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.