Winesburg, Ohio: A Group Of Tales Of Ohio Small Town Life (1919) [Paperback]

Sherwood Anderson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2009

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) was born in Camden, Ohio. Following a brief stint in the Spanish American War, he started a family and founded a business---both of which he abruptly abandoned at the age of thirty-six to pursue his life-long dream of writing. His simple and direct writing style, with which he portrayed important moments in the lives of his characters, influenced both Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. His most notable works include Winesburg, Ohio, Triumph of the Egg, Horses and Men, and A Story Teller's Story. George K. Wilson has narrated over one hundred fiction and nonfiction audiobook titles, from Thomas L. Friedman to Thomas Pynchon, and has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. He spent ten years in broadcast news, including for the American Forces Radio and Television Service and for rock radio in San Diego and Los Angeles. An American Academy of Dramatic Arts, West, graduate, his acting career includes stage, film, television, commercials, improvisational comedy, and stand-up. George has written and performed in over five hundred nationally syndicated short news satire features for public radio and NPR and has received a national Corporation for Public Broadcasting Gold Award for Best Public Service Program. He has also scripted and hosted corporate videos for Sony, Merck, IBM, and Price Waterhouse. He is currently working on a suspense short story collection and a thriller novel.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC (May 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1104531232
• ISBN-13: 978-1104531232
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,997,537 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic American book, November 23, 2004

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Winesburg, Ohio (Modern Library, 104.1) (Hardcover)

Sherwood Anderson's one great book contains the moving stories of the odd characters of one small American Midwest tone. His exact and lyrical pictures of this world gave new meaning to the depiction of the everyday in American Literature.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly Modern, January 13, 2011

By 

SeaShell (WI USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Winesburg, Ohio; a group of tales of Ohio small town life (Kindle Edition)

I'm ashamed to say that I avoided this book for decades - decades! - based soley on a cover. My mother had the book on her bookshelves, an older edition with a painting of a turn of the century couple courting on the front. It looked vaguely impressionist, and left me to conclude that the stories inside would probably be a bunch of sentimentalist claptrap. How wrong I was!

The book inside is more akin to a Hopper painting than a Degas. Anderson manages an amazing level of character development within the short stories. The stories themselves work independently, but also work together to tell the story of an American Midwestern town. And the feeling one is left with is that everything you have read is essentially and authentically American.

To comment on the Kindle version specifically, it seems well formatted to this reader. I've noticed a typo here and there, but nothing glaring, and nothing that distracts from the experience of reading the book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two-thirds of a masterpiece, December 20, 2011

By 

Karl Janssen (Olathe, KS United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Winesburg, Ohio; a group of tales of Ohio small town life (Kindle Edition)

First published in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of 22 interrelated stories set in a fictional small town in the American Midwest. Though each story can stand alone as an individual work, they are so closely interwoven that some consider the book to be a novel. The protagonist of each story often makes a supporting appearance in the tale of his or her neighbor, relative, friend, or lover, while dozens of other characters are encountered only in brief cameos. George Willard, a young reporter for the local newspaper, appears in almost all the stories and unifies the various tales into a cohesive book. Everyone in town seems to consider him a kindred spirit, and they seek him out, asking him to serve as their confessor, chronicler, and/or psychiatrist.

In deceptively simple prose, Anderson vividly captures the everyday life of this small Ohio town during its period of transition from agrarianism to modern industrialization. The denizens of Winesburg struggle to find their place in this microcosm of modern society. Their sensitive souls are tormented by loneliness, isolation, guilt-ridden pasts, frustrated dreams, and a stifling ability to communicate their feelings and aspirations. Sinclair Lewis's novel Main Street, published about the same time and also focusing on a Midwestern town, features an ambitious dreamer, Carrie Meeber, who envisions herself a prisoner within a conservative small town full of narrow minded bumpkins. In Winesburg, Ohio, everyone is Carrie Meeber. Everyone is a prisoner to something, and everyone wants out. For many of the characters, the big city represents salvation, as if their problems would just go away if they could escape to Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Chicago. More often than not, that salvation proves false and they return to Winesburg defeated. Having grown up in a small Midwestern town myself, I can say that much of Anderson's portrayal of small town life rings true. It's unclear, however, whether he's proposing that the emotional turmoil and alienation felt by Winesburg's residents is peculiar to the experience of small town life or merely indicative of the world at large.

Winesburg, Ohio is one of America's earliest examples of modernist literature. Its influence on later modernist writers is readily apparent, most notably in the works of William Faulkner. While Anderson possesses a brilliant insight into human thought and emotion and expresses his vision in a beautiful narrative voice, most of the stories end all too abruptly and thus feel incomplete. It's a conceit of modernism to think that it's enough for the author to merely offer sketches of the way things are, without providing the reader with a satisfying beginning-middle-end plot structure. In most of these stories we're deprived of an end, and one finishes each tale with the disappointment of having just read two-thirds of a novel, only to find the succeeding pages missing. The characters all finish their stories as if frozen in some tableau vivant. Reading Winesburg, Ohio is much like wandering through a gallery of Edward Hopper paintings. You've got a pretty good idea where these people have been, but you don't have a clue where they're going.