Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson
Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson – 1919
Reviewed by: Curtis Davis
This is a moving collection of stories about a small town filled with odd and unusual characters (“Grotesques”, Anderson refers to them)who are presented in a compassionate and loving way in spite of, in fact, BECAUSE OF, their strange flawed lives.
Each story is a vignette of one of Winesburg’s inhabitants, almost all of whom are emotionally crippled (hence, “grotesque”), because of something that has happened to them. The first story in the book, “Hands”, provides a beautiful example of this. “The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands”, Anderson tells us, and it is the mark of Anderson’s genius that “hands” are both the main character’s most compelling and notable (indeed, grotesque) features, as well as poetically encapsulating the idea of thwarted communication and love. Read it.
In fact, read all of the stories. The solitary and poetic lives of these grotesques will remain with you long after you have finished “Winesburg, Ohio.”
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