Product Description

Anderson profoundly changed the American short story, transforming it from light, popular entertainment into literature of the highest quality. His art belonged as much to an oral as a written tradition, and, as this collection shows, the best of his stories echo the language and the pace of a man talking to his friends. They explore with penetrating compassion the isolation of the individual and capture the emotional undercurrents hidden beneath ordinary events.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #152968 in Books
• Published on: 1993-01-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) published 23 books in his lifetime, including the acclaimed Winesburg, Ohio (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics). Charles E. Modlin is Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic and a trustee of the Sherwood Andersonliterary estate.

Customer Reviews

Inconsequential
Take the simplicity of William Saroyan but omit the charm. Take the sparse imagery of Robert Frost but omit the poetry. Take the kaleidoscopic view of small town America of Edgar Lee Masters but omit the humanity. And there you have Anderson's Winesburg. There is no elegance in his style and no consequence in his narrative. He seeks to reveal Middle America with a series of vignettes but the result is a frustrating, meandering journey to Nowhere, Ohio.

Stories that interrelate in surprising, often brilliant ways
When I discovered this book, I was already writing a story cycle of my own, The Acorn Stories. Winesburg, Ohio became a strong influence on that book, and also led me to write New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio. In Sherwood Anderson's acclaimed story cycle, a small town finds itself entering the twentieth century with loneliness and confusion. The same industrialism that Anderson would explore so well in his novel Poor White also asserts itself constantly here, turning a beautiful landscape into a sometimes desecrated one.

The young reporter George Willard appears in most of the stories, providing a connection for people who feel they lack connection and a voice for people who feel they lack a voice. Though many readers consider this book a bleak and disjointed novel, I consider it a collection of stories that interrelate in surprising, often brilliant ways. As for the bleak part, please also look at the many moments of comfort, the many sparks of inspiration.

I eventually lost track of how many times I read Winesburg, Ohio. I just know I'll read it again.

Winesburg, amazing
I am only 17 years old, but I've read a lot of books. I want to tell everybody out there that Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson is, by far, the best I've read so far. We were required to read it for an advanced english class and every student in the class was "wowed" by the depth of Anderson's book. I strongly recomend this book for any high school, or college, class; or book club. I feel that the only way to read this book is in a group so each chapter can be discussed and studied. This is not a book for those looking for an easy-reader. This is for those of you who will catch the small things (Who's a grotesque? Who's not? Are they twisted apples? Note the motifs of hands, light and dark, adventure. In which chapters are there allusion to greek myths? To The Bible?) I strongly recomend this book to anyone who has lost faith in the thoughfullness of writers today. The book will wow you, but only if you can figure it out.