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21 August 2023 - La Romieu
I knew nothing about Sherwood Anderson when I picked up Winesburg, Ohio last Fall in the Alpharetta Goodwill. I just knew it was on my list of classics to read at some point. The narrative is presented as a series of disjoint, nonchronological vignettes from an omniscent narrator following a particular character. A number of them are completely unrelated, but a number at least tengentially touch on the life of George Willard. In that sense it's a coming of age story of this young man who starts of as a reporter, chases girls with mixed success, and gets in fistfights. I thought if I ever wrote a story about the Camino it would be in the first person style of Bukowski or Murakami, but Anderson's disjoint narrative of different characters often only tengentially interacting is perhaps a better literary device. Winesburg, Ohio could almost be called a collection of short stories. And it's surprisingly actually a real place. One of Anderson's characters even head out for a wild time at Cedar Point. Amazing that was already a thing in 1919 when he wrote the book.
