than I ever dreamed of. You get into it. I wish I were younger and had your chance."
David the grandson brings joy to the farm: the family, Jesse, the farmhands, all are happier when he's around.
Jesse takes David for a drive one day, but is distracted by religious thoughts; he brings David to a creek and then demands a sign from God. David is terrified: he doesn't really recognize this fervently grandiose man shouting at the heavens as his grandfather, and he runs away, tripping and hitting his head. They return home, Jesse asking God, "What have I done that Thou doest not approve of me?"
Surrender (Part III) -- concerning Louise Bentley
Backstory here on how Louise Bentley, grandfather Jesse's daughter, comes to live as a child with a different family, the Hardy family, how the Hardy daughters ostracize her for being a good student and showing them up, how she comes to know John Hardy, the son, who she later marries. "Louise was from childhood a neurotic, one of the race of over-sensitive women that in days industrialism was to being in such great numbers into the world."
"She did know what she wanted." But, ironically, just as her father wanted a son and got a daughter, she wanted a daughter and got a son.
Terror (Part IV) -- concerning David Hardy
Interesting biblical themes here of David and Goliath obviously as well as Abraham and his near-sacrifice of Isaac. The reader learns grandson David's backstory and how, due to both a misunderstanding and David's fear of his grandfather Jesse, David injures his grandfather with a slingshot, and then leaves Winesburg forever. "It happened because I was too greedy for glory," Jesse the grandfather declares afterward.
A Man of Ideas -- concerning Joe Welling
Joe Welling, a small, slight man, talks people's ears off, he buttonholes them and literally overwhelms them with his ideas, people watch him with "amusement tempered by alarm." And yet this weird guy still seems to get exactly what he wants out of life.
Adventure -- concerning Alice Hindman
A lonely 27-year-old woman who gives up her youth for a man she loves. He leaves her, and she remains in Winesburg, left to come to grips with being alone.
Respectability -- concerning Wash Williams
Wash Williams, an ugly man ("The ugliest thing in town... Everything about him was unclean. Even the whites of his eyes looked soiled.") who harbors tremendous rage toward women after his wife took three different lovers after marrying him. This short story ends with a creepy scene that frankly doesn't work well.
The Thinker -- concerning Seth Richmond
This is a story about a young man who thinks too much, who is quiet, who stands to the side of life in the town, who doesn't belong. He is resentful of the people who talk, talk, talk all the time about nothing. He misses his chance with a pretty young woman in town.
Tandy -- concerning Tandy Hard
A very short story, barely a scenelet, where an alcoholic friend comes to Winesburg and sees something in a young girl, he gives her a name, Tandy, and prophesies that she's destined for great things, to be strong and courageous. Later she demands that her father call her by that name.
The Strength of God -- concerning the Reverend Curtis Hartman
A Presbyterian minister is uneasy and uncomfortable preaching, and he struggles with temptation. From his study where he works on his sermons, he can peep into the window of a woman, Kate Swift, across the street. One night he sees her come into her room, naked and crying, and then later praying. He then storms into George Willard's office, lecturing him on morality, telling him "God has appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift, the school teacher, kneeling naked on a bed..." As we'll see in the next story, this turns out to be ironic to the point of self-parody.
The Teacher -- concerning Kate Swift
Thirty-year-old Kate Swift is unattractive, blotchy, but overwhelmed by her desires. The story fills in details missing from the prior story about the minister. She has a misconstrued and confusing moment of near-passion with George Willard, a man quite a bit younger than she, and she leaves in a confusion, it was after this that the minister had seen her weeping in her room. This story also contains an unexpected mention of 16th century Florentine artist Benvenuto Cellini.
Loneliness -- concerning Enoch Robinson
A sensitive boy from Winesburg goes to New York to study French and go to art school, but he doesn't fit in anywhere. He wants to say things but can't seem to get the words out of his mouth, he's socially awkward and only comfortable talking to himself, living in his own mind with imaginary friends. He tells his story to George Willard one day in his old age, tells him what drove him out of New York and back to Winesburg, defeated. Essentially he gets friendly and almost close to a woman, but he has so much self-loathing that he rejects her, and when he sends her away all of his imaginary friends leave with her.
"In the half darkness the man talked and the boy listened, filled with sadness."
An Awakening -- concerning Belle Carpenter
"The bartender was ready to marry and to begin trying to earn money for the support of his wife, but so simple was his nature that he found it difficult to explain his intentions. His body ached with physical longing and with his body he expressed himself."
Belle Carpenter deliberately makes bartender Ed Handby jealous by walking about with George Willard. She succeeds, but at the cost of George's humiliation. The story is a wonderful illustration of how we do things, often terrible things, that are not only harmful to the people around us, but are even harmful to our own interests. And sometimes we don't even understand why we do these things! All there is afterward is regret for the mistake we couldn't stop ourselves from making.
What's worse for the characters of this book was the fact that during this time and in this part of the US, men and women pretty much only got one shot at getting their lives right--this society viewed women as old to the point of unmarriageable by age 30 or so, so women often had a very brief window to either find the right person, or come to terms with the fact that they'd married the wrong person.
"Queer" -- concerning Elmer Cowley
Elmer Cowley, part of the new family in town, working in Cowley & Sons, a store that "sold everything and nothing." His father, Ebenezer, the owner, "was not happily placed in life... Still he existed."
Elmer feels like a weirdo, he's extremely self-conscious about it, and he harbors a scheme to escape Winesburg and go to Cleveland and, somehow, become less of a weirdo. And, once again, poor George Willard gets beaten up by yet another person who can't express himself for the life of him.
The Untold Lie -- concerning Ray Pearson
A conversation between two laborers who work together: Ray Pearson, a farmhand "of perhaps fifty" who years ago did the honorable thing and married the girl he got pregnant; and Hal Winters, a local bad boy, still in his early twenties, who himself just got a girl pregnant. Hal asks Ray for advice on what to do. This story is about the regrets of a man who made a choice to settle down, he did the "right" thing, but he can't help but think how his life would have turned out better and more interesting had he decided otherwise. Except we the readers can clearly see, sadly, that his life wouldn't have turned out any better or worse. "'It's just as well. Whatever I told him would have been a lie,' he said softly, and then his form also disappeared into the darkness of the fields."
Drink -- concerning Tom Foster
One of the weakest stories in this collection, with some of the least believable characters. Tom Foster and his grandmother return to Winesburg from Cincinnati. Tom is "so gentle and quiet that he slipped into the life of the town without attracting the least bit of attention." Tom was raised up in a rough section of Cincinnati but somehow remained innocent and separate from it all. One night, lusting after Helen White, the banker's daughter, he gets drunk, and George Willard helps look after him.
Death -- concerning Doctor Reefy and Elizabeth Willard
We learn some of the backstory of Elizabeth Willard, touched on in the story "Mother" above: that Elizabeths mother died when she was five, that her father was unsuccessful, dispirited and ill for most of his life, that she married Tom Willard because she wanted to get married at the time and he was around. Now, at age 41, old and tired before her years, she goes to Doctor Reefy's office and talks about her life while he listens. At one point they have a near-moment of passion in his office, but it is interrupted by noise from some workmen outside the door. Shortly after this moment, she dies, and her son George Willard works through his grief and his confused relationship with his mother.
Sophistication -- concerning Helen White
"...an American town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself."
This is the strongest story in this collection. It deals with George Willard and the mutual affection he shares with Helen White. Helen is studying in college in Cleveland, and she brings back to Winesburg a young man from school, but she quickly tires of his pedantic nature and longs to be with George. At the same time George sees her with this young man, and feels a confusion of jealousy and anger. That evening, in a beautiful coincidence, they happen to run into each other on the street; they have one of those beautiful experiences that young lovers can have, where you're happy with each other no matter what you do, even if it's just walking through a field holding hands.
Now that I'm almost done with the collection, I'm starting to see what the author is trying to do with all of these scenelets: where people try to talk to each other but say all the wrong things, or where people can't say what they want to say, or people who are misfits and lonely and isolated because of it. The connection between these two characters is beautiful, brief--and sad, as we will soon see in the next story.
Departure -- concerning George Willard
George leaves town, and he is shocked and self-conscious too see so many people come down to the platform to see him off. "Helen White came running along Main Street hoping to have a parting word with him, but he had found a seat and did not see her." Interesting, and beautiful from a storytelling standpoint, that the author just throws this sentence in, despite the just-previous story where Helen and George almost connected in a way no other characters in this entire story cycle ever did.
"Tom [Little, the train's conductor] had seen a thousand George Willard's go out of their towns to the city. It was a commonplace enough incident with him... One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp."
It's telling that one of the central characters of this story cycle ends up leaving Winesburg to chase his dreams, as if in Winesburg--and perhaps in all of small-town America--there aren't any dreams to chase.
To Read:
Sherwood Anderson: Poor White (this is his next novel after this short story collection, supposedly showing "increasing technical skills as a novelist.")
Works of Theodore Dreiser
Works of Sara Orne Jewett