Penguin no. 609: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life...for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives, and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy.

The very early Penguins look so similar that choosing between them can be a fairly random process when you are unfamiliar with the authors and the titles. In general I don't mind this;  it seems to me there is always something to be learnt from reading an old book, even when I don't particularly enjoy it. But sometimes I will hear a title mentioned, and that mention will focus my attention, and make a particular book stand out. The wonderful thing about owning so many old Penguins is that when that mention comes, I often don't have to search for the book: it will be sitting at home on my bookshelves overlooked and unread.

And so it was with this one. Winesburg, Ohio is not forgotten and it isn't obscure, but the title didn't mean anything to me. It was the blog Interpolations which first drew it to my attention, because the author stated that he had read this particular book 11 times, and naturally I was intrigued by a book that could captivate any reader to that extent (especially one whose reviews are so interesting and insightful). I cannot claim to love it as he does, but I will certainly read it again, and I think it would be fair to describe it as unforgettable. It is unlike any book I have read before and is almost unclassifiable. It lies somewhere between a collection of short stories and a novel, while being neither. The tone is sombre, and the prose is simple, with the occasional passage that is so profound that the depth of the insight seems almost irreconcilable with the simplicity of the language, intensifying the effect. The whole book captures and conveys a sense of sadness and loneliness that is not easily forgotten.

Winesburg, Ohio presents a portrait of smalltown America at the beginning of the 20th Century by focusing on the outliers, those individuals who stand apart from the common townsfolk. The picture is built up like a mosaic, from a set of distinct stories, each one sketching out one or more of the characters of the town. The story is in these descriptions, and the author looks beneath surface impressions offering insights into why these people are as they are: each trapped by something that has happened to them or something they believe. Each of these individuals is remarkable, but their stories are small and they end quietly, generally without hope.

It is a picture comprised of parts. The story isn't linear; the book has an air of being written organically, as though the completion of one story inspired ideas developed in other stories. Some are connected only through the location, others because so many of the characters are drawn to the young reporter George Willard, who works for the local paper, observing and recording the small details of the inhabitants' lives. There is no introduction to the town; we come to know its streets, buildings, shops and features through the movements of these characters. In this way the sadness and limitations of their lives colours the picture of the town as well. It comes across as small, faded, decrepit and forlorn. A place to leave behind, and eventually George Willard does just that.

This unusual approach to creating a book is prefigured in the first story, The Book of the Grotesque. A writer lies in his raised bed experiencing a waking dream of procession of figures, all grotesque but not all awful. Their grotesqueness is born of their obsession with a single belief which they take to be a truth, but which their fanaticism makes a falsehood. And as the writer becomes obsessed with this idea and the procession of figures, he himself risks becoming a grotesque. This is the idea developed in the book: Winesburg, Ohio is a procession of grotesques. There are a few that are horrible, their fanaticism restricting the lives of those around them, but the remainder are sympathetically portrayed. They have the 'sweetness of the twisted apples', an idea developed in the story Paper Pills, and a secret to be discovered by the observant . This is a book which influenced much of the American literature which followed it, and it is interesting and unforgettable  because of the originality of the approach.