But, generally, Americans still had a rather romantic conception of the charm, warmth, and innocence of small-town life. Naturalists like Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris had shown the ugliness of such cities as Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Earlier realists, like Hamlin Garland in Main Traveled Roads (especially the story 'Under the Lion's Paw'), had shown the harshness and brutalizing monotony of a small farm. If you have not read Winesburg, Ohio, I encourage you to do so.In his Memoirs published in 1942, a year after his death, Anderson remarked that Winesburg 'has become a kind of American classic and has been said by many critics to have started a kind of revolution in American short-story writing.' Anderson must have written those words with pleasure for he was a man who liked to be revolutionary, and he was quite accurate when he stated that Winesburg deserved such praise.Īnderson's book was the first work of fiction to expose the hypocrisy, frustration, and inhibition behind the typical small town's facade of gentility. While there will always be many things we cannot know about a writer like Anderson, we can be certain that he was a man capable of writing with great empathy. In a tribute to Anderson's talents, I also recall being acutely aware of the author's control as I read through the stories and afterward I may have spent as much time thinking about the man who wrote them as the stories themselves. I was a willing reader and bought into every character and every sketch narrator George Willard spun. While Winesburg, Ohio is not without critics, it will always be a favorite of mine. His appealing style influenced many other writers, including Willa Cather, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner, among others. Anderson invites the reader into his process as a writer, in which he unfolds his characters' views of the world, intertwined as they are, in a small midwestern town. He almost lovingly writes about his own collection of 'grotesques,' using a writing style often compared to his literary predecessor, William Dean Howells, as naturalism. His characters (whom in his first story, the writer calls 'grotesques') transform experiences into truths, which can be built-up, and once embraced, turn to falsehoods. As a result of these hardships, Anderson left school at the age of fourteen in order to help with the family finances.Īnderson is best known for his short stories, particularly his collection published as Winesburg, Ohio (1919).

When his father's business failed, the family moved constantly and his mother became an alcoholic. Sherwood Anderson (1876 - 1941) was an American writer whose meticulous character development earned him recognition as a 'writer's writer.' Like a number of other famous writers such as Anton Chekhov, Charles Dickens, and Louisa May Alcott, Sherwood's childhood and adolescence knew family hardship.

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson