“Winesburg, Ohio” by Sherwood Anderson

In the years leading up to and including World War I, a no-longer-young writer named Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) had been trying desperately to become a full-time, recognized author. He had worked in the advertising business in Chicago, but he returned to his home state of Ohio to work in the paint business while writing fiction in his spare time. Nothing seemed to help. 

He went back to advertising in Chicago, but he was encouraged by writers like Carl Sandburg and Theodore Dreiser to keep at his writing. He published verse and fiction in various literary magazines and soon had two published but undistinguished novels.

 

Then he turned his hand seriously to short stories, and in 1919, Anderson published a group of connected short stories entitled Winesburg, Ohio. Based roughly on his upbringing in Clyde, Ohio, southeast of Toledo and set about the turn of the century, the stories departed dramatically from the nostalgic idea of small-town Midwestern life. 

 

A reader today would find the book surprisingly contemporary. Anderson called his characters a group of “grotesques,” men and women who were misfits in society and sometimes holding prominent town positions. Anderson’s grotesques, apparently, occurred in all walks of life – farmers, bankers, social matrons, and young and old alike. Some had become grotesque of circumstances beyond their control; others seemed to have developed their problems well enough on their own, as if it sprang from their inmost being. 

 

Sherwood Anderson

Almost all of the stories include at least a reference to if not a major character in George Willard, who, while not yet a grotesque himself, has one for a mother. Willard is a young writer for Winesburg’s weekly newspaper. He follows the editor’s requirement to always include the names of townspeople in his stories, no matter how mundane their activities might be. The characters seem to gravitate toward him, as if he’s some kind of talisman. Willard also is the only character in the collection who seems the closest to what we might call “normal,” even though he has his own problems and weaknesses. 

 

The young newspaperman has done what the other characters seemed to have failed to do – figure out how to live a reasonable life.

 

The characters are often unforgettable, even rather haunting. The man who talks with his hands. The doctor who is anything but a success in his medical and personal lives. George Willard’s mother, who seems to teeter on the edge of madness. The young man who was supposed to be a preacher but is called home to run the family’s farm – and becomes utterly ruthless. The girl who didn’t fit within her own family and the family that takes her in. The young woman who realizes that the boy she loves has left for good, never to return. The mother and son who live in the forgotten stone house. And so many more.

 

These short stories are no so much stories with a beginning, middle, and end as they are vividly drawn descriptions of the people who live inside the stories. You may not like these characters, but they are difficult to forget.

 

Anderson was a prolific writer, and it is his short stories that he’s best remembered for. Winesburg, Ohio is a classic, and deservedly so.