Winesburg, Ohio (Signet Classics) (original 1919; edition 2005)

THE BEST LAID PLANS

A man and woman meet at a bar. They begin to talk and learn that each has trouble staying in long-term relationships because their sexual tastes are considered deviant. Excited, they decide to return to the woman’s apartment. After a bit of heavy petting, the woman excuses herself to her bedroom, promising to return wearing something more appropriate. Minutes pass and the woman emerges from her room in dominatrix attire to find the man nude, spent and smoking a cigarette. Incensed, she admonishes him for finishing without her. He replies, "Lady, I don’t know what your idea of kinky is but I just fucked your cat and shit in your purse."

*****

Bakersfield, California

The man closes the book. He is at the car wash. His daughter dances in front of him, hopping from colored tile to colored tile in the run down, if air conditioned, interior of the building. He remembers the dreams of youth.

He remembers standing on a hillside in Corona Del Mar and looking down upon a gigantic house under construction as his father tells him he is meant to be a writer. A plywood turret of what is to become a huge personal library is framed by the hazy blue of the Pacific Ocean. The house will be that of Dean Koontz, who would go on to write the Afterword for the 2005 Signet Classic Edition of Winesburg, Ohio.

The man remembers boyhood, when the dream of being a writer was new. He is eleven. He and his parents have moved to the working class community of South Gate. For the first time, he applies himself to his schoolwork. He wins a city-wide essay contest and is rewarded with an article in the newspaper and a free lasagna dinner. His parents, whose marriage is failing, declare a temporary truce and whisper with one another about their destined-for-greatness son. Almost as impressively, a biologically precocious Latina he goes to school with named Claudia asks him to sleep with her. Blushing, he buries his head in his desk. He does not know what it is to sleep with a girl, he only knows that Catherine Bach of Dukes of Hazard fame has made him feel funny on several different occasions.

One day he is accosted at the school bus stop by another boy named Jose who is jealous of the attentions of the resident alpha-female. Jose is beaten bloody and chased home by the boy. The school bus shows up just as Jose's family spill from their house, whipped into a bloodlust that the most fervent mujahideen would envy. As the eldest brother approaches the departing bus, his eyes meet the boy's through a window. The boy answers his foreign slanders by sticking out his tongue.

The boy did not become a writer. The man he became thinks of all the things he has left unsaid and of all the feelings he has never shown. He is at the hardware store. He buys a drain snake because his Hispanic wife's hair has clogged the shower. He is mildly irked, but he loves her. He loves his daughter. He loves his life. Old friends are coming over today and he will laugh. He thinks that anyone who has read Winesburg, Ohio and given it less than four stars probably only has sex like Jesus is in the room working the lights. ( )

I loved Infinite Jest, so naturally I loved Winesburg, Ohio. Sherwood Anderson is clearly David Foster Wallace’s doppelganger, displaced eighty years in the past, and two states away, but possessing a very similar melancholy sense of humanity, and even a kindred narrative style. The more I reflect on these two novels, the more parallels I find. One’s about drugs, entertainment, and sexual deviance in fast-paced urban Boston of the near future. The other’s about isolation, disappointment and sexual repression in the leisurely and pastoral Winesburg, Ohio of circa 1915. Their window dressings may differ, but their hearts are both pervaded with a deep sense of loneliness and disconnection. Unconvinced? Let me see if I can persuade you. While both novels tend to bounce around between multiple story threads, some of which connect up in unexpected ways, each has a frontrunner candidate for the title of protagonist. Hal Incandenza and George Willard are both intelligent young men, raised by distant mothers and successful yet frustrated fathers. Each stands on the doorstep of adulthood, raked with uncertainty about how to go forward, and scarred by upbringings which have left them poorly-equipped emotionally to form healthy adult relationships. Both books contain naïve young women betrayed by their lovers. Alice Hindman lies on her bed, staring nightly at the wall, waiting in despair for years, abandoned and forgotten by Ned Currie, who really only ever wanted to bed her and move on. Joelle Van Dyne struggles alone with addiction and the bittersweet memories of Orin Incandenza, who bedded her, disfigured her, and has definitely moved on. Infinite Jest has Don Gately- the perpetually despondent rehab counselor, whose past secrets (drug addiction and manslaughter) impede him from forming close interpersonal bonds. Winesburg, Ohio has Wing Biddlebaum, a perpetually introverted and fidgety recluse, whose past secrets (untrue accusations that he molested students as a teacher) impede him from forming close interpersonal bonds.

Are these parallels too much of a stretch? Too reductive? Maybe these two novels aren’t as similar as all that.. but they do have common themes, and more than anything else, they both leave me with a sense that Nature and History have ganged up to play a cruel joke on many of us: making us on one hand genetically and socially conditioned to congregate in packs, but on the other hand shaping our society to be so rigidly hierarchical, so full of oppressive demands and expectations, and governed by such complex unspoken nuances of manner and custom that the whole process of socializing and getting along in large groups hardly feels achievable to many, and hardly seems worthwhile to many others. Most of us ultimately find a livable balance between inputs and outputs: a tolerable equilibrium between the mental and physical energy we must expend, and the social and material life that they buy for us. We don’t quite live out our wildest dreams, but we get enough of what we need to soldier on. Frequently this involves either accepting that we can’t "have it all", or redefining our idea of what "having it all" means.

That’s great for those who make it, but society and economics are hard, and not everybody ends up with the "happy-enough" ending. Some people give up on the standard prizes… the proverbial 2.3 kids and the house in the suburbs with the white picket fence. They follow some other dream, God bless ‘em, and some find their own happiness. Hermits, starving artists, nuns, and other eccentrics essentially say "fuck it". They haven’t found conventional happiness, and they’re done trying. I’m not sure whether this represents victory or defeat. Regardless, this book isn’t about those people; this book is about the people who can’t seem to attain the orthodox version of happiness, but don’t have a better dream to replace it with. It’s people who can’t quite master the rules of social success, but can’t or won't reject mainstream civilization and its prizes either.They keep following society’s rules, knowing on some level that the game is rigged against them, but following nonetheless, because they lack either the courage or imagination to take another path. Consider Ray Pearson: miserably married for decades to the girl he got pregnant, in a fleeting moment of passion. Consider Elmer Cowly: painfully awkward and overly-self conscious, who leaves his family and a secure job to head off into the night, dreaming of a distant city, where he might "… get work in some shop and become friends with the other workmen and would be indistinguishable. Then he could talk and laugh. He would no longer be queer and would make friends. Life would begin to have warmth and meaning for him as it had others." God damn; is that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard? It’s not so different from the kids at the Enfield Tennis Academy in Infinite Jest, is it? Those kids leave their families to attend the prestigious academy, placing all their hopes for deferred happiness in the dream of a career in professional tennis,"…this game the players are all at E.T.A. to learn, this infinite system of decisions and angles and lines Mario’s brothers worked so brutishly hard to master: junior athletics is but one facet of the real gem: life’s endless war against the self you cannot live without." Fuck. Kill me now, if that’s what it’s all about.

This isn’t a philosophy book, but it’s written by an observant and philosophical author. I don’t directly identify with any of the characters; I’m generally satisfied with my life, even if the review suggests otherwise. So why did these assorted vignettes about sad, disenfranchised characters touch me so? Probably because I think our social systems deserve to have their warts pointed out. They’ve evolved as a successful way to maintain order over time, which has some benefits for the community at large, but is frequently cruel and stifling to the individual, who may pay a high price for overrated things like acceptance and a sense of belonging. Sherwood Anderson seems to be telling the great abstract System that it’s not as fucking awesome as it thinks it is; and even though I’ve bought into it (or sold out to it) in many ways, there’s a part of me which still holds out against it, and which thinks the System deserves this tongue lashing, and probably a lot worse.

-Thanks, David! ( )

I've just started this but I have in mind the American radio show This American Life and the snarly description they quoted from a (I've never watched it but I gather it was sort of trashy) tv show, "Is that that [radio:] show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are?"

Anyone can read this book and call it beautiful, moving, insightful, etc. But someone who reads this and then continues to snub the "common" man for no reason other than boredom, a perceived sense of 'cool,' or appearances has learned nothing and could be called a hipster know-it-all douchebag. Not that we must all join hands in peace & love, but...be tender with each other; or be a well-read douchebag.

...this book is wonderful so far. I think I'm only on page 20.

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After reading a bit more, it occurs to me the above is a douchebag thing to say. There are likely reasons for rejecting your fellow man, for being a douchebag. Sherwood Anderson could describe these reasons in a short story that will leave you breathless with wonder. Position reversal, I am not one to judge who is a hipster know-it-all douchebag.

What the heck is a douchebag anyway? When the compound is separated each part makes sense but combined it is more than the sum of its parts. Ah, the magic of language.

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"Breathless with wonder" is an exaggeration. I think "in contemplation and uneasy self-reflection" may be more accurate.

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Done! Sort of. This book is quietly haunting, without the wooOOOoooo-ghost thing but more a slight creaking in the far corner of the house or a wisp barely sensed and gone by the time the head turns to follow the movement. My reading of it was in halting episodes, broken by work and sleep, so I feel I've forgotten too much already.

This book seems to be a study of the 'ordinary people that so fascinate hipsters' today, basically a collection of short stories describing regular folk. But so much more. With a few brushstrokes, Sherwood Anderson painted a masterpiece and I felt the emtpy rooms, the grayness of the lives, an upwelling of feeling and its inevitable return to absence, the silent sounds between people as they speak, purposeless running. Winesburg, Ohio is the town where dreams went to die, necessarily so since most dreams are bigger than feasible but for these poor folks they were not replaced by satisfaction with smaller goals. Those who were offered opportunity to escape didn't recognize it and remained trapped without realizing it and always wondering what-ifs and why they felt that way, why they felt nothing vibrant. Instead of excruciating detail, the people are presented in short descriptions of some past key event or current inner turmoil that a passerby would never realize by looking at them; these fulcrums sort of sink into your own mind and germinate. A cranky coworker or the surly pedestrian who didn't return a smile, what was their fulcrum, what disappointment or unrealized wish created this cardboard figure now and how can I get them to share with me so that they are no longer cardboard?

This can be read without a dictionary. It's not at the level of a newspaper (I believe newspapers are supposed to be written at the 6th grade level?) but it's simply written. There was little dialogue and often the dialogue was purposely minimized by being summarized as 'some words were said' because the spoken wasn't important, it was the spaces felt between the thoughts&feelings and the out-loud.

Near the middle, I stopped and read the little commentary section at the front of the book which included an excerpt of a letter from Sherwood Anderson to a playwright about a staging of Winesburg, Ohio. That was a mistake because Sherwood Anderson wrote of George Willard as being the main character and that nearly ruined it for me. I have a reflexive disgust for boys who do not try to be men (loaded words, both "boy" and "men," but stumble along with me for a sec) that blocks my open mind mechanism. After reading some of these lovely stories and feeling that I was so empathetic to their plight and lahdidahdidahhhh, to read that he intended their stories to be told through a boy trying to become a man but would he have the sensitivity to really see them and treat their broken lives with respect...and then I realized this is a book (but I love this book and started pulling out my sword for its honor or something). Also, hey dummy (I like to speak abusively to myself), he can and he did. The old man who begins the book wrote of man-made truths composed of numerous vagaries that were beautiful, but people came along and adopted just one or a few of these truths thus making them false, and those people became grotesques (this is a bad paraphrase). In my own grotesqueness, I was losing sight of the book and disliking the idea of an alien from Planet XY being the pivot point (dudes, I'm not a manhater, I love men, but boys make me impatient...keep stumbling with me). George Willard was a common figure in most of these stories so it was clear he would be used to pull it together.

The conceit of these short stories, giving insight into the lives of 'ordinary' people, reminds me of another science fiction book where a person's life was told at their funeral. Not a eulogy since those can be candy-coated lies, but an honest and sometimes brutal relating of why the person had been the way they were. I felt that this book accomplished that for these people.

At my current stage of grotesque, "Tandy" is my favorite. Not because I'm seeking that 'one,' but because I too fear missing my fulfillment or destiny or beauty or whatever it is that leads to contentment. I realize it's not a one-time thing, and maybe it's a continual striving. But will I know it when it comes? Or will I join the residents of Winesburg in gray and watch George leave? ( )

I believe Mr Anderson is a very talented writer. I also think he touched on many subjects of interest to me and others. But, for the most part, as charming as it was and well-written, I felt it all too soft for me, kind of like a Little House on the Prairie if you want to know the truth. Perhaps a bit too sentimental and even a bit too romantic for me. I like dirt and music that not only lifts me but spreads a soiling on me too permanent to rub off. But I shall see how the book progresses in the further regions of my mind as it gestates, or not, come what may. Certainly a book worth reading and definitely a precursor to what was to come in the literary field of its time. ( )

I waited too long to write my thoughts on this one and now I remember so little. But that in itself is a critique. Any book which doesn't stay with you was probably ho-hum at best.

So which parts do I remember? Actually, I remember the four-part story "Godliness" best--the one about the grandfather who feels he has been chosen by God. I found it to be thought-provoking and suspenseful. Also memorable was the story about the minister who catches a glimpse of the neighbor woman and lusts after her.

Ironically, many of the stories which focus on George Willard, the main character, escape me. The most memorable scenes from him were perhaps his final ones, as he walks around Winesburg by himself and also through the fair grounds with Helen.

I thought I'd either love Winesburg or hate it; most people I know who have read it do. Instead, I fall in the middle. There were some great stories here, but overall, it just didn't capture me. ( )