In reading most reviews of Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, you would think it is a depressing book. Many of the reviews and commentary suggest that this is an existentialist book focusing on the hopelessness of life. I must not have read the same book because it struck me as one of the most hopeful things I’ve read this year. Anderson famously influenced the literary giants of the American canon: Hemingway, Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, and even Ray Bradbury. His stoic realism perfectly portrays the tragic and the comic that make a whole American life what it is.

It is not really a novel so much as a collection of short stories about a small Midwestern town. The stories circle around George Willard, the sort-of main character. As the novel progresses, the focus spirals more and more on Willard. The book becomes about his process of realizing he is a man, deciding how to love a woman or if he even wants to, and wrestling with his longing to leave his small town and make it big. Anderson makes George’s story the story of all of us. It’s not just about leaving a small town and making something of yourself, it’s about the worthiness of that endeavor.

Do we have to leave what we knew and have new experiences to say that we’ve lived? Don’t you just take yourself with you, and therefore take your demons with you, wherever you go? It’s certainly not a treatise about staying in small town America, but Anderson does question the desire to flee the places where we came to know ourselves – or at least became aware that there is something worth knowing. He points to that moment, the moment when we realize we desire and wonder for what and why, as the moment we grow up.

By the end of the novel, I wanted to start over as a child and experience that moment all over again. I wanted to be George Willard, boarding a train to start a new adventure that may or may not turn out right – but who cares? It’s the intention and need to experience that is important. Then again, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I am still George Willard, and we all are. We’re all making decisions to have an adventure or not have one, every day. The process of coming of age never really ends.

Five stars out of five.

Guest review by Amanda Nelson. Amanda also blogs at Dead White Guys: An Irreverent Guide to Classic Literature.

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