Product Description

A timeless collection of short stories about an imaginary small town, unified by the presence of Winesburg Eagle reporter George Willard, Winesburg, Ohio is, as H.L. Mencken said upon it's publication in 1919, "...vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own."

Presented here by the leading lights of modern American letters, Winesburg, Ohio reverberates with the passion of both Sherwood Anderson and the many writers whom he has influenced.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1168416 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-01
• Released on: 2002-06-18
• Formats: Audiobook, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 6
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Amazon.com Review
Library Journal praised this edition of Sherwood Anderson's famed short stories as "the finest edition of this seminal work available." Reconstructed to be as close to the original text as possible, Winesburg, Ohio depicts the strange, secret lives of the inhabitants of a small town. In "Hands," Wing Biddlebaum tries to hide the tale of his banishment from a Pennsylvania town, a tale represented by his hands. In "Adventure," lonely Alice Hindman impulsively walks naked into the night rain. Threaded through the stories is the viewpoint of George Willard, the young newspaper reporter who, like his creator, stands witness to the dark and despairing dealings of a community of isolated people.

From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-Life in a small western town, by Sherwood Anderson. Narrated by Flo Gibson.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Editor White referred back to Anderson's original manuscript, typescript, letters, diaries, and early versions to reconstruct the most accurate edition of this 1919 staple available. (Classic Returns, LJ 1/97)
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Unhappy people trapped in sad webs of their own making
Sherwood Anderson published this collection of short stories in 1919 all set in fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio. Even though it's written in the third person, it's told through the narrative voice of George Willard, the town reporter, who shows up in most of the stories, sometimes taking an active role and at other times just telling a story.

It is obvious that the writer loves these people, and is frustrated at the isolation and unhappiness of their lives, even though he makes it clear that they hold within themselves everything needed to make them happy. The character in the first story is a dying old writer who is attempting to write about all the people he has known as a "book of grotesques". What follows is the collection of stories, which each character fulfilling that expectation.

There are the young lovers who don't quite connect; there is a old man so obsessed with religious fervor that he attempts to sacrifice his grandson; there is a married man who regrets it all and tries to warn a younger man of future unhappiness; there's a doctor and a sick woman who try to connect. The book is full of people who toil all their lives and never achieve happiness. As I made my way through the book I kept hoping that even one of the characters would rise above the morass. It didn't happen.

The writer has a wonderful sense of place and the town of Winesburg in the early part of the 20th Century is very real. These people were not poor or disadvantaged in the usual sense of the word; they didn't suffer fire, floods or famine. Instead, they trapped themselves in their own psychological webs that made it impossible for them to lead anything but sad unfulfilled lives. This is a fine book and stands alone as a clear voice of its time.

The secret heart of American experience is exposed here
In the context of today's tell-all society, the kinds of human revelations and insights that Sherwood Anderson wove into the Winesburg stories may seem tame and even pedestrian. But at the time, few good writers were even attempting to penetrate into the "real life" experience of ordinary Americans. His efforts so many years ago are all the more valuable today, however, since it provides us a glimpse of what life was *really* like for some people in much-romanticized "small town America."

This novel is really a collection of loosely interrelated short stories, or perhaps even a series of character sketches, but so what? The value here is in the individual images and insights that Anderson provides, not in any emergent "plot."

The glimpses into the inner lives of ordinary Americans and the fine descriptions of place, mood, and events that Anderson provides in this work still speak to some readers, at least, today. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Winesburgers
Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" is a string of twenty-one connected stories (plus an introduction) that, like James Joyce's "Dubliners", links a community of people to a single place and time and explores common themes. Most of the stories are told from the vista of the recurring central character George Willard, the local newspaper reporter and a sort of alter ego of Anderson, who used his own rural hometown of Clyde, Ohio, as a model for Winesburg.

Rather than an idyllic portrayal of American small town life in the 1890's, these stories are about psychological isolation, loneliness, and sexual repression and frustration brought about by small town mores. These people are as sad and neurotic as any that might be found living in the big cities. Anderson calls them "grotesques," people who are warped by the sanctimoniousness of provincial piety and their own inhibitions. His nonchalant, ironic way of writing understates the peculiarity and the gloominess of the stories.

The stories are loaded with symbolism that is difficult to decipher. My favorite is probably the four-part "Godliness", which, in a satire of religious fervor, merges parodies of the biblical tales of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac and David's slaying of Goliath. But all the stories have interesting allusions of various degrees of subtlety. This work must have seemed quite groundbreaking in its depth, complexity, and boldness when it was first published in 1919.