[0GS]⇒ [PDF] Winesburg Ohio Penguin Classics Sherwood Anderson Malcolm Cowley 9780140390599 Books

Winesburg Ohio Penguin Classics Sherwood Anderson Malcolm Cowley 9780140390599 Books

Download As PDF : Winesburg Ohio Penguin Classics Sherwood Anderson Malcolm Cowley 9780140390599 Books

Winesburg Ohio Penguin Classics Sherwood Anderson Malcolm Cowley 9780140390599 Books

I have never read anything quite like this. Anderson's grotesques are at times sad, at times crazy and always interesting. The tale of George Willard coming of age is one that really gripped me since there were so many other side stories and the other characters were well fleshed out. I feel like I know many of those Winesburg residents as I read it now decades after it was written. Anderson's prose is nice and clean and reads well on a modern level. This collection is fascinating and while at times I felt a little disturbed by some of the stories, I got into them all and couldn't put it down.

For anyone who enjoys a short story collection and a coming of age novel, this work nicely combines the two elements with stories that are funny, tragic and surprising. I definitely am happy I bought it and will read this again after my mind wraps around it.


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Winesburg Ohio Penguin Classics Sherwood Anderson Malcolm Cowley 9780140390599 Books Reviews

I found this book through a slightly unusual route. I was reading "Fire Touched" an urban fantasy book and there was a description of the books on the desk of the Marrok, leader of the North American werewolves. Sherwood Anderson was one of the authors he was reading.

My ignorance of classic American Literature is boundless, so I'd never heard of Sherwood Anderson. The idea of a new classic book appealed to me so I picked up Anderson's most famous work, "Winesburg, Ohio".

"Winesburg, Ohio" is a series of linked short stories about the residents of Winesburg. It was published in 1919, the same year as Virginia Woolf's "Night and Day" and P.G. Wodehouse's "My Man Jeeves" yet it reads as if it had been written a century earlier.

The premise of "Winesburg, Ohio" is very similar to Elizabeth Strout's "Anything Is Possible" each story builds on a central cast of characters and their influence on each other's fate is revealed.

The writing is very different. "Anything Is Possible" paints deeply nuanced, intense portraits of the personal landscapes of individuals who know each other."Winesburg, Ohio" feels like a set of sketches drawn with stubs of pencil, full of energy but rudely formed.

The writing is long-winded, self-consciously portentous and consistently remains at a distance from the minds of the protagonists.

At first, I thought I might be seeing a sort of text-version of Fauvism - all the passion with none of the form.

As I read on I put that idea aside and saw the book as a poorly constructed rant against the people in small-town Ohio, who the author sees a being driven insane by truths that have turned sour by being held on to too tightly. The author's voice is so all persuasive that his agenda and passions shine more brightly than any of the characters in the book.

To me, this book can serve only two purposes as an historical artefact to show how far the American Novel has evolved, or as an instrument of torture to be used to turn Highschool kids off the idea of reading to themselves.

I can imagine essays being written about the emergence of post-rural America and the shifts in mores as small towns forsake their frontier history and try to embrace the modern. It's all there but it's not all good.

It seems to me that Sherwood Anderson is a polemicist with no real talent for storytelling.

 This is a great example of a book that is a classic because it's a hundred years old and has been kept in print by the school curriculum long after it has lost any popular appeal.
The stories are character driven, but the town of Winesburg is also a character. Some readers may miss this fact about certain books, think of Peyton Place.. it wasn't just the people who were characters but the place they lived was an entity too. Whenever a setting is larger than life and takes on its own personality, it too becomes a character, Sherwood Forest, Dracula's castle, the 1888 London of Jack the Ripper, the Land of Oz, the list is endless.
Winesburg is a small town in Ohio, where the people are 'grotesques' as a certain old man called the other people in town. They all have their personal demons, they are flawed, imperfect and troubled. Could be said the town is the healthiest character in the book.
This book by Sherwood Anderson is said to have influenced other writers and helped them to be better writers. It was also noted, in later years Sherwood tried to continue writing with the kind of style he had used in Winesburg, Ohio, but failed; and critics, editors, readers were disappointed; he'd lost touch with the inner demon muse who assisted him into tapping in on the eccentricities.
Writers varying from Henry Miller to John Steinbeck to Ernest Hemingway all highly praised this book. They weren't wrong. The stories are sincere and cut deep into the feelings of loneliness and obscurity. The character portrayals are fantastic, and the strange things that happen in the stories are entirely believable once Anderson takes you inside the thoughts that cause these strange events. Read this book at some point.
"Winesburg, Ohio" used to be considered one of the most significant novels in America, a dead lock on the reading lists of most universities. I'm not sure that it's even read anymore. The Midwest of Anderson's time was knee-deep in grotesques. Today they still exist. They meet at Walmart 24/7. Sherwood Anderson was a strange man, who led a strange, not always happy life. He befriended a then young Hemingway, helping him on his way to a successful career. Hemingway, in return, made fun of Anderson, writing a parody of his style called "The Torrents of Spring". The oddest part of this, as I see it, is that Torrents remains the purest example of the famous Hemingway style--which indicates that Hemingway created his "style" by cannibalizing Sherwood Anderson. When you read Winesburg, you will see noticeable elements of Hemingway's "voice". It's the voice of Sherwood Anderson.
I have never read anything quite like this. Anderson's grotesques are at times sad, at times crazy and always interesting. The tale of George Willard coming of age is one that really gripped me since there were so many other side stories and the other characters were well fleshed out. I feel like I know many of those Winesburg residents as I read it now decades after it was written. Anderson's prose is nice and clean and reads well on a modern level. This collection is fascinating and while at times I felt a little disturbed by some of the stories, I got into them all and couldn't put it down.

For anyone who enjoys a short story collection and a coming of age novel, this work nicely combines the two elements with stories that are funny, tragic and surprising. I definitely am happy I bought it and will read this again after my mind wraps around it.