Winesburg, Ohio (full title: Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life) is a 1919 short story cycle by the American author Sherwood Anderson. 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. It is set in the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio (not to be confused with the actual Winesburg, Ohio), which is loosely based on Anderson's childhood memories of Clyde, Ohio.
Mostly written from late 1915 to early 1916, with a few stories completed closer to publication, they were "...conceived as complementary parts of a whole, centered in the background of a single community."Phillips (1951), 17-18 The book consists of twenty-two stories, with the first story, "The Book of the Grotesque", serving as an introduction. Each of the stories shares a specific character's past and present struggle to overcome the loneliness and isolation that seem to permeate the town. Stylistically, because of its emphasis on the psychological insights of characters over plot, and plainspoken prose, Winesburg, Ohio is known as one of the earliest works of Modernist literature.Dunne (2005), 44Stouck (1996), 229Anderson (1994), 73-74
Winesburg, Ohio was received well by critics despite some reservations about its moral tone and unconventional storytelling. Though its reputation waned in the 1930s, it has since rebounded and is now considered one of the most influential portraits of pre-industrial small-town life in the United States.Updike (1996), 194
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Winesburg, Ohio 24th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century."100 Best Novels". Random House. Accessed 22 July 2011.
Genre Though there is practically no argument about the unity of structure within Winesburg, Ohio, few scholars have concluded that it fits the standards of a conventional novel.Ingram (1971), 149-151Mellard (1968), 1312 Instead, it is typically placed "...midway between the novel proper and the mere collection of stories,"Cowley (1974), 57 known as the short story cycle.See Ingram (1971), 13-25, for an excellent discussion of short story cycles Aside from its structural unity, the common setting, characters, symbolism and "consistency of mood"Howe (1966), 100 are all additional qualities that tie the stories together despite their initial publication as separate tales.
Promoted to younger writers by Anderson himself,Ingram (1971), 148 Winesburg, Ohio has served as a representative early example of the modern short story cycle in American letters.Crowley (1990), 21 Comparisons between Winesburg, Ohio and Jean Toomer's Cane (1923), Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time (1925), William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses (1942), and several of John Steinbeck's works, among others, demonstrate the pervasiveness of the formal innovations made in Anderson's book.Cowley (1974), 57-58Crowley (1990), 14-15
The focus on George Willard's development as a young man and a writer has also led some critics to put Winesburg, Ohio within the tradition of "the American boy book, the Bildungsroman,Fussell (1966), 107 and the Künstlerroman".Crowley (1990), 15, 21
Setting
It is widely acknowledged that the fictional model of the book's town, Winesburg, is based on Sherwood Anderson's boyhood memories of Clyde, Ohio,Rideout (1996), 169Crowley (1990), 4 where Anderson lived between the ages of eight and nineteen (1884–1896),Howe (1951), 27 and not the actual town of Winesburg, Ohio. This view is supported by the similarities between the names and qualities of several Winesburg characters and Clyde's townspeople,Phillips (1951), 14 in addition to mentions of specific geographic details of Clyde and the surrounding area.Brillant, Edith. "Sherwood Anderson, Once of Clyde, Began Life as a Grocery Errand Boy / Old Clyde Residents and Mrs. J.D. Parker Recall Early Life of Writer". Sandusky Register (29 August 1926). Retrieved 23 April 2011.
It is not known why Anderson chose the name Winesburg for the town in the book. What is known is that the name was not necessarily determined by the stories themselves. In actuality, Anderson had been using Winesburg, Ohio, as a base for Talbot Whittingham, the protagonist of an unfinished novel he had been writing on-and-off for several years prior to the composition of the Winesburg stories.
A direct relationship between the real Clyde and the fictional Winesburg, however, remains the supposition of scholars. Anderson wrote in A Writer's Conception of Realism that he reacted with "shock" when he "...heard people say that one of my own books Winesburg, Ohio, was an exact picture of Ohio village life." The author went on to admit that, "the hint for almost every character was taken from my fellow lodgers in a large rooming house..."Anderson (1947), 345 These lodgers were the "...young musicians, young writers, painters, actors..." and others that lived in proximity to Anderson on the North Side of Chicago and to whom he referred as "The Little Children of the Arts".Anderson (1996a), 152 The truth probably lies somewhere in between, with memories of Clyde "merging" with Anderson's interactions at the boardinghouse.Stouck (1996), 221
Literary sources It is difficult to say that any specific writer or work influenced Winesburg, Ohio as a whole because Anderson was ambiguous about the matter. Still, most scholars affirm the obvious connection between Anderson's cycle and the Spoon River Anthology of Edgar Lee Masters (published in ), which Anderson reportedly stayed up all night to read.Howe (1951), 94Phillips (1951), 16-17 Though B.W. Huebsch, Anderson's publisher, sent out a statement, upon the release of Winesburg, Ohio, heading off comparisons between the two works by stating (erroneously, as it turns out) that the Winesburg stories were printed in magazines before the Spoon River Anthology was published, the similarities in small-town setting, structure, and mood of the works have been noted by several reviewers,Anonymous (1 June 1919), 3Broun, Heywood. "Winesburg, Ohio". New York Tribune (31 May 1919). Retrieved 3 July 2011.Anonymous (25 June 1919). "Books of the Fortnight". Dial, 66: 666. with one going so far as to call Winesburg, Ohio, the Spoon River Anthology "...put into prose."Anonymous (1996), 164
Gertrude Stein, whose work Anderson was introduced to by either his brother KarlHowe (1965), 92-93Duffey (1966), 52 or photographer Alfred StieglitzStouck (1996), 213 between 1912 and 1915, is also said to have played a key role in helping shape the unique style found in the stories. Through his interaction (at first satirizing it before ultimately accepting it as essential to his development) with Stein's Three Lives (1909) and Tender Buttons (1914), Anderson found the plain, unambiguous voice that became a staple of his prose.Howe (1951), 95-96 As indicated by the correspondence the two writers developed after the publication of Winesburg, Ohio, variations on the repetition found in Stein's writing in addition to their mutual appreciation for the sentence as a basic unit of prose were also likely features of her writing that Anderson noticed and drew upon in writing his Winesburg, Ohio.Stouck (1996), 218-221 Literary critic Irving Howe summarized the pair's connection aptly when he wrote, "Stein was the best kind of influence: she did not bend Anderson to her style, she liberated him for his own."
Numerous other writers and works have been mentioned as possible sources from which the elements of Winesburg, Ohio were drawn, most of them either denied or unacknowledged by Anderson himself. The influence of Theodore Dreiser and the Russians (Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy) were discounted by the author, the former for stylistic reasons,Anderson (1977), 434-435Phillips (1951), 15 the latter because he had apparently not read them prior to writing his book.Crowley (1990), 17 While Anderson expressed an admiration for Ivan Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, the affinities between Turgenev's novel and Winesburg, Ohio ("...both are episodic novels containing loosely bound but closely related sketches, both depend for impact less on dramatic action than on climactic lyrical insight, and in both the individual sketches frequently end with bland understatements that form an ironic coda to the body of the writing"Howe (1951), 93) may not be a sign of influence since it is not known whether Anderson read the book before writing Winesburg, Ohio. Finally, the regional focus on the Midwest has been linked to the writing of Mark Twain, particularly The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and while Anderson read and revered Twain,Spencer (1969), 5-6 the connection between Twain and Winesburg, Ohio has largely been made by scholars seeking to place the book within the canon of American literature, not necessarily by the author.
Composition and publication According to Anderson's account, the first of the stories that became Winesburg, Ohio (probably "The Book of the Grotesque") was composed, on the spur of the moment, in the middle of the night, probably while he was staying on the third floor of a rooming house at in Chicago:Phillips (1951), 13-14 "...it was a late fall night and raining...I was there naked in the bed and I sprang up. I went to my typewriter and began to write. It was there, under those circumstances, myself sitting near an open window, the rain occasionally blowing in and wetting my bare back, that I did my first writing...I wrote it, as I wrote them all, complete in the one sitting...The rest of the stories in the book came out of me on succeeding evenings, and sometimes during the day while I worked in the advertising office..."Anderson (1942), 287 Study of his manuscripts shows that, though it is probably true that most of the stories were written within a relatively short span of time in late 1915, like a number of facts in Anderson's retelling of his writing process (for instance, his claim that he had written the Winesburg, Ohio stories after his earlier books were already published), it is inaccurate to say that the final versions of the stories published in 1919 were exactly the same as the ones written whole four years earlier.
In fact, in his seminal article "How Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio," William L. Phillips wrote that the manuscript of "Hands" contained "...almost two hundred instances in which earlier words and phrases are deleted, changed, or added to..."Phillips (1951), 20 though no major structural changes to the story were detected. Additionally, slightly different versions of ten stories that ended up in the book were published by three literary magazines between 1916 and 1918 as follows:
Story Title Magazine Name Publication DatePhillips (1951), 9 ("Book of the Grotesque" and "Hands"), 12 ("Paper Pills", "'Queer'", and "The Untold Lie"), 24 ("The Strength of God"), 25-26 ("Mother", "The Thinker", "The Man of Ideas", and "An Awakening") "The Book of the Grotesque" Masses February 1916 "Hands" Masses March 1916 "Paper Pills" (as "The Philosopher") Little Review June–July 1916 "The Strength of God" Masses August 1916 "Queer" Seven Arts December 1916 "The Untold Lie" Seven Arts January 1917 "Mother" Seven Arts March 1917 "The Thinker" Seven Arts September 1917 "The Man of Ideas" Little Review June 1918 "An Awakening" Little Review December 1918
Though the stories were published to some acclaim in literary circles,Phillips (1951), 24-25, 30 John Lane, the publisher of Anderson's first two novels, referred to the Winesburg, Ohio stories as "too gloomy"Phillips (1951), 30 and refused to publish them. It was not until editor Francis Hackett showed the manuscript to Ben Huebsch, owner and editor of a small publishing house in New York, that the stories (Huebsch suggested calling them "Winesburg, Ohio") were brought together and published.
The stories