Spoiler Over: Continue Here
Well, well well, dear blobbists,
It has been some time since my last blob, and as usual, I've read many other books between this one and the last blob entry. This is my latest book bingo (I think the eleventh I've undertaken, now) and I've really been enjoying the last few books. I'm going to do a blob post at some point about all the various book bingos, so we'll save my thoughts on those books for later.
For now, let's focus on Winesburg. I have to say two things: (1) I stopped, started, re-started, and re-read this book probably six different times. To be fair, short stories are really not my favorite genre. That being said, (2) I loved this book. It definitely took me a few tries to get squarely into the world of Winesburg, but when I did, I was totally hooked. I know Sherwood Anderson is not a name I knew before reading this book, so I let myself read the introduction to my edition, and here are some nuggets I found interesting.
At the age of 36, he left behind his business and moved to Chicago, becoming one of the rebellious writers and cultural bohemians in the group that has since come to be called the 'Chicago Renaissance'.
It was in the freedom of the city, in its readiness to put up with deviant styles of life, that Anderson found the strength to settle accounts with but also to release his affection for the world of small-town America.
Narrow, intense, almost claustrophobic, the result is a book about extreme states of being, the collapse of men and women who have lost their psychic bearings and now hover, at best tolerated, at the edge of the little community in which they live.
Irving Howe wrote those lines, and I think they're very poignant. I felt a real kinship with Sherwood as I read and re-read this novel. I, too, grew up in small-town America, and the middle of Pennsylvania is really not so different from the middle of Ohio. I, too, relocated to a larger city, and I, too, feel I must both 'settle accounts with' and 'release affection for' my hometown, especially in recent years and political times.
Okay, so fair warning, this blob entry is on the long side, but I promise it's worth it. Because Sherwood Anderson lays out his novel as 22 'grotesques' or 'vignettes', I've chosen to give you little windows into my favorite ones, which, as it turns out, is almost all of them. #sorrynotsorry
So grab a mug of tea, a pumpkin spice latte (they're 20 years old, did you know? ;)), or your cozy beverage of choice, and come with me to a world of pure imagination! Wait, strike that, reverse it! Come with me to small-town Ohio, and let's meet the Winesburgians together.
The Book of the Grotesque, aka the faces of Winesburg [For each vignette, I'll list Anderson's title in bold, and the italics are my take on it]
I love that Anderson references the 'grotesque' style, which, if you didn't know, means this: a style of decorative art characterized by fanciful or fantastic human and animal forms often interwoven with foliage or similar figures that may distort the natural into absurdity, ugliness, or caricature.
From Merriam-Webster:
During the Italian Renaissance, Romans of culture took a great interest in their country's past and began excavating ancient buildings. During their excavations, they uncovered chambers (known in Italian as grotte, in reference to their cavelike appearance) decorated with artwork depicting fantastic combinations of human and animal forms interwoven with strange fruits and flowers. The Italian word grottesca became the name for this unique art style, and by 1561 it had mutated into the English noun "grotesque." The adjective form of "grotesque" was first used in the early 17th century to describe the decorative art but is now used to describe anything bizarre, incongruous, or unusual.
Here are some lines I liked from the opening story:
- Why quarrel with an old man concerning his thoughts?
- You can see for yourself how the old man, who had spent all of his life writing and was filled with words, would write hundreds of pages concerning this matter. The subject would become so big in his mind that he himself would be in danger of becoming a grotesque.
Hands, aka Wing Biddlebaum's worst enemy
One of the things I loved most about Winesburg was the names. They feel so perfectly fictional and yet also so perfectly apt. Wing Biddlebaum was one of my favorites. Wing Biddlebaum was a school teacher, beloved by his male students, but after one of his students has a nightmare and recounts a (fictional) story of Wing Biddlebaum acting inappropriately with him to his parents, the families run him out of town.
- Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset by a ghostly band of doubts, did not think of himself as in any way a part of the life of the town where he had lived for twenty years.
- The story of Wing Biddlebaum's hands is worth a book in itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men. It is a job for a poet.
- He was one of those men in whom the force that creates life is diffused, not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and they also began to dream.
- Although he did not understand what had happened he felt that the hands must be to blame. This is such an amazing line.
- The story of Doctor Reefy and his courtship of the tall dark girl who became his wife and lent her money to him is a very curious story. It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg.
- Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.
The name of the town itself is so poignant as well, as the orchards and farms and fields are woven into the narrative.
Mother, aka Elizabeth Willard, wife of the local hotel owner
Elizabeth Willard, if you consult my perfectly sketched out character map (LOL) is George Willard's mother. George is about the closest thing we have to a protagonist in this novel, though other people's opinions of him in the town vary. I felt for mother. She comes up again, so stay tuned.
- It seemed like a rehearsal of her own life, terrible in its vividness.
- The hotel was continually losing patronage because of its shabbiness and she thought of herself as also shabby.
- 'He is groping about, trying to find himself', she thought. 'He is not a dull clod, all words and smartness. Within him there is a secret something that is striving to grow. It is the thing I let be killed in myself.'
The Philosopher, aka Doctor Parcival, a man with plenty of money but very few patients
I loved Doctor Parcival because he reminded me of my sister, who is currently an excellent doctor, but struggling with a deeply broken system of primary care that's leaving her burned out and overrun again and again. Doctor Parcival may have found a magical solution, though I don't think he's sharing his secrets ;0)
- 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.
- 'If you have your eyes open you will see that although I call myself a doctor I have mighty few patients...There is a reason for that. It is not an accident and it is not because I do not know as much of medicine as anyone here. I do not want patients.' See! Simple! He doesn't want patients!
- The tales that Doctor Parcival told George Willard began nowhere and ended nowhere.
- Sometimes the boy thought they must all be inventions, a pack of lies. And then again he was convinced that they contained the very essence of truth.
Nobody Knows, aka George Willard's secret late night rendezvous
There are quite a few romantic/courtship tales in this book, but this was one of my favorites.
- Through street after street went George Willard, avoiding the people who passed. He crossed and recrossed the road. When he passed a street lamp he pulled his hat down over his face. He did not dare think. In his mind there was a fear but it was a new kind of fear. He was afraid the adventure on which he had set out would be spoiled, that he would lose courage and turn back.
- Louise Trunnion came out across the potato patch holding the dish cloth in her hand. 'How do you know I want to go out with you,' she said sulkily. 'What makes you so sure?' lolololol.
- The young newspaper reporter had received a letter from Louise Trunnion. It had come that morning to the office of the Winesburg Eagle. The letter was brief. 'I'm yours if you want me', it said. He though it annoying that in the darkness by the fence she had pretended there was nothing between them. 'She has a nerve! Well gracious sakes, she has a nerve,' he muttered as he went along the street and passed a row of vacant lots where corn grew. haghaghaghaghaghagh. Louise is like note? What note. Nope. Wasn't me. But she does come out and smooch George a bit. ;)
This story veers away from the others a bit in that it's broken into four parts. I won't go into the specifics of what happens in all of them, but it centers around Jesse Bentley, mostly in his old age, as a farm owner, father and then grandfather, and man of God.
- The Bentley farming men - A kind of crude and animal-like poetic fervor took possession of them. On the road home they stood up on the wagon seats and shouted at the stars. What a beautiful line.
- Jesse Bentley was a fanatic. He was a man born out of his time and place and for this he suffered and made others suffer.
- Like a thousand other strong men who have come into the world here in America in these later times, Jesse was but half strong. He could master others but he could not master himself.
- He would have given much to achieve peace and in him was a fear that peace was the thing he could not achieve.
- He grew avaricious and was impatient that the farm contained only six hundred acres. Pish posh! Just six hundred acres! Jesse's a bit of a tough cookie to like, if you hadn't picked that up yet.
- David Hardy, Jesse's grandson, after running away - He could not believe that so delightful a thing had happened. With her own hands Louise Hardy bathed his tired young body and cooked him food...He thought that he would have been willing to go back through the frightful experience a thousand times to be sure of finding at the end of the long black road a thing so lovely as his mother had suddenly become. Louise is Jesse's daughter, and for various reasons, she doesn't exactly shower David with affection. I so felt for little David when he got found after running away and finally felt his mother's affection and care.
- Later when he drove back home and when night came on and the stars came out it was harder to get back the old feeling of a close and personal God who lived in the sky overhead and who might at any moment reach out his hand, touch him on the shoulder, and appoint for him some heroic task to be done. Jesse gets a little (okay, a lot) obsessed with what God's plans are for him, and it gets a little creepy and eventually scares David away, much to Jesse's chagrin.
- Louise, on trying to fit in - It seemed to her that between herself and all the other people in the world, a wall had been built up and that she was living just on the edge of some warm inner circle of life that must be quite open and understandable to others. She became obsessed with the thought that it wanted but a courageous act on her part to make all of her association with people something quite different, and that it was possible by such an act to pass into a new life as one opens a door and goes into a room. Man, don't we all feel that way sometimes? I know I sure do. I walk by houses that are lit warmly at night in the city, and I think, just one simple set of steps and I could be over that threshold, thrust into that warmth.
- Joe Welling - Joe himself was small of body and in his character unlike anyone else in town. He was like a tiny little volcano that lies silent for days and then suddenly spouts fire.
- He was beset by ideas and in the throes of one of his ideas was uncontrollable.
- Although the seizures that came upon him were harmless enough, they could not be laughed away. They were overwhelming. Astride an idea, Joe was overmastering. His personality became gigantic. There's something so artistic in the way Anderson writes; he paints with words, and this is a great example.
- Joe, giving advice to George Willard, on how to write newspaper articles for the Winesburg Eagle - Becoming more excited Joe Welling crowded the young reporter against the front of the feed store. He appeared to be lost in thought, rolling his eyes about and running a thin nervous hand through his hair. A smile spread over his face and his gold teeth glittered. 'You get out your note book', he commanded. 'You carry a little pad of paper in your pocket don't you? I knew you did. Well, you set this down. I thought of it the other day. Let's take decay. Now what is decay? It's fire. It burns up wood and other things. You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk here and this feed store, the trees down the street they're all on fire. They're burning up. Decay you see is always going on. It doesn't stop. Water and paint can't stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts, you see. That's fire, too. The world is on fire. Start your pieces in the paper that way. Just say in big letters 'The World Is On Fire.' That will make 'em look up. They'll say you're a smart one. I don't care. I don't envy you. I just snatched that idea out of the air. I would make a newspaper hum. You got to admit that... I should start a newspaper myself, that's what I should do. I'd be a marvel. Everybody knows that. This cracked me up. Got that, everyone? All newspaper articles should just start with THE WORLD IS ON FIRE, and then go from there.
Adventure, aka Alice Hindman, clerk at the dry goods store, left behind by Ned Currie
There are a lot of characters I felt empathy for and maybe some concern about their well-being, but I don't want to give the impression that this is a sad book. It's contemplative, and raw, and true, but it is also warm, and vivid, and full of care. Alice's story was like that. She falls for a man named Ned Currie and he moves to a big city and then doesn't return for her like he said he would. She ends up living with her mother, and she won't let herself fall for other men.
- After running around in the rain at night and attempting to offer herself to a nearly deaf old man - '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 story was hard to read, because, as you can see from my character map, Wash Williams is an asshat. I did like the description of him, though.
- Wash Williams, the telegraph operator of Winesburg, was the ugliest thing in town. His girth was immense, his neck thin, his legs feeble. He was dirty. Everything about him was unclean. Even the whites of his eyes looked soiled.
How are you doing, blobbists? Need a break? Take a break! Stretch, get a snack, pet a cat or whatever animal you may or may not share your home with. Come back when you're ready!
Seth Richmond is one of a few people about town who have some strong feelings about George Willard.
- Seth's mother, on trying to scold him - So determined was she that the boy should this time feel the weight of her wrath that, although she would not allow the marshal to interfere with his adventure, she got out a pencil and paper and wrote down a series of sharp, stinging reproofs she intended to pour out upon him. The reproofs she committed to memory, going about the garden and saying them aloud like an actor memorizing his part. I loved this image. She can't bring herself to scold her son, and he always has a good excuse for his behavior, so she tries to practice in the garden to be mean.
- He was lonely and had begun to think that loneliness was a part of his character, something that would always stay with him. This loneliness, or disconnectedness, is a running theme in Winesburg, but like I said, it's not depressing. I think it more so speaks to the idea that we all have periods of of our lives where we feel invisible, or misunderstood, or apart from the masses.
- With calm eyes he watched the gesticulating lively figures of his companions. He wasn't particularly interested in what was going on, and sometimes wondered if he would ever be particularly interested in anything.
- He was depressed by the thought that he was not a part of the life in his own town, but the depression did not cut deeply as he did not think of himself as at fault.
- 'George belongs to this town... It's different with me. I don't belong. I'll not make a fuss about it, but I'm going to get out of here.' Interestingly, lots of people think George belongs to the town, and fits with the town, though George himself wants to leave Winesburg.
- George tells his friend Seth to go flirt with Helen on his behalf, which Seth doesn't want to do, so he goes out with Helen himself instead - Seth and Helen walked through the streets beneath the trees. Heavy clouds had drifted across the face of the moon, and before them in the deep twilight went a man with a short ladder upon his shoulder. Hurrying forward, the man stopped at the street crossing and, putting the ladder against the wooden lamp-post, lighted the village lights so that their way was half lighted, half darkened, by the lamps and by the deepening shadows cast by the low-branched trees. In the tops of the trees the wind began to play, disturbing the sleeping birds so that they flew about calling plaintively. In the lighted space before one of the lamps, two bats wheeled and circled, pursuing the gathering swarm of night flies. God, this is maybe one of my favorite passages in literature of all time. It just feels so intimate and so magical. It reminds me of when Montag first meets Clarisse in Fahrenheit-451:
The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. Her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circling leaves. Her face was slender and milk-white, and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity. It was a look, almost, of pale surprise; the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them. Her dress was white and it whispered.
- Seth turned half around on the bench, striving to see [Helen's] face in the darkness. He thought her infinitely more sensible and straightforward than George Willard, and was glad he had come away from his friend. lololol. That's right, Seth!
Tandy, aka the quality of being strong to be loved
This story is bizarre, and mostly takes place as a conversation between a stranger and a man sitting with his five-year-old daughter.
- He wanted to cure himself of the habit of drink, and thought that by escaping from his city associates and living in a rural community he would have a better chance in the struggle with the appetite that was destroying him. His sojourn in Winesburg was not a success. The dullness of the passing hours led to his drinking harder than ever.
- To Tom Hard and his five-year-old daughter - 'Drink is not the only thing to which I am addicted. There is something else. I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.' Isn't that a great line?
- 'There is a woman coming. I have missed her, you see. She did not come in my time. You may be the woman. It would be like fate to let me stand in her presence once, on such an evening as this, when I have destroyed myself with drink and she is as yet only a child.'
- 'They think it's easy to be a woman, to be loved, but I know better. I understand,' he cried. 'Perhaps of all men I alone understand. I know about her struggles and her defeats. It is because of her defeats that she is to me the lovely one. Out of her defeats has been born a new quality in woman. I have a name for it. I call it Tandy. I made up the name when I was a true dreamer and before my body became vile. It is the quality of being strong to be loved. It is something men need from women and they do not get.' Okay, so I obviously don't think it's easy to be a woman, but I loved this exchange.
Loneliness, aka Enoch Robinson and his room when his shadow people all left
Enoch was another one of my favorites. His story is about a time when he lived in New York, and first he had people over to his apartment all the time, but then, after a while, he decided to stop letting people in. Here's how it plays out.
- Nothing ever turned out for Enoch Robinson.
- He never grew up and of course he couldn't understand people and he couldn't make people understand him.
- The story of Enoch is in fact the story of a room almost more than it is the story of a man.
- In a half indignant mood he stopped inviting people into his room and presently got into the habit of locking the door. He began to think that enough people had visited him, that he did not need people any more. With quick imagination he began to invent his own people to whom he could really talk and to whom he explained the things he had been unable to explain to living people. His room began to be inhabited by the spirits of men and women among whom he went, in his turn saying words. It was as though everyone Enoch Robinson had ever seen had left with him some essence of himself, something he could mould and change to suit his own fancy, something that understood all about such things. Okay, so I know this makes Enoch sound pretty unhinged, but as an introvert, I was kind of like, I get it! Just make up your OWN people, Enoch! ;)
- There must have been two dozen of the shadow people, invented by the child-mind of Enoch Robinson, who lived in the room with me.
- On trying to let a woman into his life - 'I wanted her to understand but, don't you see, I couldn't let her understand. I felt that then she would know everything, that I would be submerged, drowned out, you see.'
- 'Things went to smash. Out she went through the door and all the life there had been in the room followed her out. She took all of my people away.'
- 'It was warm and friendly in my room but now I'm all alone.' Poor Enoch!
Elmer Crowley is another member of the Winesburg community who doesn't care for George Willard.
- On a salesman pitching them on fasteners instead of buttons - "You better grab your things and get out! We're through being fools here! We ain't going to buy any more stuff until we begin to sell. We ain't going to keep on being queer and have folks staring and listening.
- Elmer, to his father, explaining his harsh reaction - "Well, I meant it. I think we've been queer long enough." Scratching his grey beard with his long dirty fingers, the merchant looked at his son with the same wavering uncertain stare with which he had confronted the traveling man. 'I'll be starched,' he said softly. 'Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed and starched!' I loved this so much. I'm going to start saying this. I'll be starched! I'll be washed and ironed and starched! I mean, I haven't starched anything in like 2 decades, but it's a great saying.
- George Willard, he felt, belonged to the town, typified the town, represented in his person the spirit of the town. Elmer Cowley could not have believed that George Willard had also his days of unhappiness, that vague hungers and secret unnamable desires visited also his mind. Did he not represent public opinion and had not the public opinion of Winesburg condemned the Cowleys to queerness?
- Elmer had lived in Winesburg for a year and had made no friends. He was, he felt, one condemned to go through life without friends and he hated the thought. Aw, Elmer, no one should go through life without friends! You could be friends with Enoch! Or Alice!
The Untold Lie, aka what Ray Pearson can't or won't bring himself to say to Hal Winters
This story was interesting. Again, a little or maybe a lot misogynistic, in that it's about how trapped men feel when they get a woman pregnant and feel obligated to marry her, but still poetic.
- Most boys have seasons of wishing they could die gloriously instead of just being grocery clerks and going on with their humdrum lives.
- Hal Winters, to Ray Pearson, an older man - 'I've got Nell in trouble. Perhaps you've been in the same fix yourself. Shall I put myself into the harness to be worn out like an old horse? Shall I do it or shall I tell Nell to go to the devil? Come on, you tell me, Whatever you say, Ray, I'll do.'
- He knew there was only one thing to say to Hal Winters, son of old Windpeter Winters, only one thing that all his own training and all the beliefs of the people he knew would approve, but for his life he couldn't say what he knew he should say.
- Hal, when Ray finally decides to share his thoughts - 'You came to tell me, eh? well never mind telling me anything. I'm not a coward and I've already made up my mind. Nell ain't no fool. She didn't ask me to marry her. I want to marry her. I want to settle down and have kids.'
- Ray, to himself - 'It's just as well. Whatever I told him would have been a lie.'
I loved this story about a sweet boy, Tom, getting drunk. It reminded me of when David gets drunk in David Copperfield.
Davy, on the first night he gets really drunk out with Steerforth and friends: Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as 'Copperfield,' and saying, 'Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn't do it.' Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair - only my hair, nothing else - looked drunk. Oh yes, Davy, just your hair looked drunk, I'm sure. ;)
- All through the night as the train rattled along, the grandmother told Tom tales of Winesburg and of how he would enjoy his life working in the fields and shooting wild things in the woods there. She could not believe that the tiny village of fifty years before had grown into a thriving town in her absence, and in the morning when the train came to Winesburg did not want to get off. I felt so bad for his grandma! Things work out okay for them, after all, but what a shock that would be!
- In an odd way [Tom] stood in the shadow of the wall of life, was meant to stand in the shadow.
- [Tom] had always the power to be a part of and yet distinctly apart from the life about him.
- The most absurd little things made Tom Foster happy. That, I suppose, was why people loved him. In Hern's Grocery they would be roasting coffee on a Friday afternoon, preparatory to the Saturday rush of trade, and the rich odor invaded lower Main Street. Tom Foster appeared and sat on a box at the rear of the store. For an hour he did not move but sat perfectly still, filling his being with the spicy odor that made him half drunk with happiness. 'I like it,' he said gently. 'It makes me think of things far away, places and things like that.' Yes, Tom! I couldn't agree more! I love the smell of coffee.
- And then came the spring night when he got drunk. Tom was wild on that night. He was like an innocent young buck of the forest that has eaten of some maddening weed. The thing began, ran its course, and was ended in one night, and you may be sure that no one in Winesburg was any the worse for Tom's outbreak. In the first place, the night was one to make a sensitive nature drunk. The trees along the residence streets of the town were all newly clothed in soft green leaves, in the gardens behind the houses men were puttering about in vegetable gardens, and in the air there was a hush, a waiting kind of silence very stirring to the blood.
- 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. 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.' Tom adorably tells George Willard that he's been gallivanting about with Helen White, with whom he is smitten, and George gets upset because he knows for a fact Helen White has not gone out with Tom at all that evening, but Tom is just on cloud nine with his little fantasy ride
'Mother' is back. She has a brief, almost non-existent love affair with Doctor Reefy (his wife has long since died) that mostly consists of very deep conversations.
- She remembered the arms of men that had held her when adventure was a possible thing for her. Gah, this is such an exquisitely complex line!
- Elizabeth, on feeling stuck - 'I wanted to get out of town, out of my clothes, out of my marriage, out of my body, out of everything. I wanted to run away from everything but I wanted to run towards something too.' Elizabeth sprang out of the chair and began to walk about in the office. She walked as Doctor Reefy thought he had never seen anyone walk before. To her whole body there was a swing, a rhythm that intoxicated him. When she came and knelt on the floor beside his chair he took her into his arms and began to kiss her passionately. 'You dear! You lovely dear! Oh you lovely dear!' he muttered and thought he held in his arms not the tired-out woman of forty-one but a lovely and innocent girl who had been able by some miracle to project herself out of the husk of the body of the tired-out woman. Doctor Reefy did not see the women he had held in his arms again until after her death.
- Elizabeth's father gives her $800 as an 'escape fund' when she is first married - As for the eight hundred dollars the dead woman had kept hidden so long and that was to give George Willard his start in the city, it lay in the tin box behind the plaster by the foot of his mother's bed. Elizabeth had put it there a week after her marriage, breaking the plaster away with a stick. Then she got one of the workmen her husband was at that time employing about the hotel to mend the wall. 'I jammed up the corner of the bed against it,' she had explained to her husband, unable at the moment to give up her dream of release, the release that after all came to her but twice in her life, in the moments when her lovers Death and Doctor Reefy held her in their arms. Alas!
- George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast growing into manhood and new thoughts had been coming into his mind. All that day, amid the jam of people at the Fair, he had gone about feeling lonely. He was about to leave Winesburg to go away to some city where he hoped to get work on a city newspaper and he felt grown up. He felt old and a little tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind his new sense of maturity set him apart, made of him a half-tragic figure. He wanted someone to understand the feeling that had taken possession of him after his mother's death.
- 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 streets of his town. He is thinking of the future and of 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 of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and 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. This line reminded me of this moment in the last Proust installment:
Revolving the gloomy thoughts which I have just recorded, I had entered the courtyard of the Guermantes mansion and in my absent-minded state I had failed to see a car which was coming towards me; the chauffeur gave a shout and I just had time to step out of the way, but as I moved sharply backwards I tripped against the uneven paving-stones in front of the coach-house. And at the moment when, recovering my balance, I put my foot on a stone which was slightly lower than its neighbor, all my discouragement vanished and in its place was that same happiness which at various epochs of my life had been given to me by the sight of trees which I had thought I recognised in the course of a drive near Balbec, by the sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, by the flavour of a madeleine dipped in tea, and by all those last works of Vinteuil had seemed to me to combine the quintessential character. Just as, at the moment when I tasted the madeleine, all anxiety about the future, all intellectual doubts had disappeared, so now those that a few seconds ago had assailed me on the subject of the reality of my literary gifts, the reality even of literature, were removed as if by magic.…Every time that I merely repeated this physical movement, I achieved nothing; but if I succeeded, forgetting the Guermantes party, in recapturing what I had felt when I first placed my feet on the ground in this way, again the dazzling and indistinct vision fluttered near me, as if to say: “Seize me as I pass if you can, and try to solve the riddle of happiness which I set you.” and almost at once I recognised the vision: it was Venice, of which my efforts to describe it and the supposed snapshots taken by my memory had never told me anything, but which the sensation which I had once experienced as I stood upon the two uneven stones in the baptistery of St Marks’s had, recurring a moment ago, restored to me complete with all the other sensations linked on that day to that particular sensation, all of which had been waiting in their place–from which with imperious suddenness a chance happening had caused them to emerge–in the series of forgotten days. As you know, Proust can be a bit verbose, but something about the boy walking through his hometown, measuring his steps and his thoughts, echoed for me.
- George and Helen climbed the hill to the Fair Ground, coming by the path past Waterworks Pond. The feeling of loneliness and isolation that had come to the young man in the crowded streets of his town was both broken and intensified by the presence of Helen. What he felt was reflected in her.
Departure, aka when George leaves Winesburg in his rear view
Well blobbists, we've reached the last vignette I'm highlighting! And sooprize! George is actually not so delightfully happy in Winesburg, he's ready to move up and out. Here's how Anderson recounts George's last day in town:
- Young George Willard got out of bed at four in the morning. It was April and the young tree leaves were just coming out of their buds. The trees along the residence streets in Winesburg are maple and the seeds are winged. When the wind blows they whirl crazily about, filling the air and making a carpet underfoot.
- All through his boyhood and young manhood George Willard had been in the habit of walking on Trunion Pike, He had been in the midst of that great open place on winter nights when it was covered with snow and only the moon looked down at him; he had been there in the fall when bleak winds blew and on summer evenings when the air vibrated with the song of insects. On the April morning he wanted to go there again, to walk in the silence. He did walk to where the road dipped down by a little stream two miles from town and then turned and walked silently back again. When he got to Main Street clerks were sweeping the sidewalks before the stores. 'Hey, you George. How does it feel to be going away?' they asked.
- After George counted his money he looked out the window and was surprised to see that the train was still in Winesburg. The young man, going out of his town to meet the adventure of his life, began to think but he did not think of anything very big or dramatic. Things like his mother's death, his departure from Winesburg, the uncertainty of his future life in the city, the serious and larger aspects of his life did not come into his mind.
- He thought of little things - Turk Smollet wheeling boards through the main street of his town in the morning, a tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once stayed overnight at his father's hotel, Butch Wheeler the lamp lighter of Winesburg hurrying through the streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his hand, Helen White standing by a window in the Winesburg post office and putting a stamp on an envelope.
- The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood. This is the last line of the novel.
Lines I Particularly Liked
- I was a Democrat here in Winesburg when it was a crime to be a Democrat. In the old days they fairly hunted us with guns. (Tom Willard, father to George, husband to Elizabeth)
- As he grew more and more excited the red of his fingers deepened. It was as though the hands had been dipped in blood that had dried and faded. (Tom Willy, local bartender)
- Have you ever thought it strange that I have money for my needs although I do nothing? (Doctor Parcival)
- Louise and her husband did not live happily together and everyone agreed that she was to blame. (Louise Bentley, daughter to Jesse, mother to David Hardy)
- In the darkness it will be easier to say things. (Louise Bentley, trying to find the courage to flirt with John Hardy)
- The bartender had come to woo, not to threaten, and was angry with himself because of his failure. (Ed Handby, in love with Belle Carpenter)
- In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. (George Willard and Helen White, the night after the fair)
In case you've forgotten, this is the section where I mention what books this book reminded me of, whether they came before (referent) or after (reverberation).
- The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
- Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
- David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
- The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
- Fahrenheit-451, Ray Bradbury
Now, before I leave you to the rest of your evening, I'll share my favorite passages.
In her bed, during the long hours alone, the little fears that had visited her had become giants. Now they were all gone. 'When I get back to my room I shall sleep,' she murmured gratefully. Elizabeth Willard
There in the country all sounds were pleasant sounds. I love sleeping with the windows open at my mom's house, hearing the wind and the insects and the birds.
It was early evening of a day in the late fall and the Winesburg County Fair had brought crowds of country people into town. The day had been clear and the night came on warm and pleasant. On the Trunion Pike, where the road after it left town stretched away between berry fields now covered with dry brown leaves, the dust from passing wagons arose in clouds. Children, curled into little balls, slept on the straw scattered on wagon beds. Their hair was full of dust and their fingers black and sticky. The dust rolled away over the fields and the departing sun set it ablaze with colors. In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled the stores and the sidewalks, Night came on, horses whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about, children become lost and cried lustily, an American town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself. I love this description so much. The county fair is a big part of my life, and the description some century later hasn't changed all that much.
George and Helen arose and walked away into the darkness. They went along a path past a field of corn that had not yet been cut. The wind whispered among the dry corn blades. As a girl who grew up walking and running around fields of corn, I loved this line.
There is something memorable in the experience to be had by going into a fair ground that stands at the edge of a Middle Western town on a night after the annual fair has been held. The sensation is one never to be forgotten. On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people. Here, during the day just passed, have come the people pouring in from the town and the country around. Farmers with their wives and children and all the people from the hundreds of little frame houses have gathered within these board walls. Young girls have laughed and men with beards have talked of the affairs of their lives. The place has been filled to overflowing with life. It has itched and squirmed with life and now it is night and the life has all gone away. The silence is almost terrifying. One conceals oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree and what there is of a reflective tendency in his nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes. This feels quintessentially Sherwood Anderson - it's complex, a bit haunting, but also full of an intense affection and warmth.
Here's hoping that when you go to bed tonight, blobbists, your fears are no longer giants, all sounds are pleasant sounds, the wind whispers among the dry corn blades, and you love life so intensely that tears come into your eyes.
I'm off to my next book.
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