Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life. Sherwood Anderson

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       Sherwood Anderson

      Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664182234

Table of Contents

       THE TALES. AND THE PERSONS

       THE BOOK OF. THE GROTESQUE

       HANDS

       PAPER PILLS

       MOTHER

       THE PHILOSOPHER

       NOBODY KNOWS

       GODLINESS

       II

       IV

       A MAN OF IDEAS

       ADVENTURE

       RESPECTABILITY

       THE THINKER

       TANDY

       THE STRENGTH OF GOD

       THE TEACHER

       LONELINESS

       AN AWAKENING

       "QUEER"

       THE UNTOLD LIE

       DRINK

       DEATH

       SOPHISTICATION

       DEPARTURE

      THE TALES AND THE PERSONS

      THE BOOK OF THE 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

       I, concerning Jesse Bentley

       II, also concerning Jesse Bentley

       III Surrender, concerning Louise Bentley

       IV Terror, concerning David Hardy

      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

      by Irving Howe

      I must have been no more than fifteen or sixteen years old when I first chanced upon Winesburg, Ohio. Gripped by these stories and sketches of Sherwood Anderson's small-town "grotesques," I felt that he was opening for me new depths of experience, touching upon half-buried truths which nothing in my young life had prepared me for. A New York City boy who never saw the crops grow or spent time in the small towns that lay sprinkled across America, I found myself overwhelmed by the scenes of wasted life, wasted love—was this the "real" America?—that Anderson sketched in Winesburg. In those days only one other book seemed to offer so powerful a revelation, and that was Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

      Several years later, as I was about to go overseas as a soldier, I spent my last week-end pass on a somewhat quixotic journey to Clyde, Ohio, the town upon which Winesburg was partly modeled. Clyde looked, I suppose, not very different from most other American towns, and the few of its residents I tried to engage in talk about Anderson seemed quite uninterested. This indifference would not have surprised him; it certainly should not surprise anyone who reads his book.

      Once freed from the army, I started to write literary criticism, and in 1951 I published a critical biography of Anderson. It came shortly after Lionel Trilling's influential essay attacking Anderson, an attack from which Anderson's reputation would never quite recover. Trilling charged Anderson with indulging a vaporous sentimentalism, a kind of vague emotional meandering in stories that lacked social or spiritual solidity. There was a certain cogency in Trilling's attack, at least with regard to Anderson's inferior work, most of which he wrote after Winesburg, Ohio. In my book I tried, somewhat awkwardly, to bring together the kinds of judgment Trilling had made with my still keen affection for the best of Anderson's writings. By then, I had read writers more complex, perhaps more distinguished than Anderson, but his muted stories kept a firm place in my memories, and the book I wrote might be seen as a gesture 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, perhaps fearing I might have to surrender an admiration of youth. (There are some writers one should never return to.) But now, in