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Winesburg, Ohio

3.81 of 5 stars 3.81 · rating details · 11,852 ratings · 1,025 reviews

Winesburg, Ohio (1919) is Sherwood Anderson's masterpiece, a cycle of short stories concerning life in a small town at the end of the nineteenth century. At the center is George Willard, a young reporter who becomes the confidant of the town's solitary figures. Anderson's stories influenced countless American writers including Hemingway, Faulkner, Updike, Oates and Carver....more

Paperback, 240 pages

Published November 11th 1999 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published 1919)

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Dec 15, 2011 karen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: littry-fiction, favorites, hey-shorty

zut, alors! i don't even know where to begin. i had such a complicated reaction to this book. am i the only person who didn't find this depressing?? this book is life - it is tender and gentle and melancholy and real. not everything works out according to plan here, but what ever does? that's not necessarily depressing, it's just a reality that can either be moped over and dwelled upon, or accepted and moved on from. this is the emotional truth of life - we don't understand our urges, we make ba...more

104 likes · like · see review

Feb 05, 2013 Aerin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, litrachur, americana, what-if-it-all-means-something, the-luxury-of-loneliness

When I was ten years old, my family moved from Washington state to Ohio. More than any other single event, this move fundamentally changed my life, in some ways for the better, in some ways rather value-neutrally, but in most ways for the worse. Everything was different after the move, and ever since I have felt cast adrift, homeless.

My sister and I blamed it on the utter soul-crushingness of the Midwest ambience, of Ohio itself. We used to, as kids, call it O-hell-o. We'd repeat that line from...more When I was ten years old, my family moved from Washington state to Ohio. More than any other single event, this move fundamentally changed my life, in some ways for the better, in some ways rather value-neutrally, but in most ways for the worse. Everything was different after the move, and ever since I have felt cast adrift, homeless.

My sister and I blamed it on the utter soul-crushingness of the Midwest ambience, of Ohio itself. We used to, as kids, call it O-hell-o. We'd repeat that line from Animaniacs over and over: "All is strange and vague. Are we dead? Or is this Ohio?"

I say often about certain books that I wish I could go back in time and give a copy to my younger self, and Winesburg Ohio is one of those books. My eleven-year-old self needed this book; I needed to know that I wasn't the only one who'd ever felt so alone and desperate, that the characters in this book had felt that pain too, had understood it, had endured it. But maybe that would have depressed me all the more, because there are no happy endings in Winesburg. Nothing ever changes and for most there is no way out.

Maybe it's better 11-year-old me didn't read this, after all. I would have misunderstood it, anyway. I would have put far too much importance on the fact that it's set in Ohio; that would have reinforced to me that the place is the problem. It would have strengthened my belief that everything would be good again if I could just get out of the Midwest. Too many of the characters in this book operated under that fallacy, too. It's so comforting to believe there's an easy fix, especially if you know you'll never test it out and be proven wrong.

But I've been proven wrong enough times now to know that the particular setting isn't that important. Winesburg is everywhere. And the fact that it's an inbred small town isn't that important, either. Winesburg could as easily be a bustling city. As they say, cities are places where thousands of people go to be lonely together. My own personal Winesburg certainly followed me out of Ohio, back to the coast, back to the city.

Some of these stories were so familiar they were painful to read. Enoch Robinson was me. Elizabeth Willard was me. Alice Hindman was me. Elmer Cowley was me. And even the characters who were repulsive, hateful, utterly awful people, I found myself only feeling sad for - I couldn't bring myself to hate them, because they were just too real, their actions just too understandable.

This is one of those works that seems too big and too important to exist within the space of a 250-page paperback. Its essence can not be encapsulated in a book review. These stories can't be fully appreciated in a single reading, and there are some days and some moods where it's best to not even try to read them - you'll get nothing out of it but bored and depressed. And Winesburg Ohio seems too real a place to just be literature. I've been there; I've lived there. Some days, I still live there. (less)

66 likes · like · see review

Sep 14, 2010 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, favorites

AKA: Goddamn you, George Willard

My apologies to you, goodreads bandwagon...you're going to have to make room for one more. This book is bittersweet like therapy, like sweating out a lifetime's worth of drugs and drink in a mentholly sauna-room, like looking through a photo album from a decade or so ago when you thought you knew who you were but you had no idea...and still probably don't. Well, neither do the folks in Winesburg, Ohio. I loved, sympathized with and related to each individual, even...more

50 likes · like · see review

Sep 05, 2010 Esteban del Mal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Esteban by: The GR Community

Shelves: americana, fiction, novel

THE BEST LAID PLANS

A man and woman meet at a bar. They begin to talk and learn that each has trouble staying in long-term relationships because their sexual tastes are considered deviant. Excited, they decide to return to the woman’s apartment. After a bit of heavy petting, the woman excuses herself to her bedroom, promising to return wearing something more appropriate. Minutes pass and the woman emerges from her room in dominatrix attire to find the man nude, spent and smoking a cigarette. Ince...more THE BEST LAID PLANS

A man and woman meet at a bar. They begin to talk and learn that each has trouble staying in long-term relationships because their sexual tastes are considered deviant. Excited, they decide to return to the woman’s apartment. After a bit of heavy petting, the woman excuses herself to her bedroom, promising to return wearing something more appropriate. Minutes pass and the woman emerges from her room in dominatrix attire to find the man nude, spent and smoking a cigarette. Incensed, she admonishes him for finishing without her. He replies, "Lady, I don’t know what your idea of kinky is but I just fucked your cat and shit in your purse."

*****

Bakersfield, California

The man closes the book. He is at the car wash. His daughter dances in front of him, hopping from colored tile to colored tile in the run down, if air conditioned, interior of the building. He remembers the dreams of youth.

He remembers standing on a hillside in Corona Del Mar and looking down upon a gigantic house under construction as his father tells him he is meant to be a writer. A plywood turret of what is to become a huge personal library is framed by the hazy blue of the Pacific Ocean. The house will be that of Dean Koontz, who would go on to write the Afterword for the 2005 Signet Classic Edition of Winesburg, Ohio.

The man remembers boyhood, when the dream of being a writer was new. He is eleven. He and his parents have moved to the working class community of South Gate. For the first time, he applies himself to his schoolwork. He wins a city-wide essay contest and is rewarded with an article in the newspaper and a free lasagna dinner. His parents, whose marriage is failing, declare a temporary truce and whisper with one another about their destined-for-greatness son. Almost as impressively, a biologically precocious Latina he goes to school with named Claudia asks him to sleep with her. Blushing, he buries his head in his desk. He does not know what it is to sleep with a girl, he only knows that Catherine Bach of Dukes of Hazard fame has made him feel funny on several different occasions.

One day he is accosted at the school bus stop by another boy named Jose who is jealous of the attentions of the resident alpha-female. Jose is beaten bloody and chased home by the boy. The school bus shows up just as Jose's family spill from their house, whipped into a bloodlust that the most fervent mujahideen would envy. As the eldest brother approaches the departing bus, his eyes meet the boy's through a window. The boy answers his foreign slanders by sticking out his tongue.

The boy did not become a writer. The man he became thinks of all the things he has left unsaid and of all the feelings he has never shown. He is at the hardware store. He buys a drain snake because his Hispanic wife's hair has clogged the shower. He is mildly irked, but he loves her. He loves his daughter. He loves his life. Old friends are coming over today and he will laugh. He thinks that anyone who has read Winesburg, Ohio and given it less than four stars probably only has sex like Jesus is in the room working the lights.(less)

33 likes · like · see review

Feb 24, 2012 Shan Jago rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

http://youtu.be/wp2Hwi9qM48

‘Man of ordinary constitution,
was not the flesh a fruit hanging in the orchard?’ – Arthur Rimbaud

The stories in Winesburg, Ohio were composed over a series of inky summer nights amidst a plague of fireflies by a young Ray Bradbury and Flannery O’Connor while under an umbrella of hovering opium clouds. They used the pseudonym Sherwood (possibly because Ray ‘sure had wood’) Anderson (it was rumored that O’Connor was seeded at the time and that a ‘son’ was born; a grote...more

26 likes · like · see review

Sep 11, 2009 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, darkness, good-fiction, read-in-2009, to-read-again, all-time-favorites, growing-up, important-message, transformative-experience, short-stories

Fuck, I loved this book...

I loved its drab mood, and existential feel.

I loved the descriptive writing, and the small town, midwest setting, with the seasons and people changing, but life in general, staying the same.

I loved the wild brilliance to the endings.

More than anything, and what made this novel truly special to me, was its insight into the raw emotions and psychological underpinnings of people's inner worlds. Reading this felt like peering into human nature.

I loved the depth of character...more

48 likes · like · see review

Jul 25, 2010 Jacob rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: i-own, 2010, short-fiction, penguin-classics

July 2010

Hey, Winesburg, Ohio. You got a minute? There’s something I want to talk to you about.

Look, we’ve been reading each other for a few weeks now, and I think we’ve both had a good time. I’m glad we decided to move slowly. You’re a collection of short stories and, however linked those stories were, I wanted to take the time to appreciate each one. It seemed like the right thing to do. And it was. You're an amazing book, full of passion and life, an old-fashioned kind of gal. Really charming...more

23 likes · like · see review

Jul 03, 2007 AJ Griffin rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who still have hope

If you ever want to engage in a fun experiment I suggest you do the following, which I've arranged in a convenient, step-by-step format.

A) Fall in love with a girl
B) This might be hard to arrange by yourself, but the girl has to move away from you- but not because you split or anything
C) Stay away from her for a while
D) Save up your money devotedly (i.e. stop smoking for a week) so you can afford to go visit her.
E) Take a 7 hour bus ride to where she resides, which may or not be a hippy/freak/ar...more If you ever want to engage in a fun experiment I suggest you do the following, which I've arranged in a convenient, step-by-step format.

A) Fall in love with a girl
B) This might be hard to arrange by yourself, but the girl has to move away from you- but not because you split or anything
C) Stay away from her for a while
D) Save up your money devotedly (i.e. stop smoking for a week) so you can afford to go visit her.
E) Take a 7 hour bus ride to where she resides, which may or not be a hippy/freak/artist university in Northampton, MA
F) Arrive. Greet. Be happy
G) Take copious amounts of speed
H) I mean, take a lot. More than you should
I) Do not sleep. Do not eat. These are the activities of the plebeians; you need to be spending your time having long, engaging, profound and worldly conversations that connect you with everyone you meet. At least, you need to think that
J) Keep going! You're only there for two and a half days
K) Leave in the morning. It's been....50 hours since you slept or ate. Say goodbye, hop on that bus
L) You haven't taken any speed in a while because you're not fucking made of money, man, so functioning as a human becomes difficult.
M) The speed wears off. You're on a bus, you're going back home to a place that you don't particularly like, and you're leaving behind the girl that you love without knowing when you will see her again
N) Lose hope. Embrace despair. Have daylight hallucinations. Feel every grain of anything resembling happiness drain out of your body.
O) Read Winesburg, Ohio.
P) See if you survive through the day!!

The "big fans of existentialism" in my english class would have shat themselves over this book, because it seems like Mr. Anderson is the definition of the "life is devoid of meaning and full of hopelessness" idea they all wanted to believe so much. I don't want to ruin anything for you, but here's the general moral of these stories: pretty much everyone's hopes and dreams are just that, and they all end up dying, feeling like a failure.

Cheery stuff. Enjoy with a heft dose of Coricidin Cough and Cold for optimal results.(less)

25 likes · like · see review

Jul 10, 2012 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: schmutzwasser, lit-fic

Unbearably slow stories that filled me with a dull sort of dread. (2007)

A couple of years later (2012. Okay, a few years later.), after a re-read:

"Many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg."

There is no way to make my original one star reaction after the first reading of this book meet up with my present feelings about it. Is it because I was in a different place in my life a few years ago? Is it because I'm impatient with books that sometimes have a slow wind-up? Is it because, we...more

13 likes · like · see review

Jan 17, 2010 Eh?Eh! rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: tandy, goodreaders-made-me, lit-huh-rary, babble-added, weep

I've just started this but I have in mind the American radio show This American Life and the snarly description they quoted from a (I've never watched it but I gather it was sort of trashy) tv show, "Is that that [radio:] show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are?"

Anyone can read this book and call it beautiful, moving, insightful, etc. But someone who reads this and then continues to snub the "common" man for no reason other than boredom, a perceived...more

32 likes · like · see review

Jun 15, 2007 Pamela rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: the-best

This was my third time reading this book, and I think I owe it to myself to read this book at least every other year to remind myself why it is possibly the best writing America has ever produced.

The common problem in these stories is that the characters in Winesburg feel too much, and they don't know how to articulate their sudden flashes of vivid insight. So that fervor gets turned inward, and the energy of those feelings gnarls the person until he or she becomes grotesque: The Winesburg resid...more

11 likes · like · see review

Dec 18, 2011 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars

Rating: 3.75* of five

Anderson's influence on both Faulkner and Hemingway is very clear. He's got a deft hand with characterization, but he's not quite the craftsman that Faulkner would prove to be...his jumps in time feel like boo-boos, not choices. And he's not quite the storyteller Hemingway would prove to be, miring himself in the quotidian and missing the many opportunities to universalize his characters' angst the way ol' Ernie did.

I long to see an "American Masterpiece Theatre" created, an...more

6 likes · like · see review

May 07, 2009 Kim rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cultured, short-stories, meh-at-you

Okay, fine, I didn't like it.

I believe I had a crisis of faith whilst reading Winesburg, Ohio. One of the bestest reasons for GR is that I've been exposed to writers that I'd never heard of and to reviews that made me sit up and say 'To the library, NOW' and I really wanted to believe that I'd benefit from reading this. I really did.

So, uh... what went wrong? Where is this crisis of faith? Okay, maybe not faith---maybe foundation is a better word. See, I always sort of thought of myself as an...more

22 likes · like · see review

Oct 10, 2012 Emily May rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, short-stories, 2012

4.5
I apologise for my lack of originality, but I need to steal karen's perfect summarisation of this book: "this book is life - it is tender and gentle and melancholy and real. not everything works out according to plan here, but what ever does?"

There is no better way to put it than that. Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of short stories about the inhabitants of the small town of Winesburg, it is a very real story about the lives of "normal" people. Those people who work hard every day of their l...more 4.5
I apologise for my lack of originality, but I need to steal karen's perfect summarisation of this book: "this book is life - it is tender and gentle and melancholy and real. not everything works out according to plan here, but what ever does?"

There is no better way to put it than that. Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of short stories about the inhabitants of the small town of Winesburg, it is a very real story about the lives of "normal" people. Those people who work hard every day of their lives and never get rewarded for their dedication. Those who pray each day for the one thing they've always wanted... only to remain disappointed. Those who are sad and broken from having never been loved as a child, those who were never good enough for the people in their lives. This little book captures so many emotions in just over 250 pages: pain, happiness, fear, want, greed, sadness, frustration...

This book is filled with beautiful, quotable writing and the last line is one of the best finishing lines I've ever read. It just adds that cherry on top of this sundae and left me feeling a whirlwind of emotions. As does the whole book. Sherwood uses the short story method to explore different styles of story-telling when dealing with different characters in this small town. For example, the second story in the book is called Hands and tells the tale of Wing Biddlebaum through his hands that have inspired emotions from wonder to hatred in the hearts of the people he has known in his life. "The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name."

Another example of Sherwood's experimentation with styles that I really liked was in Godliness: A Tale in Four Parts. In this, the author tells the story of a family from the point of view of different family members and your opinion of the characters change with each one you read. At first, Louise is a selfish and argumentative woman who neglects her son and is prone to fits of anger or alternatively periods of withdrawal and silence. But then Sherwood switches perspective to allow for understanding: "Before such women as Louise can be understood and their lives made livable, much will have to be done. Thoughtful books will have to be written and thoughtful lives lived by people about them." Because Louise was not born with rage and frustration inside her, it was put there by life and others who failed her. Sherwood's portrait of a woman at this time and the limits put upon her because she is a woman and not a man is sad and somewhat ahead of its time.

I really wanted to give this five stars and I almost did, but I held back from doing so when I paused to look back over the book and realised the quality of some stories is far greater than others and it was the stronger stories that were tempting me to rate higher. But readers of short story collections often acknowledge that this is frequently the case and I don't want to put you off reading this. It's hard not to be touched by the realities these people faced and I think this would be the perfect opportunity to compare with The Casual Vacancy - another book about the lives of people in a small, quiet town and how they are not as calm and gentle as one may be tempted to believe.

I want to make this comparison because I tried to read Rowling's adult novel and found myself too bored to continue. So I inevitably started to believe that this was down to the subject matter and the subtle tone of the book and perhaps my not-so-secret super love of wizards and magic. I personally think Winesburg, Ohio is proof that it wasn't my lack of ability to appreciate a certain type of story and that it really was just pretty boring (sorry fans!). Because this is about small town relations too, it is about people who aren't celebrities or supernatural creatures or dating supernatural creatures... and it hooked me from start to finish.(less)

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Oct 11, 2007 Greg Carmichael rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read Winesburg, Ohio and then I read it again. It is unlike any other book that I know which is surprising since it was published in 1919. One would think that a highly regarded novel with such a unique style would have been emulated more often. Perhaps it has.

Winesburg, Ohio is a work of fiction, but has no real plot. That is not to say it is about nothing or is just an exercise in style or imagery. In a series of short chapters, the book paints portraits of several of the people in the ficti...more

6 likes · like · see review

May 04, 2012 Erik rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

A solid collection of downbeat, succinctly written, psychologically astute short stories set during the early twentieth century in a miserable Midwestern U.S. town, still trying to reconcile its old-fashioned ways with the looming influence of industrialization. We are given many brief vignettes detailing key points and thoughts in the lives of numerous citizens, refracting the full spectrum of human experience through a prism of elegiac gloom. Dreams are dashed, desires are awakened then thwart

...more

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Jun 19, 2012 Cheryl in CC NV rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Read excerpts for college - liked it enough to remember for three decades. Probably I should do so again, after all these years and books....

Ok, in my "You'll Love This One" group we are having a classics 'TBR Toppler.' So I finally got around to this. And loved it.

But the first thing I need to say is that this Edition* is Horrible! Typos abound, includ'ing more than one life -> fife and lots and lots of in-tact line breaks in the mid-dle of the line that totally inter-rupt the flow of the r...more

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Mar 06, 2007 Rolls rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone adventurous

Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Oh." is one of the most criminally undervalued books in the whole damned canon. Mention it to most people and of the few who have heard of it precious few of those have actually read it. I am in no way shape or form trying to sound highfaluting. I bought this book a full year before I actually sat down to read it and that was only 4 months ago. I was finally swayed to do so because a good buddy of mine and I were itching to read some books together and we both hap...more Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Oh." is one of the most criminally undervalued books in the whole damned canon. Mention it to most people and of the few who have heard of it precious few of those have actually read it. I am in no way shape or form trying to sound highfaluting. I bought this book a full year before I actually sat down to read it and that was only 4 months ago. I was finally swayed to do so because a good buddy of mine and I were itching to read some books together and we both happened to own a copy. I then read that Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner all at one time or another pointed to this unassuming tome as one of the greatest (and most influential) novels ever written by an american in the twentieth century - so that clinched it. Now I can hear you asking, "Why should I give a flying fig?" Well all I will say is, if you care about great literature you just have to read this book someday.

"Winesburg" is called a novel but it is an unusual one for sure. It reads more like a collection of short stories focusing on the inhabitants of this small American town. What could be more boring right? Wrong. Under the sleepy surface of Winesberg there is a seething, raw and at times unseemly reality promising to break through. Young George Willard is our compass through the rough wilderness that is day to day life in Winesburg. Most authors would churn out a coming of age story and nothing more. Anderson chooses a wider canvas and creates instead a gallery of grotesques that may depress you but will more often than not leave you marvelling at the power of his prose style.

Anderson writes about these flamboyantly damaged people in the most sparse almost haiku like manner. Never once do you feel he uses the almost right word. There is through out language of an almost detached yet laser like precision. It is almost like if e.e. cummings was earning his keep as a mild mannered reporter for a small town newspaper. He feels for these people to be sure but not enough to waste words overwriting.

Read this book and I think it will surprise you how modern a novel written in 1919 can seem almost a hundred years later. This ain't quaint nostalgia. This book is Here. This book is NOW.

(less)

14 likes · like · see review

Apr 06, 2009 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, short-stories-novellas-essays

I wanted to love this book more than I actually did. While I was reading it, I was thinking "Winesburg, Ohio is a town full of crazies, pervs, and potential rapists." I was also thinking "Sherwood Anderson must have hated women." I don't know anything about him, so I don't know what his views were, but I thought several stories had an underlying contempt for women in general. They cheat, they deceive, they lie, they tease. Then again, the men weren't written about too favorably, either.

I realize...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Jason Koivu rated it 3 of 5 stars

Superbly written from the technical sense. Unfortunately the characters are as colorless as Ohioans really do tend to be. I'M SORRY! It's just that in my experience I have met some terribly nice, but terribly boring people from Ohio and this collection of short stories backs that up. Aw, come on Ohio, don't get mad...I still loves ya!

5 likes · like · see review

Dec 19, 2012 Con McVeety rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

this song is perfect for this book
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvE5Mt...

Sherwood Anderson comes full circle with each short story that makes up the 1919 classic “Winesburg, Ohio”, a collection that has influenced a number of great twentieth century writers, from Updike to Faulkner, from Carver to Franzen. What’s amazing is the average length of each story is around six pages, but Anderson was such a clear and precise writer, also a writer that understood human behavior, and whos's prose was ah...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Laurie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

At first, I was really excited to read this book! My professor made it sounds pretty much m&mazing.
When I actually read it, however, i was slightly disappointed. The book is composed of many short stories about the citizens of a small town named, you guessed it, Winesburg, Ohio.
The short stories are all very interesting and quite beautiful. My complaint is that I wanted to get to know the characters more. I wanted more, dammit!
I felt like there were too many loose ends, too many unanswered...more

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Mar 17, 2011 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-fiction, classics, short-stories, four-star-fiction

This is a collection of 25 stories set in the 1890s in the fictional small town of Winesburg. Each story focuses on one Winesburg resident, with other characters drifting in and out of all the stories. It reads more like a series of shifting tableaux than an episodic novel, but in the end it felt surprisingly complete for a book without a definitive, linear plot.
The main "character" is the town of Winesburg itself, with all it represents in terms of thwarted dreams, isolation, small-town restle...more

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Apr 30, 2007 sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

You DO need to read this book, Tracy. I loved it. Really loved it. Gave it four stars because it's hard for me to read stuff that is in that style of story telling, but that's all me. That barren star is a representative of me... not the dear ole folks of Winesburg, Ohio. (I've a feeling I could change my mind about this next time I read it.) And it's short stories! Holy hell! We should read one a week... starting this week (I need to find another copy) and -no wait!!- we need to read these alou...more

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Oct 07, 2012 oriana marked it as didntfinish-yet · review of another edition

Recommended to oriana by: David

I am taking a massive leap of faith here. I am taking only this book—which I haven't even started yet—on a weekend out of town. No vetting, no backups (okay, I have a big-ass Chuck Klosterman essay collection if I get really desperate), basically no prep to make sure this is the book I want for my only companion on a four-hour bus ride. All because of David's review.

David, you better be right this time. I don't want to be stranded in the middle of the night with another horror like that Jewish...more

2 likes · like · see review

deleted user Thanks for being influenced by my blustery bombast, Oriana. I really, really hope that I don't let you down this time... but knowing your love for Pes...more
updated Mar 12, 2009 10:50am

oriana Thanks, I'm totally psyched to read this now! If your two-sentence excerpt and awesome analysis are a fair indication (and I suspect they are), I thin...more
Mar 12, 2009 10:53am

deleted user Yeah, I kinda know that The Jewish Messiah speaks to a more... shall we say specific taste. (By the way, you're not the only person who took up my rec...more
Mar 12, 2009 10:57am

Mar 18, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: that-dreadful-pain

I read this book because goodreaders told me that Steinbeck was influenced by Anderson; that Cannery Row was influenced by Winesburg, Ohio; that this book was a favorite for Wolfe, for Faulkner, for Hemingway, for Henry Miller, for David Kowalski, for brian gottlieb, for Ben, for Chris, for Philip Roth, for J., for Angie, for Moira, for Yvette, for Ray Bradbury, for H.P. Lovecraft. For John Steinbeck. How could I possibly resist it, then? How can you, now?

It's a novel and/or a series of short st...more I read this book because goodreaders told me that Steinbeck was influenced by Anderson; that Cannery Row was influenced by Winesburg, Ohio; that this book was a favorite for Wolfe, for Faulkner, for Hemingway, for Henry Miller, for David Kowalski, for brian gottlieb, for Ben, for Chris, for Philip Roth, for J., for Angie, for Moira, for Yvette, for Ray Bradbury, for H.P. Lovecraft. For John Steinbeck. How could I possibly resist it, then? How can you, now?

It's a novel and/or a series of short stories and/or meditations on loneliness and disappointment and futility. So, when you're feeling lonely and disappointed, is it a good idea to meditate on these things? Was it a good idea for James Ellroy to obsess on fictional and nonfictional accounts of misogynistic violence after the brutal murder of his mother? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But really, he had no choice, I guess. He just did. And the lonely and despairing will gravitate towards this book. They'll be either thankful to be given a glimpse of all the grotesque souls lined up along the town's streets or else they'll throw the book across the room! THIS WRETCHED BOOK! And they'll go read The Onion or something absurd and flippant that they can shake their head and laugh at.

Speaking of The Onion and this book, here's today's daily Onion headline, which I found fitting for this review: House Haunted by Tortured Souls of Current Residents. Hee-hee. Despair is funny, now. "Thanks, Onion!"

The first short in this collection is called "The Book of the Grotesque," and while the novel is not named so, it certainly sets the stage for the entire book to follow, for the rest of the stories compose a bit of a parade through the main street of Winesburg, featuring its grotesque citizens. I don't know if Sherwood thought that there were happy and peaceful souls in that town, but if he did, he didn't see a need to share their (surely bland) stories. And by grotesque, he didn't always mean dispicable, though some of them were. As the man in the short envisions them before writing about them, it's stated: "The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were amusing, some almost beautiful, and one, a woman all drawn out of shape, hurt the old man by her grotesqueness. When she passed he made a noise like a small dog whimpering."

There's too much pain, right? I made a new shelf for this book because all through, I kept hearing a line from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath: "They sat and looked at it and burned it into their memories. How'll it be not to know what land's outside the door? How if you wake up in the night and know--and know the willow tree's not there? Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, you can't. The willow tree is you. The pain on that mattress there--that dreadful pain--that's you." The final line is the one that kept repeating in my head, but I included the whole paragraph because it's such an amazing one. Though, truth be told, I'm getting a little weary of pain fiction at the moment, which probably accounts for the missing 5th star. I at least need a break from it, though I can't abandon it because it seems to be my favorite reading. I just need a little time where I'm reading without sighing.

I felt physically thankful (you know what I mean) when Anderson let up on the pain a bit and showed me some purity or some hope or some beauty. In the short Paper Pills, the first of two about Dr. Reefy, both of which I loved, Anderson lays out a metaphor that lets us know that he doesn't hate these characters; he loves them. He finds them beautiful. He even thinks they're better than the unpained and undamaged. I'll just leave you with that.

On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Dr. Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they're delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all of its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.
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Mar 08, 2013 Owen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Owen by: karen

Shelves: classics, notable, short-stories

I wasn't going to read this book for whatever reason, and I planned on taking it back to the library. However, I picked it up and read it in about a day or two. I'm glad I did.

Sometimes I encounter books, usually short story collections, that are separate stories but are interwoven. This is one of them. The stories take place in the same town, the fictional Winesburg,Ohio but rarely do they overlap. The only real unifying factor is a character by the name of George Willard, who shows up in each...more

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Aug 21, 2007 Chris Q. Murphy rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of the americana, grotesques, and the film "heathers".

this was the book that confirmed my wife's (then girlfriend) suspicions that i am a sucker for the american gothic. this book will bore you to tears if you are a fan of action, high drama, or even intrigue; but if you love ornately detailed storytelling and the process of placing characters in the bigger picture, you won't be able to put this one down until you're done.

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Feb 02, 2010 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Alan by: everyone but Jen

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-2010

totally enchanted. Not sure if I can add to what has already been said but I will say more tomorrow-ish (at work now and haven't got the book with me). For now a couple of thoughts - I kept thinking 'Chekhov, Chekhov' for that's how the stories tasted - but then in the intro I see he hadn't read Chekhov at the time. There's a lot of running off into the night, talking to trees, that kind of thing, which does make it seem a little odd, daft, but I suppose now there'd be less running off, more sin...more

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Mar 12, 2013 julieta rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: young-americans

Most of the characters in winesburg seem to have the same problem. Loneliness , and being incapable of communicating this loneliness to others around them. Strange when Winesburg is such a small place, and they all cross paths at some point. But I suppose that is to be learned by these stories, it is not what you tell but how you choose to tell it, and the way Anderson looks at his stories is beautiful, sad, and maybe a little depressing. You don't seem to have many choices if you live in a smal...more

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About Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson was an American writer who was mainly known for his short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio. That work's influence on American fiction was profound, and its literary voice can be heard in Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell and others.

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Certain Things Last: The Selected Short Stories

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Quotes from Winesburg, Ohio

“In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I have come to this lonely place and here is this other," was the substance of the thing felt.” — 37 people liked it

“Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night,' he had said. 'You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses.” — 36 people liked it

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