Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson

Description

Winesburg, Ohio is a series of loosely linked short stories set in the fictional town of Winesburg. The stories are held together by George Willard, a resident to whom the community confide their personal stories and struggles. The townspeople are withdrawn and emotionally repressed and attempt in telling their stories to gain some sense of meaning and dignity in an otherwise desperate life. The work has received high critical acclaim and is considered one of the great American works of the 20th century.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781775415565
• Langue: English

Extrait

WINESBURG, OHIO
A GROUP OF TALES OF OHIO SMALL TOWN LIFE
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SHERWOOD ANDERSON
 
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Winesburg, Ohio A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life First published in 1919.
ISBN 978-1-775415-56-5
© 2009 THE FLOATING PRESS.
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
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Contents
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Introduction The Tales and the Persons The Book ofthe Grotesque HANDS, concerning Wing Biddlebaum PAPER PILLS, concerning Doctor Reefy MOTHER, concerning Elizabeth Willard THE PHILOSOPHER, concerning Doctor Parcival NOBODY KNOWS, concerning Louise Trunnion GODLINESS, a Tale in Four Parts A MAN OF IDEAS, concerning Joe Welling ADVENTURE, concerning Alice Hindman RESPECTABILITY, concerning Wash Williams THE THINKER, concerning Seth Richmond TANDY, concerning Tandy Hard THE STRENGTH OF GOD, concerning the Reverend Curtis Hartman THE TEACHER, concerning Kate Swift LONELINESS, concerning Enoch Robinson AN AWAKENING, concerning Belle Carpenter "QUEER," concerning Elmer Cowley THE UNTOLD LIE, concerning Ray Pearson DRINK, concerning Tom Foster DEATH, concerning Doctor Reefy and Elizabeth Willard SOPHISTICATION, concerning Helen White DEPARTURE, concerning George Willard
Introduction
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by Irving Howe
I must have been no more than fifteen or sixteen years oldwhen I first chanced upon Winesburg, Ohio. Gripped by thesestories and sketches of Sherwood Anderson's small-town"grotesques," I felt that he was opening for me new depthsof experience, touching upon half-buried truths whichnothing in my young life had prepared me for. A New YorkCity boy who never saw the crops grow or spent time in thesmall towns that lay sprinkled across America, I foundmyself overwhelmed by the scenes of wasted life, wastedlove—was this the "real" America?—that Anderson sketchedin Winesburg. In those days only one other book seemed tooffer so powerful a revelation, and that was Thomas Hardy'sJude the Obscure.
Several years later, as I was about to go overseas asa soldier, I spent my last week-end pass on a somewhatquixotic journey to Clyde, Ohio, the town upon whichWinesburg was partly modeled. Clyde looked, I suppose, notvery different from most other American towns, and the fewof its residents I tried to engage in talk about Andersonseemed quite uninterested. This indifference would not havesurprised him; it certainly should not surprise anyone whoreads his book.
Once freed from the army, I started to write literarycriticism, and in 1951 I published a critical biographyof Anderson. It came shortly after Lionel Trilling'sinfluential essay attacking Anderson, an attack fromwhich Anderson's reputation would never quite recover.Trilling charged Anderson with indulging a vaporoussentimentalism, a kind of vague emotional meandering instories that lacked social or spiritual solidity. Therewas a certain cogency in Trilling's attack, at leastwith regard to Anderson's inferior work, most of whichhe wrote after Winesburg, Ohio. In my book I tried,somewhat awkwardly, to bring together the kinds ofjudgment Trilling had made with my still keen affectionfor the best of Anderson's writings. By then, I hadread writers more complex, perhaps more distinguishedthan Anderson, but his muted stories kept a firm placein my memories, and the book I wrote might be seen as agesture of thanks for the light—a glow of darkness,you might say—that he had brought to me.
Decades passed. I no longer read Anderson, perhapsfearing I might have to surrender an admiration ofyouth. (There are some writers one should never returnto.) But now, in the fullness of age, when asked to saya few introductory words about Anderson and his work, Ihave again fallen under the spell of Winesburg, Ohio,again responded to the half-spoken desires, theflickers of longing that spot its pages. Naturally, Inow have some changes of response: a few of the storiesno longer haunt me as once they did, but the long story"Godliness," which years ago I considered a failure, Inow see as a quaintly effective account of the wayreligious fanaticism and material acquisitiveness canbecome intertwined in American experience.
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Sherwood Anderson was born in Ohio in 1876. Hischildhood and youth in Clyde, a town with perhaps threethousand souls, were scarred by bouts of poverty, buthe also knew some of the pleasures of pre-industrialAmerican society. The country was then experiencingwhat he would later call "a sudden and almost universalturning of men from the old handicrafts towards ourmodern life of machines." There were still people inClyde who remembered the frontier, and like Americaitself, the town lived by a mixture of dilutedCalvinism and a strong belief in "progress," YoungSherwood, known as "Jobby"—the boy always ready towork—showed the kind of entrepreneurial spirit thatClyde respected: folks expected him to become a"go-getter," And for a time he did. Moving to Chicagoin his early twenties, he worked in an advertisingagency where he proved adept at turning out copy. "Icreate nothing, I boost, I boost," he said abouthimself, even as, on the side, he was trying to writeshort stories.
In 1904 Anderson married and three years later moved toElyria, a town forty miles west of Cleveland, where heestablished a firm that sold paint. "I was going to bea rich man.... Next year a bigger house; and afterthat, presumably, a country estate." Later he would sayabout his years in Elyria, "I was a good deal of aBabbitt, but never completely one." Something drove himto write, perhaps one of those shapeless hungers—aneed for self-expression? a wish to find a moreauthentic kind of experience?—that would become arecurrent motif in his fiction.
And then, in 1912, occurred the great turning point inAnderson's life. Plainly put, he suffered a nervousbreakdown, though in his memoirs he would elevate thisinto a moment of liberation in which he abandoned thesterility of commerce and turned to the rewards ofliterature. Nor was this, I believe, merely a deceptionon Anderson's part, since the breakdown painful as itsurely was, did help precipitate a basic change in hislife. At the age of 36, he left behind his business andmoved to Chicago, becoming one of the rebelliouswriters and cultural bohemians in the group that hassince come to be called the "Chicago Renaissance."Anderson soon adopted the posture of a free, liberatedspirit, and like many writers of the time, he presentedhimself as a sardonic critic of American provincialismand materialism. It was in the freedom of the city, inits readiness to put up with deviant styles of life,that Anderson found the strength to settle accountswith—but also to release his affection for—the worldof small-town America. The dream of an unconditionalpersonal freedom, that hazy American version of utopia,would remain central throughout Anderson's life andwork. It was an inspiration; it was a delusion.
In 1916 and 1917 Anderson published two novels mostlywritten in Elyria, Windy McPherson's Son and MarchingMen, both by now largely forgotten. They show patchesof talent but also a crudity of thought andunsteadiness of language. No one reading these novelswas likely to suppose that its author could soonproduce anything as remarkable as Winesburg, Ohio.Occasionally there occurs in a writer's career asudden, almost mysterious leap of talent, beyondexplanation, perhaps beyond any need for explanation.
In 1915-16 Anderson had begun to write and in 1919 hepublished the stories that comprise Winesburg, Ohio,stories that form, in sum, a sort of loosely-strungepisodic novel. The book was an immediate criticalsuccess, and soon Anderson was being ranked as asignificant literary figure. In 1921 the distinguishedliterary magazine The Dial awarded him its first annualliterary prize of $2,000, the significance of which isperhaps best understood if one also knows that thesecond recipient was T. S. Eliot. But Anderson's momentof glory was brief, no more than a decade, and sadly,the remaining years until his death in 1940 were markedby a sharp decline in his literary standing. Somehow,except for an occasional story like the haunting "Deathin the Woods," he was unable to repeat or surpass hisearly success. Still, about Winesburg, Ohio and a smallnumber of stories like "The Egg" and "The Man WhoBecame a Woman" there has rarely been any criticaldoubt.
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No sooner did Winesburg, Ohio make its appearance thana number of critical labels were fixed on it: therevolt against the village, the espousal of sexualfreedom, the deepening of American realism. Such tagsmay once have had their point, but by now they seemdated and stale. The revolt against the village (aboutwhich Anderson was always ambivalent) has faded intohistory. The espousal of sexual freedom would soon beexceeded in boldness by other writers. And as for theeffort to place Winesburg, Ohio in a tradition ofAmerican realism, that now seems dubious. Only rarelyis the object of Anderson's stories socialverisimilitude, or the "photographing" of familiarappearances, in the sense, say, that one might use todescribe a novel by Theodore Dreiser or Sinclair Lewis.Only occasionally, and then with a very light touch,does Anderson try to fill out the social arrangementsof his imaginary town—although the fact that hisstories are set in a mid-American place like Winesburgdoes constitute an important formative condition. Youmight even say, with only slight overstatement, thatwhat Anderson is doing in Winesburg, Ohio could bedescribed as "antirealistic," fictions notable less forprecise locale and social detail th