#17 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson

"Be brave enough to dare to be loved."

Jacket Copy: Published in 1919, Winesburg Ohio is Sherwood Anderson's masterpiece, a work in which he achieved the goal to which he believed all true writers should aspire: to see and feel "all of life within." In a perfectly imagined world, an archetypal small American town, he reveals the hidden passions of that turn ordinary lives into unforgettable ones. Unified by the recurring presence of young George Willard, and played out against the backdrop of Winesburg, Anderson's loosely connected chapters, or stories, coalesce into a powerful novel. Anderson's intuitive ability to home in on examples of timeless human conflicts--a working man deciding if he should marry the woman who is to bear his child, an unhappy housewife who seeks love from the town's doctor, an unmarried high school teacher sexually attracted to a pupil--makes this book not only immensely readable but also deeply meaningful. An important influence on Faulkner, Hemingway, and others who were drawn to Anderson's innovative format and psychological insights, Winesburg Ohio deserves a place among the front ranks of our nation's finest literary achievements.

Similar to: Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, D.H. Lawrence

Highlights:
--this is really more a book of connected short stories than it is a "novel." this format in itself makes it kind of cool to read
--this is a book about loneliness and isolation and feeling different from everyone else. Its a book about temptation and about confusion over one's desires and one's own human nature.
--as such, it is infinitely relatable to any human being who reads it--everyone has felt the emotions and been in similar situations to the ones described in this book.
--although the stories in here are very very plot driven, there are still several notable examples of poetic language, that, although perhaps a bit sappy and overly sentimental, I enjoyed because of its romantic tone. Here's my favorite example:

Love is like the wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night.You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses