I first heard of Sherwood Anderson because of a high school English teacher who said that my writing style at the time was reminiscent of Anderson. I told this recently to a friend, and she responded, "Wow, he must have really liked your writing." The thing is, I don't think he did. My English teacher from the year before had given me A's on all my short stories, and then suddenly this guy started giving me C's, if I was lucky. Mr. Hughes was a genial man, but I don't think he particularly liked my writing. I suspect that he might not have liked Sherwood Anderson either. His suggestion seemed to be more of a "Well, your writing reminds me of this author who I really hate, so you might as well read his books" type of recommendation.
To me, Sherwood Anderson's stories feel like fables. They have a very simple style. In writing, you hear a lot about showing the reader events instead of telling the reader events, but Anderson is all about telling. For him, it works. I think my writing in high school was also all about telling instead of showing, and for me, it didn't always work quite so well.
This is a book with a town as the protagonist. It is really a collection of short stories all set in Winesburg. The newspaper reporter, George Willard, shows up in many of the stories, but you can't really call him the protagonist, even if his decision whether or not to leave Winesburg is a driving force behind the book. In fact, many of the people here are dreaming of leaving town. I was tempted to compare Winesburg to Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, but the people of Winesburg don't seem nearly as happy. Most seem to be dreaming of different lives, hoping for a way to escape. They seem to like the small town, but they also want more.
This dreamy element is aided by Anderson's whimsical writing style, which I love. He'll often spend a few paragraphs on something that has little to do with the story. I know this because he usually tells us, like in this paragraph:
But this is not the story of Windpeter Winters nor yet of his son Hal who worked on the Willis farm with Ray Pearson. It is Ray's story. It will, however, be necessary to talk a little of young Hal so that you will get into the spirit of it.Well, okay then.
I had forgotten about Sherwood Anderson until I found Winesburg, Ohio with some of my old books at my parent's house last year. I started to read it a few months ago, but it's such a strange, little book that it's tough to get into. I only made it about 20 pages in before I moved onto something else. This month, I decided to give him another try, and I'm glad I did.
All my life, I've been against the concept of assigned reading. If I don't want to read something, then I'm not going to read it. (That's why I don't like joining book clubs.) However, I've noticed that this plan to read one hour every day really does make one more patient with books. Instead of thinking, "Well, I'll give it a few pages," I find myself thinking, "Well, I'll give it an hour." An hour or two was enough for me to get into this book, and eventually for me to be sucked in. Just a few pages, though, wasn't going to do it.
One final note: Because of this book, I've decided that any novel I ever write will have a character index in the back. There are so many characters that wander in and out of this book that it's tough to keep track of them. I would have loved an index where I could have quickly found where Anderson first introduced them.
