Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana

by Michael Martone

A new story collection focused on the Heartland from Michael Martone, one of America's most prolific and important contemporary authors. In Plain Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana , Michael Martone places steady fingers on the arrhythmic pulse of the Flyover as he conjures Winesburg, Indiana, a fictional town and all of its inhabitants’ lyric philosophies, tales of the mundane, and the sensation of being “lost” in the heart of the heart of the country. But here, in over one-hundred and thirty short fictions, even as there is much sadness, the citizens continue to tinker and create, marvel and wonder in the midst of ruin and rust. These stories may capture lives of quiet desperation, but in so doing, they create a kind of hobbled poetry in the spontaneous sketches of the ordinary made extraordinary, the regular irregularities, the familiar knocked off-balance with a glancing blow. From the overly overworked City Manager, to Margaret Wigg’s obsessively collected collection of library stamps, to Blanche’s air-filled aluminum ice cube tray, the town is a community of everyday odd-balls rife with isolation and idiosyncrasy. They are people trying to get by; that question loss as well as passion, devotedness, childhood wonder, and kinship in their observations and daily routines. With undeniable humor, intelligent quirk, and earnest longing for a pastoral passing into the annals of deep Midwestern time, Michael Martone crafts an unforgettable panoply of characters whose perspectives invite us to alternatively interpret our own commonplaces.

195 pages, Paperback

Published September 6, 2022

About the author

Michael A. Martone is a professor at the creative writing program at the University of Alabama, and is the author of several books. His most recent work, titled Michael Martone and originally written as a series of contributor's notes for various publications, is an investigation of form and autobiography.

A former student of John Barth, Martone's work is critically regarded as powerful and funny. Making use of Whitman's catalogues and Ginsberg's lists, the events, moments and places in Martone's landscapes — fiction or otherwise — often take the same Mobius-like turns of the threads found the works of his mentor, Barth.

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martone is a brilliant wordsmith. I always marvel at his little works of prose art, especially when he reaches into the realm of mundane objects and overlooked workers (think pencil eraser and stamp makers and the folks who stencil numbers on curbs) and invests each one with depth and light and wonder. A wonderful collection that pulls most of his rural works together.

[ava morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

“And each night, I take it apart, revealing, once this facade of a facade is torn down, the nothing I was constructing out of the nothing all around me.”

Coming in at a little under 200 pages, Plain Air consists of over 130 stories — or as the subtitle more aptly suggests, sketches — of the fictional town of Winesburg, Indiana. The book is almost like a prose poetry version of the play Our Town. Each story, only 0.5-1 page in length on average, recounts the mundane trials and tribulations of different residents of the town, with the only consistent narrator is the City Manager.

The stories are both timeless and firmly situated in the present: while the themes of loneliness and a search transcend setting, the concerns with technology as well as the effects of globalization on rural Midwestern communities confronts contemporary issues.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the premise of Plain Air, I didn’t always feel the same about its execution.

With its elevated prose, the book’s intent does not seem to be to imitate the drudgery of the everyday — if anything, it seems to demonstrate the excitement with which we must infuse the most mundane minutiae in order to bear, or maybe distract from, the repetition and loneliness present in our day-to-day lives. For the most part though, the structure on both a story and sentence level felt repetitive.

Similarly, almost every story introduces us to another first-person narrator, but the voice overwhelmingly sounds the same. It’s one thing for different characters to be concerned with the same overarching themes, but it’s another for each character to relay their experiences in a singular manner. I think I may feel differently about the book if the simple switch from predominately first-person narratives to all third-person narratives was made — then, at least, the unchanging voice would feel justified.

Overall, there’s a lack of a narrative arc that ties the stories together in a compelling way. I did enjoy the accompanying photographs and hand-drawn maps. Yes, there are several moments of beautiful prose, but ultimately, it’s not enough.

Read my reviews on Instagram @a.morganreads

[John Madera · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a word, brilliant.

[Mariam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Martone's way with words is remarkable. These short snippets of life in Winesburg paint a definite picture. They're light-hearted and sharp. But I'll be happy to get back to an actual novel.