Wednesday, 24 August 2011 03:06 pm
Book Review: Winesburg, Ohio
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deckardcanineSomewhere online, an essayist mentioned in passing that anyone interested in writing short stories should read Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, which has inspired lots of popular writers in the last 92 years. I was already thinking of doing a collection with a unifying theme for the next NaNoWriMo, since it seemed easier for me to do well. Previously I knew Anderson only for the quirky yet serious "The Triumph of the Egg," so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect.
Well, it’s a good thing I had plenty of reading time on my vacation, because if I’d taken my usual pace, I’d probably shelve WO. Pretty much everyone in it is miserable no matter what happens in their lives. Most come across as socially challenged jerks, including, eventually, the almost too youthful reporter who interacts with everyone else. Oh, they’re all distinctive—bordering on caricatures, albeit with very little humor—but as the foreword by John Updike aptly notes, they represent the same problem to the point of being one character repackaged. Maybe hydra heads.
You might see the moral as “Small-town America sucks.” I’d been wondering whether something about Winesburg really produced these personalities or simply attracted them. In the former case, the seemingly best explanation is that small towns don’t cater well to personal ambition. Fair enough. But a letter from Anderson in the back indicates that he wanted to convey that Winesburg could be absolutely any part of civilization. This meshes with his original planned title, The Book of the Grotesques. So the moral is that life sucks. Brilliant.
Then there’s the writing style. On one hand, for a book this old, it does a good job of avoiding questionable paragraph length and division. On the other hand, Anderson doesn’t always handle narration well. I believe that a narrator should call either plenty of attention to himself, like Lemony Snicket, or none at all. Here we have someone who records dozens of characters’ unspoken thoughts but then says “I suppose” in explaining one. So much for the omniscient. It’s as if you were having a conversation when a voice from the clouds boomed, “Sorry, what was that?”
Speaking of conversation, there’s no dialogue. We get quotations here and there but no immediate replies. This does make sense when you consider the time frame of most stories, cramming in various important points in a character’s life because few figure prominently in more than one story. But dialogue means a lot to me, especially in non-action stories, and its absence was one reason I didn’t get far in The Silmarilion.
Finally, the character names. They’re mostly ordinary, Virginia Richmond and the incidental Sugars McNutts notwithstanding. But about 90% of the time, when Anderson uses a first or last name, he uses both together. Sure, some first names belong to two or three characters, but when there’s only one George and we read about him all the time, why not just leave it at George? Are you afraid we’ll sympathize too much or think he’s your buddy or something?
In truth, I did learn to like WO a little better as I went along. The more I thought about them, the more credible the stories became. Anderson devotes a good number of chapters to women, whom he regards with as much (and as little) respect as the men. I may yet pick a few helpful hints out of the gestalt before I try my hand at the medium.
Well, it’s a good thing I had plenty of reading time on my vacation, because if I’d taken my usual pace, I’d probably shelve WO. Pretty much everyone in it is miserable no matter what happens in their lives. Most come across as socially challenged jerks, including, eventually, the almost too youthful reporter who interacts with everyone else. Oh, they’re all distinctive—bordering on caricatures, albeit with very little humor—but as the foreword by John Updike aptly notes, they represent the same problem to the point of being one character repackaged. Maybe hydra heads.
You might see the moral as “Small-town America sucks.” I’d been wondering whether something about Winesburg really produced these personalities or simply attracted them. In the former case, the seemingly best explanation is that small towns don’t cater well to personal ambition. Fair enough. But a letter from Anderson in the back indicates that he wanted to convey that Winesburg could be absolutely any part of civilization. This meshes with his original planned title, The Book of the Grotesques. So the moral is that life sucks. Brilliant.
Then there’s the writing style. On one hand, for a book this old, it does a good job of avoiding questionable paragraph length and division. On the other hand, Anderson doesn’t always handle narration well. I believe that a narrator should call either plenty of attention to himself, like Lemony Snicket, or none at all. Here we have someone who records dozens of characters’ unspoken thoughts but then says “I suppose” in explaining one. So much for the omniscient. It’s as if you were having a conversation when a voice from the clouds boomed, “Sorry, what was that?”
Speaking of conversation, there’s no dialogue. We get quotations here and there but no immediate replies. This does make sense when you consider the time frame of most stories, cramming in various important points in a character’s life because few figure prominently in more than one story. But dialogue means a lot to me, especially in non-action stories, and its absence was one reason I didn’t get far in The Silmarilion.
Finally, the character names. They’re mostly ordinary, Virginia Richmond and the incidental Sugars McNutts notwithstanding. But about 90% of the time, when Anderson uses a first or last name, he uses both together. Sure, some first names belong to two or three characters, but when there’s only one George and we read about him all the time, why not just leave it at George? Are you afraid we’ll sympathize too much or think he’s your buddy or something?
In truth, I did learn to like WO a little better as I went along. The more I thought about them, the more credible the stories became. Anderson devotes a good number of chapters to women, whom he regards with as much (and as little) respect as the men. I may yet pick a few helpful hints out of the gestalt before I try my hand at the medium.
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I'm currently slogging through the penultimate ninth book of the Thomas Covenant series, and it's boring me to tears. I sometimes read it before bed to help me get to sleep faster.
Some adult authors could take a cue from children's literature: keep things happening, don't fill pages with insipid nonsense, and leave behind a positive message of some sort.