anderson

Sherwood Anderson's Winesberg, Ohio is rather strange in that it is comprised of such brief short stories but is really a loosely structured novel. We see something close to this with Hemingway's "Nick Adams" stories or Joyce's Dubliners, but Hemingway and Joyce are altogether different from Anderson, especially concerning prose style.

"The Book of the Grotesque" and "Paper Pills" both read something like an odd mixture of Poe and HP Lovecraft, where everyone in the world (or at least in the community at hand) is somehow evil or bad or crippled (physically or mentally) or "grotesque" in some way. Winesberg sounds more like hell than a midwestern community, although Ohio has always been closer to hell than the midwest. Notably, we don't get real or fully developed characters at all, only small clips. Even in the "Nick Adams" stories we actually know Nick Adams a little better after each story, but not in Anderson's case.

The stories are being told to us, almost like campfire stories (one can imagine a sinister voice and a flash-light for facial illumination). Also notable is the running style narrative voice, the theatrical yet "spontaneous" performance / account of the story: "He was like a pregnant woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby but a youth. No, it wasn't a youth, it was a woman, young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart." This is a rather odd passage, something we may expect from a demented Twilight Zone episode or a Robert Browning poem. Further down, we get a whole rant on truth and truths and their large variety and how people stick to one truth against all other truths, etc. These truths make people grotesque, or rather, these truths make them particular to Sherwood Anderson. But what are these truths (also mentioned in "Paper Pills")? We don't really know, they're only some vague concept Anderson has thrown at us, akin to a symbol in French Symbolist poetry or some weird moral from a Poe tale. Indeed, we probably finish one of these stories with far more questions than answers, at least I have. What happens to these people? Why? Does the story length change throughout the book? Do the characters keep coming back? Unfortunately, as is the case with a short selection, we can't find out, although based on the selections given, I'm not sure I'll be investigation Anderson any further.