Review by Edward Tanguay August 31, 1995

What a bizarre little town! So far in the book, we've been introduced to two citizens with mental disorders: Dr. Parcival who believes everyone is Christ and Joe Welling who babbles nonsense about creating a new race of plants. We've also met a psychotic who wants to poor lamb's blood on his son's head in the forest and then sacrifice the lamb to God. Then there was the man who was chased out of another town for supposedly fondling little boys--whether he actually did or not is unknown but nevertheless he is incapable of acting normally now. Speaking of normal, this town is definitely not normal! Or is it? The women in the town seem to represent very real lives of frustration. My favorite section of the whole book is "Adventure" about the woman who was so lonely that one day while undressed in her room watching the rain outside, she got a wild idea to run out of the house into the streets naked. She had a brief moment of release and happiness out in the rain and wanted to embrace another human being. She found an old man whom she scared half to death. She then fell to the ground in shame and crawled home on the ground. The section ends:

When she got into bed she buried her face in the pillow and wept brokenheartedly. "What is the matter with me? I will do something dreadful if I am not careful," she thought, and turning her face to the wall, began trying to force herself to face bravely the fact that many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg.

This pent up emotion, lack of human love, lack of healthy relationships with others is an connecting theme in all of the disparate characters in this town. Simple, healthy conversation for these people seems to be a very difficult and rare thing. They feel awkward with each other and are often at a loss of words:

In the evening when the son sat in the room with his mother, the silence made them both feel awkward. Louise turned and went out of the room, leaving the two men to sit in embarrassed silence. "You do work hard, don't you?" he said awkwardly, and then before she could answer he also went away. She tried to make talk but could say nothing, and after he had gone she was angry at herself for her stupidity.

These characters' simple lives do not provide them with the opportunity to develop healthy minds. Like in a Flannery O'Connor story, everyone is a bit psychologically off or dimwitted:

The four young men of the family worked hard all day in the fields, they ate heavily of coarse, greasy food, and at night slept like tired beasts on beds of straw. Into their lives came little that was not coarse and brutal and outwardly they were

themselves coarse and brutal. On Saturday afternoons they hitched a team of horses to a three-seated wagon and went off to town. In town they stood about the stoves in the stores talking to other farmers or to the store keepers. They were dressed in overalls and in the winter wore heavy coats that were flecked with mud. Their hands as they stretched them out to the heat of the stoves were cracked and red. it was difficult for them to talk and so they for the most part kept silent. Men labored too hard and were too tired to read. In them was no desire for words printed upon paper. As they worked in the fields, vague, half-formed thoughts took possession of them. As a matter of principle they did just enough work in their classes to avoid punishment. "I hate books and I hate anyone who likes books, Harriet, the younger of the two girls, declared passionately.

Anderson's style is tiring. He seems to have about three sentence styles and uses them over and over and over. One way he pulls you along and makes you want to keep reading is his tactic of introducing some kind of big event in this sort of way: "When he turned sixteen, something happened to him that changed his life forever." The reader naturally becomes curious. Anderson also comes up with a descriptive jewel every now and then, for example this one:

The lid of the left eye twitched; it fell down and snapped up; it was exactly as though the lid of the eye were a window shade and someone stood inside the doctor's head playing with the cord.

The atmosphere of this town reminds me of the atmosphere in David Lynch's movie "Eraser Head." Everyone is awkward. Some are fully bizarre and nobody is really playing with a full deck. No relationship is healthy or normal. It's as if a tainted mental breeze had swept through the town and now everyone's disrupted psychological well-being has manifested itself in its own unique way. It's interesting at least to get to know each of these eccentric characters, as Anderson suggests referring to the rejected apples left on the trees in Winesburg:

"Only a few know the sweetness of the twisted apples."

Edward Tanguay

*** Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
*** Review of second half
*** by Edward Tanguay
*** September 10, 1995

This book was hard to read. The style is choppy. After enjoying the detailed descriptions of Saul Bellow and having begun reading the smooth narrative of John Steinbeck, Sherwood Anderson's simple style is simply hard to get through. His descriptions are two-dimensional. You can never get close to his characters or the general plot, as in a dream. Another bothersome item about reading this book is you have to learn a new setting and set of characters every ten pages when a new chapter starts. He does have some jewels here and there which make the reading worth while, as in the story "The Thinker" in which Seth ends up lonely:

When it comes to loving someone, it won't never be me. It'll be someone else--some fool--someone who talks a lot--someone like that George Willard. "Drink" was also good in that another character tried to express himself but found that he couldn't, this time by getting drunk one time. I like this theme of people trying to break out of the small town life by doing something bizarre. Here is Tom Foster describing his one drunken night: Tom Foster's voice arose, and for once in his life he became almost excited. "It was like making love, that's what I mean," he explained. "Don't you see how it is? It hurt me to do what I did and made everything strange. That's why I did it. I'm glad, too. It taught me something, that's it, that's what I wanted. Don't you understand? I wanted to learn things, you see. That's why I did it."

Does the book form a complete whole? I think so. Malcolm Cowley in the introduction of my book noted that everyone in this little town has trouble communicating and they each see in George Willard an ability to express himself. I found this to be true. Throughout the book, characters are walking away from each other in silence because they don't know what to say, or just sitting looking at each other, or bursting out incoherent utterances to each other. They believe in George and his ability to express himself. Doctor Parcival is the clearest instance of this:

"You must pay attention to me," he urged. "If something happens perhaps you will be able to write the book that I may never get written."

After his mother's death, George feels released of the town and can move onto the big city. George represents his town. The people of the town believe in him to use his talents and do himself what they can not. I like this interpretation of Cowley's because it makes the theme of this book a positive one, a book about a small town's hope.

Edward Tanguay

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