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    Winesburg, Ohio
    Winesburg, Ohio
    Winesburg, Ohio
    Audiobook7 hours

    Winesburg, Ohio

    Written by Sherwood Anderson

    Narrated by George K Wilson

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Winesburg, Ohio is Sherwood Anderson's masterpiece, a cycle of short stories concerning life in a small town at the end of the nineteenth century. In the perfectly imagined world of Winesburg, an archetypal small American town, Anderson reveals the hidden passions that turn ordinary lives into fonts of unforgettable emotions. Played out against a deceptively placid backdrop, Anderson's loosely connected stories coalesce, like chapters, into a powerful novel of love and loss.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 14, 2010
    ISBN9781400189410
    Author

    Sherwood Anderson

    Sherwood Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio. Following a brief stint in the Spanish American War, he started a family and founded a business -- both of which he abruptly abandoned at the age of 36 to pursue his life-long dream of writing. His simple and direct writing style, with which he portrayed important moments in the lives of his characters, influenced both Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. His other notable works include Triumph of the Egg; Horses and Men; and A Story Teller's Story.

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    Reviews for Winesburg, Ohio

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    • 4/5
      Sherwood Anderson is often credited with writing, in Winesburg Ohio, the first really 'modern' American novel. Or so I've read ... I'm in no position to agree or disagree with that but what I can say is, that despite the age of the book, the short stories even today sound fresh to the ear and still discuss themes and topics contemporary to 'now'.Set in a fictional mid-west small town the book is a collection of short stories about the inhabitants all (very) loosely held together by a young wannabe reporter George Willard. Not all of the stories flatter the characters and the language used is very vivid, which I understand puts some people off Sherwood, denouncing him as having a 'superior attitude', however there are certainly some stories that inspire as Sherwood seems to get right inside the fictional minds of his characters to draw out their deepest and truest characters. The stories themselves can be read individually and I must admit to having dipped back in to the collection again to re-read a few, particularly my favourite story 'Hands'.I would heartily recommend this book to anyone and urge you to keep going with it if it does not instantly grab you; it is well worth any effort you have to put in to read.
    • 4/5
      The author Sherwood Anderson led an interesting life. He was born in 1876, America’s Centennial Year, to a father who was a veteran of the Civil War, and a mother who later took in laundry to make ends meet while her husband drank. After growing up in small town Ohio, he followed his brother to Chicago and began working factory jobs while going to night school to further his education. He left to join the Army for the Spanish American War, and then returned to Chicago to begin a career in advertising and sales. In his spare time he began writing. It wasn’t until his 40s that his first book was published.He found his first real success with the work that he is mainly remembered today - the short story collection in Winesburg, Ohio. The publisher of his first two books refused to publish Winesburg, calling it “too gloomy”. It was Ben Heubsch, owner of a small publishing house in New York, who gave the book its title and published it to effusive critical reception. Anderson has been considered by some critics to be more significant for his influence on a younger generation of writers than for any of his own works. Those he influenced include Hemingway, Faulkner, and Sandburg, who he and his third wife entertained at their apartment in New Orleans in the 1920s. He was married four times, taking full advantage of the new sexual freedom of the Roaring Twenties. He died in 1941 of peritonitis while on a cruise in the Caribbean. In 1998, Modern Library chose Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio as #24 on their list of 100 Best Novels. It’s in fact not a novel, but a series of interconnecting short stories. Each is a character study focused on a particular individual. Every one of Anderson’s characters has their secrets, every one has their disappointments. Taken together the stories provide a sense of the loneliness and frustration hiding beneath the surface of small town pre-industrial life. The stories are heartbreakingly real, and written in simple, matter-of-fact language that I found distinctly Midwestern. In many of the stories young George Willard, an eager newspaper reporter, and stand-in for the author, plays a part. People come to him and unload their tales. George himself is a character in the tales of his mother and himself that finish out the book.I really enjoyed these stories. I know some find them depressing, but remember when they were written, with World War I raging and America undergoing enormous change - from agriculture to industry and from rural to urban. Stories looking back to small town life between the Civil War and World War I, and seeing it with all its shortcomings, make perfect sense given the times. But for me the realness of the stories Anderson captured makes them timeless.
    • 4/5
      The stories in Winesburg, Ohio, tell of a restless longing for something that the characters can’t quite define, but which may be community or connection. It has an aura of disappointment verging on despair. The town is filled with lonely souls who seem detached from everyone around them, except for young reporter George Willard, who seems to be the last remaining thread connecting the people of Winesburg. What will happen to the town when George Willard leaves?Anderson seems to capture the beginning of the Midwest’s shift from agricultural economy to manufacturing economy and the waning of its small towns. Everyone with Midwestern roots ought to read this book.
    • 5/5
      I know many of my friends did not enjoy this collection as much as I did. They called the interconnected stories "depressing." I chose to focus on the glimpses of small town life and the beautiful way the author painted the picture with adjectives and other words. George Willard appears in most of the stories, and we gain lots of insights into his character through the course of the book. I found a lot of truth in the small town life depiction even a century later. While I know many will disagree with my high rating, this one resonated with me.
    • 4/5
      A collection of short stories about the citizens of the small town. What most of the stories have in common is that each character has something that makes them feel isolated and often desperately unhappy, whether this is a bad marriage or an unsuccessful career or unrequited love. While some readers have found this a depressing book, and it certainly isn't a happy one, there are little unexpected touches of humor, and a lot more sex than you'd expect in a book published in 1919.
    • 4/5
      Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson was originally published in 1919 and consists of 22 short stories loosely connected by setting and characters. One character, George Willard, appears in all but 6 of the stories, and we read about his growing up years and his observations in the small fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio. From the moment of reading the first story, “The Book of the Grotesque” the author sets the stage for his series of less than flattering stories about the loneliness and isolation that can exist in a small town.Anderson is reputed to have strongly influenced authors such as Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck and Wolfe by his modern style of writing. Nothing here is over-written or padded with flowery descriptions. The themes that Anderson explores are mostly connected with the inability to communicate and feeling that one doesn’t fit in. While on the surface life moves gently along in this small town, underneath there is darkness, jealousy, and unfulfilled yearnings.While I can certainly see the uniqueness of Winesburg, Ohio, I can’t say that I enjoyed the book as I found the various stories rather depressing. Personally I would have preferred some of the stories to express a little lightness or humor but these loosely connected stories about the troubled characters of Winesburg, Ohio is well worth the read.
    • 4/5
      Series of interconnected stories set in the early part of the 20th century (preindustrial) small town, Ohio. Themes of loneliness and isolation even though these characters are living in a small town.The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard, from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man.Because of its emphasis on the psychological insights of characters over plot, and plain spoken prose, Winesburg, Ohio is known as one of the earliest works of Modernist literature. It is also a forerunner of the novel made up of a bunch of interconnected short stories. The cycle consists of twenty-two short stories, one of which consists of four parts:[note 1]The Book of the GrotesqueHands—concerning Wing BiddlebaumPaper Pills—concerning Doctor ReefyMother—concerning Elizabeth WillardThe Philosopher—concerning Doctor ParcivalNobody Knows—concerning Louise TrunnionGodlinessParts I and II—concerning Jesse BentleySurrender (Part III)—concerning Louise BentleyTerror (Part IV)—concerning David HardyA Man of Ideas—concerning Joe WellingAdventure—concerning Alice HindmanRespectability—concerning Wash WilliamsThe Thinker—concerning Seth RichmondTandy—concerning Tandy HardThe Strength of God—concerning The Reverend Curtis HartmanThe Teacher—concerning Kate SwiftLoneliness—concerning Enoch RobinsonAn Awakening—concerning Belle Carpenter"Queer"—concerning Elmer CowleyThe Untold Lie—concerning Ray PearsonDrink—concerning Tom FosterDeath—concerning Doctor Reefy and Elizabeth WillardSophistication—concerning Helen WhiteDeparture—concerning George WillardWritten third person omniscient narrative.
    • 4/5
      This book grew on me, a steady crescendo to a final couple of chapters that were beautifully crafted. A narration style that captures the animalistic frustration and self-contained disasters of growing up in a small town.
    • 2/5
      As a steadfast lover of Death in the Woods and Other Stories, I was sorely disappointed with this. No doubt Anderson's talent for bringing the reader to the moment of epiphany with a character is present. Furthermore, his ability to evoke emotion with seemingly simple descriptions of the physical is also manifest, and the book will most certainly arch the eyebrows of those who think that we were oh-so-much more pure and civilized in the ever-golden past. However, despite all those redeeming characteristics, the work as a whole simply does not gel. The individual stories, more often than not, only make sense within the context of each other, so they fail to satisfy as complete tales. Yet they also lack the necessary cohesion to form a novel. So while the portrait of a town is indeed painted, it is not made of interest.Those who have only read this Sherwood Anderson title might consider giving Death in the Woods a try. I find it to be a vastly superior work.
    • 5/5
      This is one I come back to every once in a while. I read it on the web the last time. It's more than just a portrait of a town. It's poetry. You come to feel like you know the people and their relationships. Life is hard in a small town, but there are perks.
    • 5/5
      The themes and concepts about humanity and society in these stories are fascinating and ageless.
    • 3/5
      Somehow I had never read this book, so im glad it got picked for one of my book clubs. Sherwood Anderson describes life in a small Ohio town that is ostensibly based on his own hometown. It is not a pleasant portrait. The action in the book takes place almost entirely at night, sand the darkness reflects the lives of most of the book's characters. There is lying, cheating, illicit sex and just about every other vice you can think of. No wonder the people in Anderson's home town were appalled when this book came out. A very depressing, yet accurate look at the venial life in a small town.
    • 3/5
      An interesting book of short stories about small-town life in the rural area of Winesburg, Ohio. Very introspective, with much of the intrigue based within the minds of the characters. It was good, but personally there was nothing especially noteworthy about the book. Nonetheless, worth a read.
    • 4/5
      Short stories wrapped around a town in Ohio.
    • 3/5
      I can see why this would have been scandalous back in 1919. There's an awful lot of earthy sexuality in Winesburg.

      Men and women are instantly struck by each other's attractiveness and they fall in and out of lust at the drop of a hat. There a depth to such human shallowness that even reminded me of War and Peace and the way Tolstoy was so sharp on the tiny things that trigger feelings of love.

      It's a great companion piece to the Spoon River Anthology which I read last year delving into overlapping lives with overlapping vignettes.

      The short story "The Untold Lie" is worth the price of admission all by itself.
    • 4/5
      Much better than I expected. This book of short stories both showed its age and defied it. It was packed with more sex, more honestly confused people, and more ambiguous moments than I expected. At the same time, that sex, confusion, and ambiguity was more obviously privileged, white, and male than I was comfortable with.In the penultimate story, the narrator observes of a young woman, "it seemed to her that the world was full of meaningless people saying words." Perhaps this applies to all the characters in the novel, or perhaps we're encouraged to believe that young newspaper reporter who is nearly the main character and seems to be the chronicler of the town's adventures is a different sort of man.Such moments of keen insight were too often surrounded by passages that feel more subtly sinister in the winter of 2017: "The young man took Mary Hardy into his arms and kissed her. When she struggled and laughed, he but held her the more tightly. For an hour the contest between them went on..." Over and over, women are waiting for men to deliver them from their lives. Maybe that is merely an accurate reflection of a time when women couldn't vote, unmarried women could rarely own property or conduct business, and rarely attended college. But at several moments in the story, it all felt more sinister to me.I wish I'd read these stories a decade ago. I suspect I would have loved them without the complicated mixed emotions I have now.
    • 4/5
      I did not know what to think when I began reading Winesburg, Ohio. Hemingway's satire of the novel in The Torrents of Spring had somewhat tainted my first impression of the book. However, on completion I found the book thoughtful, interesting, and, aside from being somewhat vanilla in its description of life in a small American town, insightful. There is a coherence to the various stories that I found in Calvino's Marcolvaldo, despite the work appearing as a collection of short stories based around a protagonist and their relationship to the people, places and happenings in one particular town. I would not be surprised if Calvino was inspired by Anderson. But for the life of me I cannot understand Hemingway's criticism. Yet Anderson had a similar response from Faulkner. I think what makes this work so important is the background story, yet the work speaks to the reader in its own right.
    • 4/5
      This has been on my mental list of "to-reads" for a very long time. As a native of Ohio, I have a familiarity with the area and and with Sherwood Anderson, so I was excited to finally read this fantastic piece of literature.
    • 4/5
      Anderson shows a deep understanding of people and what drives them. Each character is unique and filled out so completely that I feel as though I understand every one on a level much deeper than the length of their presence in the book would suggest. Their is also an attention to language in the prose that is lovely to read. It's not always poetic, but it is always beautiful, and it cuts through to the heart of whatever is being said in that moment.

      My favorite quote from the books comes from the chapter titled "Death, concerning Doctor Reefy and Elizabeth Willard":
      "Their bodies were different, as were also the color of their eyes, the length of their noses, and the circumstances of their existence, but something inside them meant the same thing, wanted the same release, would have left the same impression on the memory of an onlooker.

      I would suggest this to anyone looking to feel less alone in the world, anyone who is confused and feels lost, or anyone who just needs something they can't explain.
    • 3/5
      It's hard to find those kind of books where the action slowly meanders through the streets and fields, and doesn't come blasting out of weapons, or splash through in a rapid pace, firing wit at a whiplash pace. Winesburg, Ohio shapes the character of a small town through its characters, told slowly and gently through short story glimpses. I love a quiet paced book, with good writing, and even though this was really vignettes/short stories, it still had the gentle quality I long for in today's action packed world.Almost embarrassed to admit, I might not have picked this up were it not for the Stanford Book Salon. I read in someone's review that the author died from peritonitis after his intestine was perforated by a piece of a toothpick left in a martini olive. I just want to reassure everyone that knows about the czuk "Martini Night" ritual on (most) Fridays, that we do not toothpick our Castlevietro olives.
    • 4/5
      This book has much of Elyria, Ohio in it. At least that seems to be the case. I was raised in Elyria and Anderson writes of a typical turn-of-the-century (last century, that is) American Midwest city with its prejudices and glories. If one wishes to understand the evolution of the American being, read this book.
    • 5/5
      WINESBURG, OHIO-by Sherwood Anderson 479 -12706019I was skeptical of this book because I thought the title sounded dull and the generic title even more dull-dom. However, I decided to read it only because I am from a small town in Ohio. It turns out, I am happy I live in Ohio. The stories are detailed with realistic, well-rounded characters. Typically I steer away from short stories as many times it seems the endings are simple cutoff. This author delivers. His stories, though short, are well formed and entertaining. I was taken back to a different time of life, perhaps better in some ways as I read through.
    • 2/5
      I trudged through this. I'm sure it was quite realistic and risque in 1919, but the repeated hand imagery annoyed me, as did the whole premise of trying to describe the inner emotional lives of interconnected people in vignettes. Give me PLOT, please! And don't tell me it was a coming of age story, George was an idiot.
    • 4/5
      A collection of interconnected short stories, set in the post-WWI years in a small town in Ohio. Some of the stories are a little bit dated, but still a good read--a slice of time and place.
    • 3/5
      Oddly compelling set of very short stories set in rural America at the dawn of agricultural industrialization. Themes center on love, family religion, values and lack thereof. Also a kind of one hit wonder for Anderson.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this collection of short stories about the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio. The way the story lines interconnected fascinated me. The descriptions of the townspeople's actions emotions were so intriguing that sometimes I felt like a voyeur.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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!
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.