Collected Stories: Winesburg, Ohio / The Triumph of the Egg / Horses and Men / Death in the Woods / Uncollected Stories

by Sherwood Anderson, Charles Baxter (Editor)

Sherwood Anderson became a writer by a process of slow and irresistible rebellion. Breaking away from a two-decade career as advertising copywriter and small businessman, he reinvented himself as a modernist storyteller whose influence was foundational for modern American writing. Without Anderson’s example, the work of Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck, McCullers, Mailer, and Kerouac is almost unthinkable. In mapping the America he knew widely and intimately—an America of small towns, big-city boarding houses, racetracks, isolated farms—he opened up new regions of America’s inner life in stories that remain astonishing for their stylistic freedom, their emotional candor and sexual frankness, and the exactness of their observation.

Anderson wrote in many genres, but it was in the short story that he found his ideal form. This volume collects for the first time all the books of stories he published in his lifetime—Winesburg, Ohio (1919), The Triumph of the Egg (1921), Horses and Men (1923), and Death in the Woods (1933)—along with a generous selection of stories left uncollected or unpublished at his death. Taken together they offer powerful evidence of Anderson’s extraordinary capacity to illuminate what is hidden under the surface of seemingly ordinary lives and to give expression to private delusions and desires.

When Winesburg, Ohio appeared, Hart Crane wrote: “America should read this book on her knees. It constitutes an important chapter in the Bible of her consciousness.” Weaving memories of his small-town youth into a series of interrelated stories, Anderson realized a stunning collective portrait, a haunting, expressionist set of variations on themes of isolation, frustration, and encroaching obsession. It remains a central masterwork of American literature.

Anderson’s later collections are no less imbued with his intuitive sense of the shapes of lives as felt from the inside. In such stories as “I Want to Know Why,” “Out of Nowhere into Nothing,” “The Man Who Became a Woman,” “An Ohio Pagan,” and “Brother Death,” he offers breathtaking insights, catching his characters unawares with deep empathy for their fragility and strangeness.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, American

898 pages, Hardcover

First published December 27, 2012

About the author

Often autobiographical, works of American writer Sherwood Anderson include Winesburg, Ohio (1919).

He supported his family and consequently never finished high school. He successfully managed a paint factory in Elyria before 1912 and fathered three children with the first of his four wives. In 1912, Anderson deserted his family and job.

In early 1913, he moved to Chicago, where he devoted more time to his imagination. He broke with considered materialism and convention to commit to art as a consequently heroic model for youth.

Mainly know for his short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio. One can hear its profound influence on fiction in Ernest Miller Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Clayton Wolfe, John Ernst Steinbeck, and Erskine Preston Caldwell.

Most important book collects 22 stories. The stories explore the inhabitants of a fictional version of Clyde, the small farm town, where Anderson lived for twelve early years. These tales made a significant break with the traditional short story. Instead of emphasizing plot and action, Anderson used a simple, precise, unsentimental style to reveal the frustration, loneliness, and longing in the lives of his characters. The narrowness of Midwestern small-town life and their own limitations stunt these characters.

Despite no wholly successful novel, Anderson composed several classic short stories. He influenced Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and the coming generation.

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson in high school. I lived in a small semi-rural town, and I was dazzled by Anderson's collection of grotesques, those strange, often lonely and wordless characters who seem to gravitate to small towns. I was going on vacation and decided to see how the stories held up many decades later. I was pleased to find them quite readable and still able to cast a spell, although I was more conscious of Anderson's technique. The book contained all his collected stories, and I read on beyond the famous book. The more I read, the more the stories began to seem repetitious and formulaic. But I find that to be true when I read too many short stories of any author. I enjoyed the look back at an American classic and I recommend it.

[Terence · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I spent this much time with these stories, if you ever need ideas for how to start a story Anderson sure know how to kick it off.

[A.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I'm breaking all sorts of self-imposed conventions by not only reviewing a book that I thoroughly enjoyed but did not finish but also by providing a five-star rating to this unfinished read. Truth be told, I simply wanted to re-read Winesburg, Ohio - one of my favorite books that I revisit every so often. However, I live on an island with a small library, and most of the books I want to read have to be sent from other libraries throughout the state. The only manner I could even read Winesburg, Ohio was via this huge anthology of Anderson's collected short stories, a compilation of five separate books.

Anderson is not one to binge, in my opinion; reading a single collection of his short stories is overwhelming enough. He is an amazing writer whose character vignettes are meant to be pondered not plowed through. If I could sum up Anderson in one quotation, it would be from his short story "Out of Nowhere Into Nothing" from The Triumph of the Egg:

"We are all on the rush. We are all for action. I sit still and think. If I wanted to write, I'd do something. I'd tell what everyone thought. It would startle people, frighten them a little, eh?" (p. 319)

And his insight into the human psyche is more than startling - it's haunting. Most of the drama in Anderson's stories takes place within the minds of his characters - in the thoughts and ideas that plague them and become the impetus for compulsive decisions that lead to often horrific results - in short, the cause of their suffering, as illustrated in this line from "Seed" within the same collection:

"The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men. I am myself covered by crawling creeping vines that choke me." (p. 216)

This concept underlies all of the stories I have read thus far, and its "seeds," interestingly enough, are in Winesburg, Ohio, which kicks off with a short tale called "The Book of the Grotesque," about a conversation between an old writer and a carpenter:

"That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful.

The old man had listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try to tell you of all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carefulness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful. [Note: these listed "truths" are themes explored throughout his stories.]

And then people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them.

It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood." (page7),

Winesburg, Ohio is his most known "masterpiece" for a reason, and if you enjoy it as much as I do, I highly recommend reading his other collections. I finished The Triumph of the Egg and Horses and Men, and both are exceptional. One of the most powerful stories for me, personally, is "Unused" in Horses and Men, a heartbreaking novella about the often "grotesque" relationships between men and women and its impact on a misunderstood young girl.

Note to future self (since I primarily use Goodreads as an electronic book diary ;): I stopped at Death in the Woods (p. 603).

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories - Wineburg, Ohio, The Triumph of the Egg, Horses and Men, Death in the Woods, and Uncollected Stories by Sherwood Anderson, edited by Charles Baxter (Library of America 2012) (Fiction) (3835).

Sherwood Anderson made his reputation in the short story genre as a chronicler of small-town life in the Midwest as the nineteenth century gave way to the 1900s. I love short stories, and I expected to be enthralled.

I was not. I am just not part of Anderson’s audience. Some readers marvel over the author’s extraordinary recitation of minutiae about his stories’ settings; I found his style to be a celebration of what are arguably nondescript, fungible, boring, and forgettable little communities. I feel the same about his characters too.

Many American writers of the first rank apparently were influenced by Sherwood Anderson, so his writing has to be quality stuff.

Anderson’s style just holds no appeal for this reader.

My rating: 7/10, finished 7/25/23 (3835).

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Reading still in progress, on and off.) It may take more than one reading to be caught by the strength of Anderson's writing. Very impressive in my eyes are:

- the storytelling, made of simple, sometimes seemingly simplistic and almost-redundant touches, and yet dealing with the deepest stuff of life (and death).
- the half-redundancies, which both (a) give a conversational tone and, more essentially, (b) give multiple and renewed takes on the characters and their actions, creating a vision of life where identity is not a fixed, easily-grasped object but requires multiple takes, and time, to discover.
- the apparent non-sequiturs which push back the boundaries of our logic and force readers to think in terms of a deeper logic of understanding.
- the "leveling", so to speak, of people and objects and spaces (particularly visible in enumerations and similes), which further force the reader to look at a seemingly familiar and banal world in a new light.

So far I tend to prefer the shorter stories ("Paper Pills", "Sister") because this type of storytelling seems more effective in them.

[Gary Redman · Rating 5 out of 5]

WINESBURG, OHIO. 4.5 Stars

Outstanding collection of short stories about the titular town and it's unhappy isolated inhabitants, seen mostly through the eyes of the protagonist George Willard who is a constant presence from birth until he strikes out on his own in the concluding story.

[Alex Gleason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly odd, frequently hypnotic.

[Pmslax · Rating 4 out of 5]

I presented the discussion at great books in November 2021. The mood of the story is almost smothering. The old woman is trapped in poverty and emotional abuse that began in childhood. The setting is barren and unforgiving. Nobody is nice except the butcher.

I have begun to read the other SS in this volume which is very nice.

[River James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would be interesting when you are young and reading a lot and realizing the "modern" existential angst of western, 'merica in particular, life has been with us a very long time.

[Jennifer Benningfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of one-story buildings no one really lives in.

[Stan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of Anderson's many stories. I read Winesburg, Ohio, a collection of twenty-four stories, considered to be his best collection of short stories, and a good portion of The Triumph of the Egg; I didn't finish the rest. I liked Anderson's writing style and his ability portray small-town America of the early twentieth century. Most of the stories in Winesburg had a thread of gloom running through them, just enough to keep me from really wanting to immerse myself in the life and times of the community.

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really only read Winesburg, Ohio; I'll get to the rest of the stories later, and gradually. Bits of it haven't aged so well, but Anderson was wonderfully empathetic and compassionate and such a careful observer of people, and that all shines through. I love his stories as much now as I did 20 years ago.

[Concha Moreno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una prosa tan simple y tan suave que es como un milagro.

[Mills College Library]

Fiction A5498c 2012