Name: Winesburg, Ohio
Rating: 3.709677419354839 (31 reviews)
ISBN: 0140247793

Sherwood Anderson

Winesburg, Ohio

Winesburg, Ohio (Oxford World's Classics)

Greg Talbot

Sherwood Anderson’s unsettling collection of stories“Winesburg Ohio” is an eerie look at just how unwholesome, eerie and terrifying small town America can be and. It's a reminder of the constraining nature of our environments. If David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” wasn’t enough to warn you or a leisurely watch of Toby Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” hasn’t come your way, you might want to snuggle up to these twisted tales. Winesburg Ohio, is a town where everyone is feeling great impulses but no one is connecting. Anderson writes about the primordial almost-Jungian desires/archetypes that drive these residents to madness or at least strangeness. Almost as a meta-commentary, the book starts with “The Book of the Grotesque”, and we see the world through the dark vision of a poet who imagines the “process of grotesques passing before his eye” (p.5), and the old seer theorizes that people hold on to a truth that suites them. Stating almost as the big idea to all the following stories in the book “he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.” (p.6). As we meet the town members through different stories, it becomes very apparent that no one would ever benefit to be born or stay in Winesburg Ohio. Although Anderson couches his language in old-time phrases like “let us look briefly”, he manages to conjure up imagines of the townspeople grotesqueness that is as bone chilling as anything i’ve read. For example, in the brilliant “The Untold Lie”, we get the story within the story about Old Windpeter “raving and searing at the onrushing locomotive, and that he fairly screamed at the onrushing locomotive and that screamed with delight” (p.204). There is also the troubled alcoholic, who more sinisterly reveales he “is addicted to something else”. In this story “Tandy”, he reduces a seven year old to tears “her young strength were not enough to bear the vision of the words of the drunkard had brought to her” (p.142) in the presence of her though. The physical manifestations of the town are often disturbing, twitching lips, Wash Williams “purple, bloated face” (p.116), Wing Biddlebaum’s “nervous expressive fingers” (p.16). The insights residents have are usually just as terrifying. God’s will and character seem deeply perverted. Peeping Reverend Curtis Hartman, in the masterful “The Strength of God” seems to have a mystical experience after letting his dark lustful feelings take hold. He states, “After ten years in this town, God has manifested himself to me in the body of a woman (p.147). Desires for transcendence manifest in Alice Hindman when taken the idea that “the rain would have a creative and wonderful effect on her body” (p.111), “a mad desire to run naked through the streets took possession of her.” Finally there is the old testament modernized story of Abraham in the dark four part-morality tale “Godliness” There is a thread through the whole book with the character George Willard. George Willard , a boy of some promise, George seems to have an appearance or connection to almost everyone in this madhouse. George is hears the women troubles of Seth Richmond, hears the pitying of undone Wash Williams (p,115), and gets the attention of pretty much every lady in the town. He is a reportor for the Winnesburg Eagl. He has nervous disposition “like the rest of town of Winesburg he was perplexed and knew not what to do” (p.100). Although he comes of as ineffectual and tragic with descriptions about “sadness of a growing boy in a village at year’s end (p.172)”, he also becomes our hope. Despite getting into some “interesting” relationships with troubled women and thrown into bushes by other male suitors of those women, George like the reader comes away largely unscathed. If there is any hope for the town, it’s in George Willard who exits the town and ends this book of madness and dark disturbances. These stories are really unique..they had a strong effect on me. They can be heavy, tragic, horrifying, interesting and boring. I found the poetry and language to be antiquated, but the imagery to be rich and singular. A friend of mine referred this collection of stories to me after I recently finished a performance of the Edward Lee Masters classic “Spoon River”. Like “Spoon River” this is an interwoven tapestry of stories about men and women in a small town America. “Winesburg, Ohio” carries that deep American piece of the psyche. Written 100 years ago, the writing is aged, but the desires are carried. Our towns and our souls are unexplored, bordered by darkness, despair and madness. Yet we go on.

Katie

El joven George Willard, reportero del periódico local, observa la vida de los habitantes de su pequeño pueblo, Winesburg, en Ohio. La mirada del narrador construye, a partir de lo cotidiano y gris, un fascinante retrato humano, pulcro y detallado, de enorme realismo poético y finísima penetración, que convierte al libro en todo un referente literario.

Winesburg, Ohio

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