From My Shelves – Winesburg, Ohio

(From My Shelves is an occasional series of posts about books, movies and music that hold a special place in my heart and on my shelves)

College is the time when you go away and discover a universe that you never knew existed.  At least it was for me.  My vision of social interactions, music, movies, books, ideas, anything you care to name changed dramatically in those four years.  In the immediate aftermath I hung on to a case of books from college.  As the years went by more and more of them fell away.  Today I don’t think there’s a handful I still own.  That’s fine, most of them have served their purpose.  I’ve continued to grow which means that I’ve outgrown some of them.  Some have simply become dated and are no longer relevent.

But in that handful are books that reassembled my worldview in ways that still amaze me.  I’m not sure any book has had the impact on my view of writing that Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” did.  Here was a book that told a story in a series of short stories.  It was not a single narrative but it told a single story.  George Willard grew up in Winesburg and knew every street corner in that small town.  He also knows all the people of that town, the people the author refers to as “grotesques”.  Through 22 stories we are introduced to the people of the town.  Through thier struggles and shortcomings we come to know the town as a whole.

When it was first published in 1919 it was considered unconventional in its story telling style.  Just shy of 60 years later that story telling style would be just as much of a revelation to a boy from suburban America.  I connected with Willard and the place where he had grown.  In many ways it seemed similar to the places I had known as a child.

This is a book that holds such a special place in my memory, in my personal mythology, that I am almost afraid to read it again.  Afraid that it will not live up to my memory, that I might have somehow outgrown it.  That seems unlikely given that it has made several lists of great novels of the 20th Century.  I think it’s probably time for George and me to spend some time together once again.

As a would be writer myself there are two ultimate goals I would love to achieve.  I would like to write a story with the depth and texture of Ray Bradbury.  And I want to write a story in the fashion of “Winesburg, Ohio”.  It’s curious that both that writer and this novel have deep connections to the small town America of a century or more ago.

Rating – ***** Worth Owning