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Triumph of the Egg
Book by Anderson, Sherwood
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
7 people are currently reading
265 people want to read
About the author
Sherwood Anderson
439 books613 followersOften autobiographical, works of American writer Sherwood Anderson include
Winesburg, Ohio
(1919).
He supported his family and consequently never finished high school. He successfully managed a paint factory in Elyria before 1912 and fathered three children with the first of his four wives. In 1912, Anderson deserted his family and job.
In early 1913, he moved to Chicago, where he devoted more time to his imagination. He broke with considered materialism and convention to commit to art as a consequently heroic model for youth.
Mainly know for his short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio. One can hear its profound influence on fiction in Ernest Miller Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Clayton Wolfe, John Ernst Steinbeck, and Erskine Preston Caldwell.
Most important book collects 22 stories. The stories explore the inhabitants of a fictional version of Clyde, the small farm town, where Anderson lived for twelve early years. These tales made a significant break with the traditional short story. Instead of emphasizing plot and action, Anderson used a simple, precise, unsentimental style to reveal the frustration, loneliness, and longing in the lives of his characters. The narrowness of Midwestern small-town life and their own limitations stunt these characters.
Despite no wholly successful novel, Anderson composed several classic short stories. He influenced Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and the coming generation.
He supported his family and consequently never finished high school. He successfully managed a paint factory in Elyria before 1912 and fathered three children with the first of his four wives. In 1912, Anderson deserted his family and job.
In early 1913, he moved to Chicago, where he devoted more time to his imagination. He broke with considered materialism and convention to commit to art as a consequently heroic model for youth.
Mainly know for his short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio. One can hear its profound influence on fiction in Ernest Miller Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Clayton Wolfe, John Ernst Steinbeck, and Erskine Preston Caldwell.
Most important book collects 22 stories. The stories explore the inhabitants of a fictional version of Clyde, the small farm town, where Anderson lived for twelve early years. These tales made a significant break with the traditional short story. Instead of emphasizing plot and action, Anderson used a simple, precise, unsentimental style to reveal the frustration, loneliness, and longing in the lives of his characters. The narrowness of Midwestern small-town life and their own limitations stunt these characters.
Despite no wholly successful novel, Anderson composed several classic short stories. He influenced Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and the coming generation.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
October 3, 2014
Next time I read this collection, and there will certainly be a next time, it will be fall, and I will be intensely aware of the fallness of that fall, the ripeness and death of it, the bright red rattling melancholy of it, the drifty isolated inwardness of it, the chill forced domesticity of it; for Sherwood Anderson is the autumnal writer; no one writes about dried leaves like him.
Leaves should be carried away, go dancing away, not be beaten straight down off the trees by rain. So says Sherwood in paraphrase.
There is a naturalism here - the subject matter is certainly naturalistic - but not a lot of naturalistic details, only just enough to give his self-absorbed and internalized characters somewhere to actually be in the world. I don’t know if it was the nature of the font and layout of the copy I read – largish font with wide margins all around - but I had the sensation while reading of everything taking place in a great blankness – towns fading to nothingness on their peripheries, lazy paths winding off into the void, everything one step away from being overtaken by the surrounding blankness and getting erased, solidity appearing beneath the feet as his characters step off into this blankness - which only served to enhance the overall effect of the stories.
The writing reminded me quite a bit of Gertrude Stein – the two were friends – and not only in its atomized word-by-word style, but also in the almost simple-minded seeming manner of expression of insights into human psychology and motivations, though Anderson goes much deeper than Stein in this regard. There is a great clearing away of brush and debris in Anderson’s manner, an intentional obliviousness to the extraneous, as he continually gets at the inner workings of his characters.
Emotional imprisonment and melancholy, along with the tangible desire to escape such conditions, which only exacerbates, are very comforting to me; in literature at least.
I do remember my love for it but I don’t remember the molecular details of Winesburg all that well, but in my mind The Triumph of the Egg is the next logical step as it feeds on Winesburg’s various portrayals of small town imprisonment and frustration to present a few tales of people who actually do escape to somewhere else. Not that they’re any better off when they get there.
Standouts: I Want To Know Why, Seeds, The Egg, Brothers, The New Englander and, especially, Out Of Nowhere Into Nothing which almost qualifies as a novella and is a masterpiece.
The Egg is cringingly, tragically hilarious.
The collection is organized as a unity, with a visual introduction consisting of clay busts of characters within the story executed by the artist Tennessee Mitchell, a poem to begin it and a poem to end it, one character who appears in two stories, and a few short impressionistic-type stories that are not really stand-alone but do add to the overall atmosphere of the collection. It has the feel of an experiment, however homespun the subject matter.
I suspect that The Triumph of the Egg is not as popular, or even known, as Winesburg because it crosses the line into grotesquerie too often and too well. It makes people uncomfortable. It loses readers who do not want to confront or even acknowledge their own grotesqueness.
But there are other reasons.
There is the necessarily crude and over-riding preoccupation with the sex impulse, and its dominate role in our motivations. In fact every major story in this collection revolves around it. There is the racism, which pops up here and there in his flippant use of "nigger" and his general idealization of “their” connection to unobstructed impulses of the naturally authentic. But after a while none of it bothered me; I was too taken away by the stories themselves and the manner of their telling; and by his strange brand of stunted wisdom. His drawbacks in the end only served to enhance the authenticity of his vision, as he himself merged partially with the grotesques he portrayed, thereby validating its universality, however marginal.
And Sherwood Anderson is stunted; with weird whiffs of adolescence stubbornly residing in his middle-aged mind, though within his handicaps is a perennially immature, and valid, wisdom. He is the writer/philosopher of that youthful impulse that ever thinks there is something better, something more, “over there”, a world of possibility, however continuously squashed it is. Though he’s no optimist squashing is not final, as there’s also the unstoppable gross rankness of life itself that ever tosses out new possibilities in its unstructured growth.
Leaves should be carried away, go dancing away, not be beaten straight down off the trees by rain. So says Sherwood in paraphrase.
There is a naturalism here - the subject matter is certainly naturalistic - but not a lot of naturalistic details, only just enough to give his self-absorbed and internalized characters somewhere to actually be in the world. I don’t know if it was the nature of the font and layout of the copy I read – largish font with wide margins all around - but I had the sensation while reading of everything taking place in a great blankness – towns fading to nothingness on their peripheries, lazy paths winding off into the void, everything one step away from being overtaken by the surrounding blankness and getting erased, solidity appearing beneath the feet as his characters step off into this blankness - which only served to enhance the overall effect of the stories.
The writing reminded me quite a bit of Gertrude Stein – the two were friends – and not only in its atomized word-by-word style, but also in the almost simple-minded seeming manner of expression of insights into human psychology and motivations, though Anderson goes much deeper than Stein in this regard. There is a great clearing away of brush and debris in Anderson’s manner, an intentional obliviousness to the extraneous, as he continually gets at the inner workings of his characters.
Emotional imprisonment and melancholy, along with the tangible desire to escape such conditions, which only exacerbates, are very comforting to me; in literature at least.
I do remember my love for it but I don’t remember the molecular details of Winesburg all that well, but in my mind The Triumph of the Egg is the next logical step as it feeds on Winesburg’s various portrayals of small town imprisonment and frustration to present a few tales of people who actually do escape to somewhere else. Not that they’re any better off when they get there.
Standouts: I Want To Know Why, Seeds, The Egg, Brothers, The New Englander and, especially, Out Of Nowhere Into Nothing which almost qualifies as a novella and is a masterpiece.
The Egg is cringingly, tragically hilarious.
The collection is organized as a unity, with a visual introduction consisting of clay busts of characters within the story executed by the artist Tennessee Mitchell, a poem to begin it and a poem to end it, one character who appears in two stories, and a few short impressionistic-type stories that are not really stand-alone but do add to the overall atmosphere of the collection. It has the feel of an experiment, however homespun the subject matter.
I suspect that The Triumph of the Egg is not as popular, or even known, as Winesburg because it crosses the line into grotesquerie too often and too well. It makes people uncomfortable. It loses readers who do not want to confront or even acknowledge their own grotesqueness.
But there are other reasons.
There is the necessarily crude and over-riding preoccupation with the sex impulse, and its dominate role in our motivations. In fact every major story in this collection revolves around it. There is the racism, which pops up here and there in his flippant use of "nigger" and his general idealization of “their” connection to unobstructed impulses of the naturally authentic. But after a while none of it bothered me; I was too taken away by the stories themselves and the manner of their telling; and by his strange brand of stunted wisdom. His drawbacks in the end only served to enhance the authenticity of his vision, as he himself merged partially with the grotesques he portrayed, thereby validating its universality, however marginal.
And Sherwood Anderson is stunted; with weird whiffs of adolescence stubbornly residing in his middle-aged mind, though within his handicaps is a perennially immature, and valid, wisdom. He is the writer/philosopher of that youthful impulse that ever thinks there is something better, something more, “over there”, a world of possibility, however continuously squashed it is. Though he’s no optimist squashing is not final, as there’s also the unstoppable gross rankness of life itself that ever tosses out new possibilities in its unstructured growth.
December 17, 2014
The song was a command. It told over and over the story of life and of death, life forever defeated by death, death forever defeated by life. from 'Out of Nowhere Into Nothing'
"In every human being there are two voices, each striving to make itself heard." Terrible truths about life sound in the routines in Rosalinds father's home. Water from the pail hits the floor like innocent feet. She is always awake waiting to be afraid again by what they know, and do they want. Throwing stones to test the depth and a heart fall for the answer. Living with her brother and his wife in Chicago she is not frightened by what they know. In the crowds there's a rest for the tiring ache. When you walk by opened windows and a light is on. Staring into another life, if you can have faith in it meaning something is everything. There is always a new face to outrun the historical lines. I'm heart in my throat if she can make those life on top of life too much feelings something to live on longer than I've been able to do it. I've been lost on where understanding can go too. When the voices are heard how do the voices stay alive without the searching? Rosalind can imagine it is in the knowing smile of her neighbor in the town of her parents. Has it been him forever and her never alone. I don't know if it is in the old bachelor Melville Stoner's said out loud I knew your thoughts. How can intimacy of rhythms tear down secrets. She can find sweetness in it and I still don't know. She's looking for proof to hold in her hand and maybe that's it.
Rosalind goes home to see if it is possible to be with her mother and know herself with another presence resting on the unspoken. That's a danger, I think, to risk that hope on the chance of faith. I don't know about this married boyfriend of hers that she wants her mother's say so. Should she be his lover in flesh. Her ego is kitten stroked when the man who couldn't sing anymore can let it out again in her presence. The man Walter Sayer's self written life splits off. The woman is his dream-life so he can sing. The wife and kids and job are his real life. When he fantasizes about Rosalind he thinks he could make love to Rosalind if he could go on after as if it had never happened. It's all bull shit, this you can't sing if you're not going to make a brilliant career out of it. It's in these stories over and over that one's soul is imprisoned with their spouse. No ends possible they have the heart to see but sex and rings and bills. She loves her Walter Sayers. Does she or is he all she knows. All I know of their conversations is his claims of needy defeat and some condemnation of Americans vampiric existence over the natives. It must have suited her ego to listen to him. She liked to believe her home town of Willow Creek incapable of housing another spark. Only in the places to go big city of Chicago. As if there weren't costs for anyone who fed off the land, Walter. I can see her searching his exhale and inhale for what she always felt was missing life and settling for his holes in the big picture. Why does the choice to live with another person make it impossible for the chooser to feel/see/hear/even want another possibility? Do all songs forget about them? This must be why love stories are predominately about beginnings over the middle and end. Rosalind's mother says don't do it, don't do it, don't it. Her husband was bad in bed. She cleans, she cooks, she gets fat. Don't parallel with me. I don't know what to do with the songs but how do you not hear anything else but that. How did Rosalind live next door to Melville and see his mocking smile when he speaks to the widow with the hens. His eyes must have said don't leave me alone with myself and his smile must have said I can only live by myself because I don't know how to listen, only know. I'm haunted by the sight of the middle aged man face down hunting the scent that made the bees drunk on life. There must be another kind of listening that he had and I wish I knew what it was to go looking for bee scents. How did she not feel torn that he lived until the age of forty with his mother as his housekeeper? Come on, there's something fucked up about living with another person that way. Them going down for you to go up.
Eyes must have looked at one another as they lived on the way to dying without seeing. What did they want to be seen by others? If another human being could really hear you what would you want them to hear? Would you know what you were really saying in those two voices? I believed that Rosalind had those voices. I feel like she's still going to be lonely. There's only so much naked to the human soul.
Elsie ran into the vastness of the cornfields filled with but one desire. She wanted to get out of her life and into some new and sweeter life she felt must be hidden away somewhere in the fields. from - 'The New Englander'
The young woman Elsie has feelings that are not thoughts with another home in a greater elsewhere. They are the everything you see when you're alone. A deflating self balloon. I don't know what to call it either. I saved the last few pages of this book and went on a long drive to get the that feeling when the trees look like they are moving and not me. With worlds between I can almost see. On the other side are the fields and getting in the mental running. I can't love one more than the other. I've done that always. To still do it makes childhood feel like it is never going to end, that the desperate wish for something good to happen is never going to come true. I know what it feels like when Elsie is small to the world and huge eyes to herself. She has moved with her parents to live with her older brother and his family in Iowa. Her family are far away like listening to something you won't look at. Sharper and more afraid. I can hear the shouts and the dead rabbits in their cornfields. See the promise between her younger niece and her sweetheart. Feel unrelated life as they are far away from Elsie's quiet feelings.
A hard smile came and went on his face. "She isn't like a young tree any more. She is almost like Winifred. She is almost like a person who belongs here, who belongs to me and my life," he thought. from 'The Door of the Trap'
He could breathe as he did before he counted every brick of his prison but Hugh won't let that happen. He locks the door to his study from his wife and another way to be. Their talks on the sofa, their children out of the gray of his obsession. I don't get the father in 'Brothers' either. Kids can be awesome. That there's no pleasure in witnessing their personalities assert over or to experience? Adults too. Hugh doesn't want their say in his festering beliefs. It is on purpose. When I was a kid my mom had a coworker who boasted of dumping his wife because one night she was watching Lifetime network. "Lifetime is what my life had become!" Why couldn't they see anything else in anything else? When they approach the pearly gates they will be turned away to the sarlaac pit if they didn't moisten their dicks on a more exciting pussy, I guess. The husband in 'Brothers' murders his wife's life, the only one she will get, in a darkened hallway outside their home. Firey eyes burning dreams of a pretty face in the office across where he fixes bicycles. The choking desire of his brother telling the story is what got me. The sacrifice of the dog he holds in his arms as he forgets any other life to be had for the unattainable dream. These dreams have nowhere to go. Hugh the embittered family man brings home a young student from his school to be his tree as the bike mechanic's secretary was his starry tentacle offering nothing. I was moved by the out of his sight family life without Hugh. The girl is in his sight and out of it, growing closer to his sons. Kissing them and loving them. I don't know if the wife was really okay with it. If she had muted dreams or blames on the marriage prison. Why didn't they want anything else than to go back before they were married and gamble it all again on a seperate satellite remaking them into one who could never be thirsty or hungry ever again? Did the murderer's brother see anything than crying in death and miss the living altogether? I don't know but I get a twisting feeling in my gut wondering about it. I'm feeling a little sick for that girl who is tossed out of the man's prison. The girl and the old man should get together and sit with hearts in their mouths trying to taste what family feels like and that shell being all they saw. What if you could take the shards from fallen stars everybody like Elsie got and put it all together.
That horse wasn't thinking about running. He don't have to think about that. He was just thinking about holding himself back 'til the time for the running came. I knew that. I could just in a way see right inside him. from 'I Want To Know Why'
The faith in the same connection, the unsick horse running fever, is tears in his eyes. The pride for something beautiful with no ownership. I feel the purity in the wanting to be apart of something but a bit sick about the blindness to what happens to the horses. Wouldn't they rather be wild horses couldn't stop them. The black stable hands he envies in their mutual horse lives. I feel torn about horse training, in keeping them dependent on human care when they could have done for themselves. What if the men who were taking the jobs they could get had wanted to do something else. But the pull of that envy to be another person is killer for me. I try to make myself feel it as often as possible. I could get into the making himself believe in the shared mental running with the beast and the betrayal when Jerry Tillford the trainer sells out the unspoken love for the horse into boasting for himself to win another temporary dance with a female. Coarse words from a window. The hot breath between lips and nightly loving is taking place somewhere else for Jerry and the boy doesn't separate the two. He doesn't know that people are liars outside and bury the truth in their hearts. Not dead, not quite, but not holding everything. Another man in another story wishes to be a leaf blown away by the wind. A dead dry thing. I would like to be between trees in away there's some kind of an horizon. And edge of a forest, maybe. In 'The Egg' the ugly naked chickens walk into death under wheels. Stroking out to the sun. If you could see all lives as the same then some of them make it and there are eggs. Eggs to chickens to the oval of life. If you can't there's life to death. The father keeps nature's fuck ups floating in jars. Maybe they'll be worth something some day. Another move to another job. Change doesn't last long enough to make life feel any different for long. The father gets a fantasy about being the center of happy young people. They open a restaurant by a train station. The horrible thing about new faces in the big loud world is getting lost in it. Their happy faces to the outsider who doesn't just know something sweet. That's the hardest thing, the faith in something good behind another soul. Rosalind could do it but I can only do it some of the time. In 'The Egg' the father loses his mind to beating at that door. His son can't ride on the life to death to life again loop. That's a tough one too. I had a feeling about all of these stories that they could have something I always wanted and don't know how to get it. It's funny 'cause they are all near one side of things. When you can't have faith in it and when you can. Being close to where it was happening was enough to twist me inside no matter what happened. Whatever happens I kinda want it to go the other way. A husband follows the echos of Napoleon and General Grant. His wife is floating as a stranger, a picture. If he tried to get the beat of her heart drums to do the Morris dance to maybe it'd be go back and forth between dream and solid windows. Real in belief. I think he liked the far away thunder, though. The girl, Mary, who is going to lose her cold father to cancer in "Unlighted Lamps". He wouldn't do what you have to do to be believed by another person. He wouldn't be proof to his wife and he loses her. No one says why did the mother leave her baby daughter with a man who leaves her to live all by herself. The living ghost isn't dead yet and it is almost too late. When it is too late I know that he loved her and she wants the real person she always dreamed of. The too late is more real than what it could be. This time the unheard voice doesn't matter. I could feel beating within her the strangers, the wish for something different.
I loved how the dots weren't all connected in a constellation that said the world is too damned small. It's too small and is that all there is, just life and death. I absolutely loved it. That's the only time I feel a voice. I can't stop thinking about my suspicions. The girl in Willow Creek who bursts into tears as her friends finger the carefully selected trousseau of another girl. Please don't do it, please don't do it! It has different meanings when Rosalind cannot put herself in the place of the girl with the looked for future. She is later the aching regrets of the lonely girl, mourning a life of her own for the engaged girl. That's amazing to me to swallow down unnamed feelings for people that could have existed. The holding them as not trivial is the best I ever had to combat the putting up of prison walls.
"In every human being there are two voices, each striving to make itself heard." Terrible truths about life sound in the routines in Rosalinds father's home. Water from the pail hits the floor like innocent feet. She is always awake waiting to be afraid again by what they know, and do they want. Throwing stones to test the depth and a heart fall for the answer. Living with her brother and his wife in Chicago she is not frightened by what they know. In the crowds there's a rest for the tiring ache. When you walk by opened windows and a light is on. Staring into another life, if you can have faith in it meaning something is everything. There is always a new face to outrun the historical lines. I'm heart in my throat if she can make those life on top of life too much feelings something to live on longer than I've been able to do it. I've been lost on where understanding can go too. When the voices are heard how do the voices stay alive without the searching? Rosalind can imagine it is in the knowing smile of her neighbor in the town of her parents. Has it been him forever and her never alone. I don't know if it is in the old bachelor Melville Stoner's said out loud I knew your thoughts. How can intimacy of rhythms tear down secrets. She can find sweetness in it and I still don't know. She's looking for proof to hold in her hand and maybe that's it.
Rosalind goes home to see if it is possible to be with her mother and know herself with another presence resting on the unspoken. That's a danger, I think, to risk that hope on the chance of faith. I don't know about this married boyfriend of hers that she wants her mother's say so. Should she be his lover in flesh. Her ego is kitten stroked when the man who couldn't sing anymore can let it out again in her presence. The man Walter Sayer's self written life splits off. The woman is his dream-life so he can sing. The wife and kids and job are his real life. When he fantasizes about Rosalind he thinks he could make love to Rosalind if he could go on after as if it had never happened. It's all bull shit, this you can't sing if you're not going to make a brilliant career out of it. It's in these stories over and over that one's soul is imprisoned with their spouse. No ends possible they have the heart to see but sex and rings and bills. She loves her Walter Sayers. Does she or is he all she knows. All I know of their conversations is his claims of needy defeat and some condemnation of Americans vampiric existence over the natives. It must have suited her ego to listen to him. She liked to believe her home town of Willow Creek incapable of housing another spark. Only in the places to go big city of Chicago. As if there weren't costs for anyone who fed off the land, Walter. I can see her searching his exhale and inhale for what she always felt was missing life and settling for his holes in the big picture. Why does the choice to live with another person make it impossible for the chooser to feel/see/hear/even want another possibility? Do all songs forget about them? This must be why love stories are predominately about beginnings over the middle and end. Rosalind's mother says don't do it, don't do it, don't it. Her husband was bad in bed. She cleans, she cooks, she gets fat. Don't parallel with me. I don't know what to do with the songs but how do you not hear anything else but that. How did Rosalind live next door to Melville and see his mocking smile when he speaks to the widow with the hens. His eyes must have said don't leave me alone with myself and his smile must have said I can only live by myself because I don't know how to listen, only know. I'm haunted by the sight of the middle aged man face down hunting the scent that made the bees drunk on life. There must be another kind of listening that he had and I wish I knew what it was to go looking for bee scents. How did she not feel torn that he lived until the age of forty with his mother as his housekeeper? Come on, there's something fucked up about living with another person that way. Them going down for you to go up.
Eyes must have looked at one another as they lived on the way to dying without seeing. What did they want to be seen by others? If another human being could really hear you what would you want them to hear? Would you know what you were really saying in those two voices? I believed that Rosalind had those voices. I feel like she's still going to be lonely. There's only so much naked to the human soul.
Elsie ran into the vastness of the cornfields filled with but one desire. She wanted to get out of her life and into some new and sweeter life she felt must be hidden away somewhere in the fields. from - 'The New Englander'
The young woman Elsie has feelings that are not thoughts with another home in a greater elsewhere. They are the everything you see when you're alone. A deflating self balloon. I don't know what to call it either. I saved the last few pages of this book and went on a long drive to get the that feeling when the trees look like they are moving and not me. With worlds between I can almost see. On the other side are the fields and getting in the mental running. I can't love one more than the other. I've done that always. To still do it makes childhood feel like it is never going to end, that the desperate wish for something good to happen is never going to come true. I know what it feels like when Elsie is small to the world and huge eyes to herself. She has moved with her parents to live with her older brother and his family in Iowa. Her family are far away like listening to something you won't look at. Sharper and more afraid. I can hear the shouts and the dead rabbits in their cornfields. See the promise between her younger niece and her sweetheart. Feel unrelated life as they are far away from Elsie's quiet feelings.
A hard smile came and went on his face. "She isn't like a young tree any more. She is almost like Winifred. She is almost like a person who belongs here, who belongs to me and my life," he thought. from 'The Door of the Trap'
He could breathe as he did before he counted every brick of his prison but Hugh won't let that happen. He locks the door to his study from his wife and another way to be. Their talks on the sofa, their children out of the gray of his obsession. I don't get the father in 'Brothers' either. Kids can be awesome. That there's no pleasure in witnessing their personalities assert over or to experience? Adults too. Hugh doesn't want their say in his festering beliefs. It is on purpose. When I was a kid my mom had a coworker who boasted of dumping his wife because one night she was watching Lifetime network. "Lifetime is what my life had become!" Why couldn't they see anything else in anything else? When they approach the pearly gates they will be turned away to the sarlaac pit if they didn't moisten their dicks on a more exciting pussy, I guess. The husband in 'Brothers' murders his wife's life, the only one she will get, in a darkened hallway outside their home. Firey eyes burning dreams of a pretty face in the office across where he fixes bicycles. The choking desire of his brother telling the story is what got me. The sacrifice of the dog he holds in his arms as he forgets any other life to be had for the unattainable dream. These dreams have nowhere to go. Hugh the embittered family man brings home a young student from his school to be his tree as the bike mechanic's secretary was his starry tentacle offering nothing. I was moved by the out of his sight family life without Hugh. The girl is in his sight and out of it, growing closer to his sons. Kissing them and loving them. I don't know if the wife was really okay with it. If she had muted dreams or blames on the marriage prison. Why didn't they want anything else than to go back before they were married and gamble it all again on a seperate satellite remaking them into one who could never be thirsty or hungry ever again? Did the murderer's brother see anything than crying in death and miss the living altogether? I don't know but I get a twisting feeling in my gut wondering about it. I'm feeling a little sick for that girl who is tossed out of the man's prison. The girl and the old man should get together and sit with hearts in their mouths trying to taste what family feels like and that shell being all they saw. What if you could take the shards from fallen stars everybody like Elsie got and put it all together.
That horse wasn't thinking about running. He don't have to think about that. He was just thinking about holding himself back 'til the time for the running came. I knew that. I could just in a way see right inside him. from 'I Want To Know Why'
The faith in the same connection, the unsick horse running fever, is tears in his eyes. The pride for something beautiful with no ownership. I feel the purity in the wanting to be apart of something but a bit sick about the blindness to what happens to the horses. Wouldn't they rather be wild horses couldn't stop them. The black stable hands he envies in their mutual horse lives. I feel torn about horse training, in keeping them dependent on human care when they could have done for themselves. What if the men who were taking the jobs they could get had wanted to do something else. But the pull of that envy to be another person is killer for me. I try to make myself feel it as often as possible. I could get into the making himself believe in the shared mental running with the beast and the betrayal when Jerry Tillford the trainer sells out the unspoken love for the horse into boasting for himself to win another temporary dance with a female. Coarse words from a window. The hot breath between lips and nightly loving is taking place somewhere else for Jerry and the boy doesn't separate the two. He doesn't know that people are liars outside and bury the truth in their hearts. Not dead, not quite, but not holding everything. Another man in another story wishes to be a leaf blown away by the wind. A dead dry thing. I would like to be between trees in away there's some kind of an horizon. And edge of a forest, maybe. In 'The Egg' the ugly naked chickens walk into death under wheels. Stroking out to the sun. If you could see all lives as the same then some of them make it and there are eggs. Eggs to chickens to the oval of life. If you can't there's life to death. The father keeps nature's fuck ups floating in jars. Maybe they'll be worth something some day. Another move to another job. Change doesn't last long enough to make life feel any different for long. The father gets a fantasy about being the center of happy young people. They open a restaurant by a train station. The horrible thing about new faces in the big loud world is getting lost in it. Their happy faces to the outsider who doesn't just know something sweet. That's the hardest thing, the faith in something good behind another soul. Rosalind could do it but I can only do it some of the time. In 'The Egg' the father loses his mind to beating at that door. His son can't ride on the life to death to life again loop. That's a tough one too. I had a feeling about all of these stories that they could have something I always wanted and don't know how to get it. It's funny 'cause they are all near one side of things. When you can't have faith in it and when you can. Being close to where it was happening was enough to twist me inside no matter what happened. Whatever happens I kinda want it to go the other way. A husband follows the echos of Napoleon and General Grant. His wife is floating as a stranger, a picture. If he tried to get the beat of her heart drums to do the Morris dance to maybe it'd be go back and forth between dream and solid windows. Real in belief. I think he liked the far away thunder, though. The girl, Mary, who is going to lose her cold father to cancer in "Unlighted Lamps". He wouldn't do what you have to do to be believed by another person. He wouldn't be proof to his wife and he loses her. No one says why did the mother leave her baby daughter with a man who leaves her to live all by herself. The living ghost isn't dead yet and it is almost too late. When it is too late I know that he loved her and she wants the real person she always dreamed of. The too late is more real than what it could be. This time the unheard voice doesn't matter. I could feel beating within her the strangers, the wish for something different.
I loved how the dots weren't all connected in a constellation that said the world is too damned small. It's too small and is that all there is, just life and death. I absolutely loved it. That's the only time I feel a voice. I can't stop thinking about my suspicions. The girl in Willow Creek who bursts into tears as her friends finger the carefully selected trousseau of another girl. Please don't do it, please don't do it! It has different meanings when Rosalind cannot put herself in the place of the girl with the looked for future. She is later the aching regrets of the lonely girl, mourning a life of her own for the engaged girl. That's amazing to me to swallow down unnamed feelings for people that could have existed. The holding them as not trivial is the best I ever had to combat the putting up of prison walls.
November 17, 2017
معمولی بود.
July 25, 2015
I loved this book! Anderson was a writer that not just anyone can read. His use of prose, grammar and punctuation are unique and can be odd at times. For example, he will spell a word one way in one story and then spell the same word differently in another story. There are points where he omits a punctuation mark where there ought to be one, specifically commas.
But overall, the works of Anderson are classic and timely. 'Triumph of the Egg' is no exception. It is a compilation of short stories, but unlike 'Winesburg, Ohio' these stories do not have a mutual relation to each other. Only the last story, 'Out of Nowhere Into Nothing' is divided into six parts and concerns the same characters.
Many people may find reading Anderson difficult because of the author's style of extreme setting descriptions and the depth of probing into a character's mind and thoughts. I personally love reading Anderson because I find myself getting fully involved in the story and anticipating what happens next. Many times, the author leaves the reader hanging in a way, with the story almost ending without resolve, but other times he finishes a story with an unexpected ending, leaving the reader wanting to know more.
If this style of writing is something you think you will find interesting and challenging, then by all means, read the works of Sherwood Anderson. He was one of the main influences of writers such as Steinbeck, Hemmingway and Kerouac. The perception of the late 1800s and early 1900s is vivid and full of detail. Anderson's work is written as if he lived it, it seems almost autobiographical.
But that's what makes Anderson such an effective writer.
But overall, the works of Anderson are classic and timely. 'Triumph of the Egg' is no exception. It is a compilation of short stories, but unlike 'Winesburg, Ohio' these stories do not have a mutual relation to each other. Only the last story, 'Out of Nowhere Into Nothing' is divided into six parts and concerns the same characters.
Many people may find reading Anderson difficult because of the author's style of extreme setting descriptions and the depth of probing into a character's mind and thoughts. I personally love reading Anderson because I find myself getting fully involved in the story and anticipating what happens next. Many times, the author leaves the reader hanging in a way, with the story almost ending without resolve, but other times he finishes a story with an unexpected ending, leaving the reader wanting to know more.
If this style of writing is something you think you will find interesting and challenging, then by all means, read the works of Sherwood Anderson. He was one of the main influences of writers such as Steinbeck, Hemmingway and Kerouac. The perception of the late 1800s and early 1900s is vivid and full of detail. Anderson's work is written as if he lived it, it seems almost autobiographical.
But that's what makes Anderson such an effective writer.
December 22, 2023
Mr. Anderson has the gift of describing a scene in his book so vividly that I felt I was in the scene.
His attention to detail is amazing.
This is a collection of short stories about small-town living in the northeast.
They deal with life choices and the stories about love and how it can make a person change for the better. Or as the story of a farm girl who comes home from the big to tell her mother who she has fallen in love with and is startled by her mother's advice.
There's a story about a town that follows a religious leader who predicts that God is returning at a certain time and date. This news splits the town into those who believe without exception and those who don't follow him. Or the ones who have figured out that something isn't quite believable with this person.
It was enjoyable to read but be aware this isn't a book that has big revelations. It's about life.
His attention to detail is amazing.
This is a collection of short stories about small-town living in the northeast.
They deal with life choices and the stories about love and how it can make a person change for the better. Or as the story of a farm girl who comes home from the big to tell her mother who she has fallen in love with and is startled by her mother's advice.
There's a story about a town that follows a religious leader who predicts that God is returning at a certain time and date. This news splits the town into those who believe without exception and those who don't follow him. Or the ones who have figured out that something isn't quite believable with this person.
It was enjoyable to read but be aware this isn't a book that has big revelations. It's about life.
January 29, 2011
This collection of short stories is even better than Winesburg, Ohio and with their diversity I find myself understanding/enjoying Anderson a great bit more. For me, this is the writer who truly defined/crystallized/understood modernized America. What strikes me as different from Winesburg is that Anderson takes his soulless, lifeless characters in town and shows much more of what it is that they struggle against.....and he does so in beautiful ways. In "I Want to Know Why," we come face to face with a youth who loves the soul, the essence, the beauty of a horse......only to find another man loves the same horse only for the money which can be reaped from it. In "Seeds," the character pines, "I want more than anything else in the world to be clean." In "Brothers," the leaves themselves "should go dancing away," lending an image of "what beauty could be." In "The Man with the Trumpet," we read the desperation of one shouting for something better than humanity's normal course: "I said they might build temples to themselves." And in the novella "Out of Nowhere into Nothing," the protagonist somewhat abruptly even finds an alternative to the usual lifelessness, for at the end of the story Rosalind felt she "was a creator of light." I will be interested to go back and reread, but I do not recall any characters arriving at any desires, conclusions, or thoughts much beyond their trivial, mundane, day-to-day existence in Winesburg, Ohio.
The use of nature in this series of stories is also exceptional. While at times dry and coarse with death, it is mostly light and airy, just as Anderson's wording, to such an extent that the reader could almost float through the text. The land joins with humanity to be so airy it's almost an illusion, mirage, or apparition. This begs the question which I think Mr. Anderson would repeatedly ask: What is the essence behind all this superficial form?
I agree with my good friend and colleague, Eddie Watkins: The Library of America series needs to grant Mr. Anderson his due. I also agree with that same good friend and colleague that this book will definitely be reread. In the fall, in the woods, on a boat, in Kentucky, in Russia, with tea.......all would work well.
Glad to see Hemingway and Faulkner gave Mr. Anderson his due, because in my view they hold a hollow stick next to his pen. Entirely original and authentic: weeds, winds, phantoms.
And please remember: Chicken farming is not for you!!!!
The use of nature in this series of stories is also exceptional. While at times dry and coarse with death, it is mostly light and airy, just as Anderson's wording, to such an extent that the reader could almost float through the text. The land joins with humanity to be so airy it's almost an illusion, mirage, or apparition. This begs the question which I think Mr. Anderson would repeatedly ask: What is the essence behind all this superficial form?
I agree with my good friend and colleague, Eddie Watkins: The Library of America series needs to grant Mr. Anderson his due. I also agree with that same good friend and colleague that this book will definitely be reread. In the fall, in the woods, on a boat, in Kentucky, in Russia, with tea.......all would work well.
Glad to see Hemingway and Faulkner gave Mr. Anderson his due, because in my view they hold a hollow stick next to his pen. Entirely original and authentic: weeds, winds, phantoms.
And please remember: Chicken farming is not for you!!!!
November 25, 2014
Anderson is a wonderful writer, evoking a particular America that maybe never existed as such an actualised, coherent place in the world, but certainly did exist as a unified literary landscape: clear bright skies, verdant hills, vast flat plains where -- on a clear day -- the eye can see forever: the people so small against it all, battling through their sinewy lives and clinging to whatever looks like hope for as long as they can hold on. Sad, poignant, and sometimes hilarious, with particularly gorgeous character portraits.
March 8, 2023
Are you feeling happy and positive…so much so that you feel you should go down a notch or two? Then read this utterly depressing collection of short stories. You’ll find yourself feeling bleak and hopeless. I I loved the author’s book, Winesburg, Ohio, but this one is doing nothing for me except pulling me down. I quit halfway through. I can’t waste another minute on it.
October 9, 2013
Done, and it always bums me out when I do so. The stories are timeless and at times formless. The stories are like ghosts trying gliding through the pages, giving the reader a peek of the ghostly form and then they disappear. Just a perfect little book that's ever been writ!
December 10, 2022
After reading “ Winesburg, Ohio I decided to keep going on the Anderson stories.
These stories are slightly more uneven with a few not really even worth noting. There are many, however, that hold up extremely well. As in his other collection there is a great deal of sexuality or at least sensual thought hidden inside the writing. Loneliness, desire, if one scrapes the surface Anderson seems to have much to say about these proper folks of the early Midwestern twentieth century
In “ The Other Woman “ we see a man struggling to live as he should. Married and happily he finds himself remembering a woman. The wife of the man where he buys his paper and sundries. Just beggar his marriage he asked her to visit him and she had. That night after their visit he rationalizes it by telling himself he appreciates his wife even more for having done it. Yet he is haunted by the woman.
“ The Egg” as the title story should be stronger but it’s not. A man recalls the struggles of his father to be successful. As a small farmer to a restaurant owner, nothing comes easy, especially when his Father seems it worthwhile to “ change “ his personality type to a hale and hearty chatter to woo customers
In “ Unlighted Lamps” one sees the first great story of this set. Both young Mary Cochran and her Father struggle with their relationship. Mary’s mother left when she was young and her Father has tried to do right by her but struggled to achieve closeness. Much the same as happened with his wife. On the day of the story recent events have led each of them independently to decide to open up to the other, to acknowledge each other. Yet that evening upon arriving home the Doctor collapses on the stairs in the entryway and dies leaving everything unsaid.
“ Brothers “ is another story that tells of how sexual obsession can lead to disaster. A story within a story we learn about a Chicago bicycle factory foreman who murders his wife after becoming obsessed
“ In the Door of the Trap “ revisits the character of Mary Cochran again. Now, with her Father dead, attending college she becomes a friend of the family of her Professor Walker. She enjoys his children but when Mr Walker kisses her one night and then tells her never to return she finds her life upended again.
In “ The New Englander “ Elsie Leander is nearing 30 and never married. When her widowed Father decides to relocate out west to where Elsie’s much older brother has made a life she is excited. A quiet, unspoken attraction builds between her and a young farmhand. Illusions are shattered, however, when she witnesses the man kidding her brothers teenage daughter in the cornfield one Sunday.
“ Motherhood “ is a short two page notable for the authors comparing a woman to the fertile earth, going so far as to say “ he plowed her deeply.” Pretty risqué I would think for the times
“ Out of Nowhere in Nothing “ is a long piece about a young woman named Rosalind Wescott. Well, young by todays standards, in the story at 27 she is well past the normal age of marriage. Rosalind was raised comfortably in a rural town, staying at home for three years after high school graduation, waiting for something, anything, whatever was supposed to happen to do so. When nothing changed she moved to Chicago to live with her brother and his wife, eventually becoming secretary to an older man. This man, also dissatisfied with his lot, finds solace in her. While not consummating the relationship the feelings are there. His marriage and children an obvious worry she seeks her Mothers guidance.
This is a strong set, not the same excellence of Winesburg, but still offering some strong views of early twentieth century life and mores.
These stories are slightly more uneven with a few not really even worth noting. There are many, however, that hold up extremely well. As in his other collection there is a great deal of sexuality or at least sensual thought hidden inside the writing. Loneliness, desire, if one scrapes the surface Anderson seems to have much to say about these proper folks of the early Midwestern twentieth century
In “ The Other Woman “ we see a man struggling to live as he should. Married and happily he finds himself remembering a woman. The wife of the man where he buys his paper and sundries. Just beggar his marriage he asked her to visit him and she had. That night after their visit he rationalizes it by telling himself he appreciates his wife even more for having done it. Yet he is haunted by the woman.
“ The Egg” as the title story should be stronger but it’s not. A man recalls the struggles of his father to be successful. As a small farmer to a restaurant owner, nothing comes easy, especially when his Father seems it worthwhile to “ change “ his personality type to a hale and hearty chatter to woo customers
In “ Unlighted Lamps” one sees the first great story of this set. Both young Mary Cochran and her Father struggle with their relationship. Mary’s mother left when she was young and her Father has tried to do right by her but struggled to achieve closeness. Much the same as happened with his wife. On the day of the story recent events have led each of them independently to decide to open up to the other, to acknowledge each other. Yet that evening upon arriving home the Doctor collapses on the stairs in the entryway and dies leaving everything unsaid.
“ Brothers “ is another story that tells of how sexual obsession can lead to disaster. A story within a story we learn about a Chicago bicycle factory foreman who murders his wife after becoming obsessed
“ In the Door of the Trap “ revisits the character of Mary Cochran again. Now, with her Father dead, attending college she becomes a friend of the family of her Professor Walker. She enjoys his children but when Mr Walker kisses her one night and then tells her never to return she finds her life upended again.
In “ The New Englander “ Elsie Leander is nearing 30 and never married. When her widowed Father decides to relocate out west to where Elsie’s much older brother has made a life she is excited. A quiet, unspoken attraction builds between her and a young farmhand. Illusions are shattered, however, when she witnesses the man kidding her brothers teenage daughter in the cornfield one Sunday.
“ Motherhood “ is a short two page notable for the authors comparing a woman to the fertile earth, going so far as to say “ he plowed her deeply.” Pretty risqué I would think for the times
“ Out of Nowhere in Nothing “ is a long piece about a young woman named Rosalind Wescott. Well, young by todays standards, in the story at 27 she is well past the normal age of marriage. Rosalind was raised comfortably in a rural town, staying at home for three years after high school graduation, waiting for something, anything, whatever was supposed to happen to do so. When nothing changed she moved to Chicago to live with her brother and his wife, eventually becoming secretary to an older man. This man, also dissatisfied with his lot, finds solace in her. While not consummating the relationship the feelings are there. His marriage and children an obvious worry she seeks her Mothers guidance.
This is a strong set, not the same excellence of Winesburg, but still offering some strong views of early twentieth century life and mores.
November 12, 2022
This book of short stories was hard to get through. I only enjoyed The Egg, and The Dumb Man, and The Seeds (kind of), including the front matter. The stories are bleak and depressing with poor depictions of women, women’s sexual desire and potential references to sexual assault and rape, like Motherhood and The Seeds. One thing that I did enjoy across many of the stories was that there was a desire to be loved and to love as the characters ultimate pursuit.
All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone unless you’re bored and want to read some twisted stories, that will leave you feel heavy from the harsh reality of the characters world.
All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone unless you’re bored and want to read some twisted stories, that will leave you feel heavy from the harsh reality of the characters world.
January 3, 2024
The American author Anderson was one of the most famous writers decades ago, but today he is unfairly almost forgotten. Reading Anderson means to me discovering the tension of economic progress and nostalgia in the mid-American society in the beginning of the 20th century, of passion and everyday life, of living in growing cities and in small villages. His spare and clear style of writing was the fundament for the novels of Hemingway.
June 19, 2020
The characters in these stories are confused and dissatisfied with their lives. They often resort to illusions and fantasies, rather than accept reality. There are no resolutions and in the end, they are in the same alienated condition, if not worse, as at the beginning. Every story left me feeling frustrated and uncomfortable. Not an enjoyable reading experience.
January 17, 2021
the collection has good stories about entrapment of life in countries. People are perplexed and puzzled, but they are no able to define their problems. Yes there is this loneliness, hopelessness, and desolation, but why? and how? Why do they feel numb for their family members, mothers, fathers, and children?
December 15, 2021
There were unquestionably some interesting pieces here, but I really can't get past the fact that all of Sherwood Anderson's characters talk (and to a lesser extent act) like people with mild-to-moderate intellectual disabilities despite not being people with mild-to-moderate intellectual disabilities.
February 10, 2022
Don’t read this collection if you are having a bad day. Populated by the dysfunctional, the lonely, the mentally unstable, the discontented, the disappointed, the depressed, the frustrated, the loveless, the lost…. these stories leave you feeling there’s little hope. Anderson is a master creator of American small town melancholy- but there must have been some people who appreciated the joy and beauty of living there.
Want to read
September 13, 2024This isn't my kind of thing at all, but for some reason I really want to read it.
June 9, 2025
A collection of loneliness and isolation of the most familiar and familial kind.
July 20, 2022
li a edição de 2022 da cutelo ed., com tradução de josé miguel silva, que não se encontra listada.
no seu discurso de aceitação do nobel em 1949 william faulkner terá afirmado "somos todos filhos de sherwood anderson", numa alusão aos autores que retrataram literariamente uma certa américa, sulista e introvertida, cheia de dramas e contradições. muitos referem os nomes de hemingway, dos passos e wolfe mas para mim, não esquecendo as vozes femininas de o'connor, welty e mccullers, o que melhor lhe seguiu as pisadas terá sido mesmo o meu querido e actualmente esquecido erskine caldwell. este é um livro de contos invulgar, alguns são como poemas em prosa, noutros apenas se confessa a vontade de que a narrativa pudesse ser um conto. e contam-se histórias de homens e mulheres à margem, desenraizados mas profundamente ligados à terra, absurdos e contudo concretos, todos à procura de algo dentro de si, muitos sabendo que não o irão conseguir mas continuando sempre a tentar... já não se escreve assim - e é pena.
no seu discurso de aceitação do nobel em 1949 william faulkner terá afirmado "somos todos filhos de sherwood anderson", numa alusão aos autores que retrataram literariamente uma certa américa, sulista e introvertida, cheia de dramas e contradições. muitos referem os nomes de hemingway, dos passos e wolfe mas para mim, não esquecendo as vozes femininas de o'connor, welty e mccullers, o que melhor lhe seguiu as pisadas terá sido mesmo o meu querido e actualmente esquecido erskine caldwell. este é um livro de contos invulgar, alguns são como poemas em prosa, noutros apenas se confessa a vontade de que a narrativa pudesse ser um conto. e contam-se histórias de homens e mulheres à margem, desenraizados mas profundamente ligados à terra, absurdos e contudo concretos, todos à procura de algo dentro de si, muitos sabendo que não o irão conseguir mas continuando sempre a tentar... já não se escreve assim - e é pena.
August 23, 2013
I guess I did Anderson backwards. Winesburg Ohio is his masterpiece and the consensus seems to be that he declined after this and hurt his reputation by tackling novels -- a format he never mastered.
Anderson's style is to let the protagonist of the story tell the tale, in their voice and from their viewpoint. As you read you feel that you are sitting on a porch with the character and they relate the story just as people do in real life, oftentimes wandering off into other trains of thought, but then bringing you back with "But, that's not what I wanted to tell you about." Anderson chronicles the lives of ordinary people and his most common theme is the modernization of America and what was lost in the process. He loves small town America, horses, and detests materialism.
The best story of the set, and his best known is "The Egg." It is a tragic story of a boy's father who was "intended by nature to be a cheerful, kindly man." He was happy to work for another as a farm hand. But, then he got married and "The American passion for getting up in the world took possession of" him. A failed chicken farm is followed by a failed restaurant business. It is comic and tragic. He is completely undone trying to perform tricks with eggs to impress one of his few restaurant customers. He can't get the egg to stand on end or slip it into a bottle, thus, the Egg Triumphs. I liked this better than Sinclair Lewis or Howells who spent entire novels to capture the essential point here.
I can see the influence of Chekhov on Anderson. His stories raise questions but don't always provide answers. In some cases I found this to be very perplexing. "The Dumb Man" and "The Man in the Brown Coat" left me befuddled. At other times, I liked his subtle approach. "I Want to Know Why" is a good coming of age tale and I felt that the point of "Brothers" is that the insane man realizes something that most of his miss. We are all connected, related, and somehow responsible for each other. Our "father" (Whom I took to be God) "has gone to sea."
Anderson wrote often of infidelity. Anderson abandoned his first wife and children to pursue his writing and then married a secession of other women. Thus, he probably knew of what he wrote in "The Other Woman." The main character, like many in these stories, cannot explain, but only describe what he feels. He states that he loves his wife -- perhaps too often -- but cannot get out of his mind the fling he had right before their marriage. He returns to this same theme in the story within the frame of "Brothers." Here again, a man becomes obsessed by another woman that he knows he can't have - "unattainable like far off stars...but she is real." He ends up knifing his wife. Quite a dim view of human nature.
One question for Anderson - Why does everyone have gray eyes?
Anderson's style is to let the protagonist of the story tell the tale, in their voice and from their viewpoint. As you read you feel that you are sitting on a porch with the character and they relate the story just as people do in real life, oftentimes wandering off into other trains of thought, but then bringing you back with "But, that's not what I wanted to tell you about." Anderson chronicles the lives of ordinary people and his most common theme is the modernization of America and what was lost in the process. He loves small town America, horses, and detests materialism.
The best story of the set, and his best known is "The Egg." It is a tragic story of a boy's father who was "intended by nature to be a cheerful, kindly man." He was happy to work for another as a farm hand. But, then he got married and "The American passion for getting up in the world took possession of" him. A failed chicken farm is followed by a failed restaurant business. It is comic and tragic. He is completely undone trying to perform tricks with eggs to impress one of his few restaurant customers. He can't get the egg to stand on end or slip it into a bottle, thus, the Egg Triumphs. I liked this better than Sinclair Lewis or Howells who spent entire novels to capture the essential point here.
I can see the influence of Chekhov on Anderson. His stories raise questions but don't always provide answers. In some cases I found this to be very perplexing. "The Dumb Man" and "The Man in the Brown Coat" left me befuddled. At other times, I liked his subtle approach. "I Want to Know Why" is a good coming of age tale and I felt that the point of "Brothers" is that the insane man realizes something that most of his miss. We are all connected, related, and somehow responsible for each other. Our "father" (Whom I took to be God) "has gone to sea."
Anderson wrote often of infidelity. Anderson abandoned his first wife and children to pursue his writing and then married a secession of other women. Thus, he probably knew of what he wrote in "The Other Woman." The main character, like many in these stories, cannot explain, but only describe what he feels. He states that he loves his wife -- perhaps too often -- but cannot get out of his mind the fling he had right before their marriage. He returns to this same theme in the story within the frame of "Brothers." Here again, a man becomes obsessed by another woman that he knows he can't have - "unattainable like far off stars...but she is real." He ends up knifing his wife. Quite a dim view of human nature.
One question for Anderson - Why does everyone have gray eyes?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 28, 2017
This bleak collection of very Midwestern American short stories has some merit and value in its portrayal of life at that time and place, but Sherwood Anderson does not rise much above the crowd. Each story seems to revolve around a perverse psychological "point", which is what gives the story its artistic flavor. The very first story is about a young man's love for another, disappointed when he sees that man with an ugly prostitute. The very long next to last story is about a woman grappling with her fundamentally empty and boring life and her newly discovered love for a married man. No story stands out as particularly good, and some of the shorter ones are pretty bad. They are not nearly as good as Flannery O'Connor's which cover a similar slice of life, although the flat dullness of the Midwest has rarely been captured better. Perhaps they are more "accurate" than O'Connor in that they do not rely on violence to express their points. You really do get a sense of the tedium of American life in the early 1900s in this part of the world.
This was read as part of JC Powys' "Modern Books" lecture series. It's interesting to compare the treatment of nature, and how rich the countryside of Dorset is compared to the bleak, flat, American Midwest. The psychological "perversity" does not seem quite as accurate or as meaningful as that held by Powys' characters. Otherwise, no sense at all that Anderson influenced Powys as a writer.
What I'm not sure I can recommend to the general reader, if you are a fan of classic American short stories, you might like it. I view these stories as having a lot of value with respect to American cultural history as they seem quite authentic in their description of life back then. The stories are easy to read, rarely do you have to look up a word and there are no references to other literature. The stories are never uplifting or enjoyable, at best they are merely interesting.
This was read as part of JC Powys' "Modern Books" lecture series. It's interesting to compare the treatment of nature, and how rich the countryside of Dorset is compared to the bleak, flat, American Midwest. The psychological "perversity" does not seem quite as accurate or as meaningful as that held by Powys' characters. Otherwise, no sense at all that Anderson influenced Powys as a writer.
What I'm not sure I can recommend to the general reader, if you are a fan of classic American short stories, you might like it. I view these stories as having a lot of value with respect to American cultural history as they seem quite authentic in their description of life back then. The stories are easy to read, rarely do you have to look up a word and there are no references to other literature. The stories are never uplifting or enjoyable, at best they are merely interesting.
August 24, 2016
2.5 stars.
This was disappointing, needed some major editing. It has bits and pieces and scraps of work that showed up in other places more completely.
read a little bit like a person going insane, or locked in a room until they hit their word count. Especially the last ( too long) story- can't remember the last time I was urging a character towards suicide so hard.
the only story that really left an impression on me was "the triumph of the egg".
After finishing reading "mid-american chants" everytime I the word corn, I can't help but roll my eyes. Thanks a lot for that Mr. Anderson.
This was disappointing, needed some major editing. It has bits and pieces and scraps of work that showed up in other places more completely.
read a little bit like a person going insane, or locked in a room until they hit their word count. Especially the last ( too long) story- can't remember the last time I was urging a character towards suicide so hard.
the only story that really left an impression on me was "the triumph of the egg".
After finishing reading "mid-american chants" everytime I the word corn, I can't help but roll my eyes. Thanks a lot for that Mr. Anderson.
February 5, 2018
Babam ise insanları hoşnut kılıp eğlendirmeye iyiden iyiye kaptırmıştı kendini. Hiç kuşku yok ki, yüreğinin gizli bir yerinde şovmenlik ruhu geziniyordu. Geceleri servis yaptığı demiryolculara cephanesini pek fazla harcamıyor, neler yapabileceğini, Bidwell'den gelecek genç bir adam ya da kadına saklıyordu sanki
July 26, 2008
I love stories about freaks, oddities and whispered ugliness of mankind.
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