Day 1,307, Quasi-Quarantine: There's More Than Meets The Eye In Middle America, Says "Winesburg, Ohio"

 

"All men lead their lives behind a wall of misunderstanding they have themselves built, and most men die in silence and unnoticed behind the walls. Now and then a man, cut off from his fellows by the peculiarities of his nature, becomes absorbed in doing something that is personal, useful and beautiful. Word of his activities is carried over the walls."

Tackling themes of loneliness and fraught family relationships, Sherwood Anderson weaves together a number of stories of the citizens of "Winesburg, Ohio." 

"The tall beautiful girl with the swinging stride who had walked under the trees with men was forever putting out her hand into the darkness and trying to get hold of some other hand."

"It seemed to her that the world was full of meaningless people saying words."

Turning the town into a character of its own, the author exposes secret hopes and lives in a sleepy Midwestern village. A connectedness of meaning is mitigated by a fracturing of meaning, making it difficult to reconcile the book as a collection of separate stories rather than chapters.

Anderson's writing shares some similarities to William Trevor in terms of themes and tone, but the prose is denser and harder to work through. Some of the standout stories were "Hands," "Mother," "Loneliness," "Death," Sophistication," but the understated beauty of "The Untold Lie" made it my favorite.

"Little pyramids of truth he erected and after erecting knocked them down again that he might have the truths to erect other pyramids."

"'I had come to the time in my life when prayer became necessary and so I invented gods and prayed to them.'"

From religion to romance to criminality, powerful themes pervade, with the book overcoming that occasional density to offer a glimpse into the truth of early-20th-century Middle America. However, utter loneliness is certainly the dominant atmosphere, which renders everything in a bleaker tone -- including the disturbing mother-son relationships that resound in nearly every tale.

"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."