William Faulkner called Sherwood Anderson "the father of my whole generation of writers." So why have I had Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson on my shelf for years and never been drawn to it? I always felt I should read it. It was highly recommended by Alan Cheuse when I did my MFA in Fiction at George Mason University. Now, thanks to our Classic Book Discussion group I've finally read it, and now I can see what they were going on about. Because this is a book which excites you, not just as a reader but also as a writer. As a writer you are blown away by the economy, the skill and the angle into the stories and you can't wait to try and imitate them, have a go at the same technique. Easier said than done for sure.
Anderson tells us in the opening pages, that "in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth." But, he continues, "The moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque, and the truth he embraced became a falsehood."
It is the false premises and resultant shortcomings and private tragedies that draw you into the inner world of each character. Characters may sometimes appear in more than one story. In one they might be the main character, only to pop up in the background of another story. For example, Dr Reefy, the main character in "Paper Pills" writes fragments of thoughts on scraps of paper, then balls them up in his pockets. He appears again in "Death" the story I recorded above. They make up the fabric of an entire community, which is chiefly united in George Willard, the local newspaper reporter.
Helen White runs through several of the stories. She's the banker's daughter and numerous young men are in love with or want to be in love with her. Then there is Alice Hindman who after a brief love affair with Ned Currie, becomes obsessed with him to no avail, and eventually winds up "trying to force herself to face bravely the fact that many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg."
There are many local crack-pots - Ebenezer Crowley and his weird son Elmer, Wash Williams who is so dirty even the whites of his eyes look soiled, and Mook the halfwit who when surprised will sometimes exclaim, "Well well, I'll be washed and ironed and starched!"
There's a lot about temptation in these stories- and private sexual or romantic attachments. Reverend Curtis Hartman is tempted by the vision of Kate Swift the school teacher, as she lies on her bed reading and smoking. He realizes later that she is a new "and more beautiful fervor of the Spirit. That God "has appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift... an instrument of God, bearing the message of truth." Kate appears in another story where she teaches the boy George Willard in school and urges him not to be "a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is what people are thinking about not what they say."
As I read, I found that some of the stories blended together - and others utterly eluded me. But I always felt myself excited by the brisk pacing, the way the truths these people lived by however flimsy - pulled each story forward, by the extraordinary economy, impetus and beauty of Anderson's language and by the rhythm of the sentences. I got a full sense of a completely bygone world - by the preoccupations of a town based on agriculture, just at the outset of industrialization - a post civil war America and what it must actually have been like to live during these times.
I was reminded of Hemingway - because of the economy of language. But also of Alice Munro because the center of each story often seems elusive and because of that, all the more haunting.
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