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Title: Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio: With Variant Readings and Annotations by Sherwood Anderson, Ray Lewis White ISBN: 0-8214-1180-2 Publisher: Ohio University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (56 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: It's for reading and not for torture? Are you sure?
Comment: Winesburg, Ohio may be well written, but that doesn't matter because it's not about anything. Anderson's concept for the book seems to be that the seemingly insignificant lives of the Everyman are beautiful in their simplicity. What does that mean? It means he wrote a boring book. It's a book about nothing, and that was his intention, which makes it not worth reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: Sad but Hopeful
Comment: A cycle of short stories concerning residents of a small Ohio town in the 1890s. The characters don't feel in any way part of life in the town around them. They don't get what they want and they don't know what they want. They're isolated and disconnected by their inability to express themselves.
In "Sophistication," the second-to-last story, 18-year-old George Willard, the town's newspaper reporter, gets a vision of why it's so difficult for people to get hold of something to live their lives by:
"He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun."
It's a sad book, but with an undercurrent of hope for life in the modern world.
I should also mention that the book was considered morbidly sexual at the time it was published, if you're the type who likes that sort of thing...
Rating: 1
Summary: Don't Waste Your Time. I Did.
Comment: I just finished this book and I have to say that I honestly didn't think it was very good. I've read different things about this book for years, and everyone talks like this is some landmark piece of American prose, but I don't get it. The stories are rambling and sloppy and often pointless. The writing seems very amateurish. I got tired of hearing about how every young man in the book felt this yearning to leave Winesburg and see "Life". I mean, isn't that the biggest cliche of small town life that there is. And he kept hitting that same note over and over and over and over again, like a nail being driven into my skull. With all the acclaim this book has gotten, it's safe to say that the Devil has the deed to Anderson's soul safely filed away somewhere.
This book reminded me a little of Saroyan's The Human Comedy. Both books are quirky and they both have an odd way of sounding as if their characters come from children's books. I wasn't too crazy about The Human Comedy either, but it's like a Shakesperian masterpiece compared to this. The Human Comedy's quirkiness is charming, while Winesburg's quirkiness just makes the book seem inept. The Human comedy is much more tightly organized and better written and it's loosely connected episodes almost, almost, form a narrative structure. If you really want to read about life in an American small town, then please, read The Human Comedy or Lake Wobegon Days, or even Rose Wilder Lane's Old Home Town. There's nothing that you'll get out of this book that you can't get from any of these others.
In the introduction to my edition, Irving Howe talks about how much this book inspired him when he was a teenager and opened up new depths of emotion and blah, blah, blah. I find this a little hard to believe. When I was 16 I read Kerouac's On the Road and I was swept away, so I know the kind of experience he's talking about. But I feel very sorry for anyone who claims that this book sent their young heart fluttering. I can imagine someone young reading Victor Hugo or Dickens or Thomas Wolfe or Gone With The Wind and feeling that the flame of their life has been lit. But not Winesburg. Please, please no, not Winesburg. This book is like a box of wet matches and broken sticks.
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Title: The Egg, and Other Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) by Sherwood Anderson ISBN: 0486414116 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684822768 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 31 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters ISBN: 0451525302 Publisher: Signet Classics Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Main Street (Signet Classics (Paperback)) by Sinclair Lewis ISBN: 0451526821 Publisher: Signet Classics Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: My Antonia by Willa Cather ISBN: 039575514X Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 21 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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