Rex J. Burbank

I find Sherwood Anderson’s fiction haunting and memorable, specifically his Winesburg, Ohio and his better short stories. This literary analysis helped me better to understand the compelling nature of his writing as well as the author behind it. Burbank's work has two goals – to identify the nature and sources of Anderson’s literary heritage, and to analyze those of his works that best reflect his art and his development as a writer.

Burbank sees Anderson as drawing upon and contributing to a widespread theme in American literature – the myth of the modern Adam. Its theme is that of an individual who makes a “moral journey,” losing his innocence and then striving to regain it. Anderson’s innocents often become victims of evil because they are ill-equipped to withstand it.

Of Anderson’s many works of fiction, Burbank focuses first on his early novels, Windy McPherson’s Son and The Marching Men (through which Anderson was learning his craft), then Winesburg, Ohio (for which the author is best remembered), its successor Poor White, and the best-known of his short stories. His later novels (which are seldom read today), such as Many Marriages, Dark Laughter, Beyond Desire, and Kit Brandon are described as “dismal, depressing failures.”

In Burbank’s perspective, Anderson’s best writing offers “penetrating insights into the inner lives of broken, sensitive people....” “lonely, sensitive souls who want desperately to break out of the isolation of their inner lives. “ “No other writer” (says Burbank) “has portrayed so movingly the emerging consciousness of the culturally underprivileged Midwesterner, and has done it, for the most part, with neither condescension nor satiric caricature.” In Anderson’s masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio,“the frightening complexity, the puzzling contradictions, the perplexing ambiguities of the adult world first impinge upon the simple and morally ordered world of a youth and shatter his or her childhood innocence. “

I would recommend Burbank’s book to readers who want better to understand the powerful effects of Sherwood Anderson’s best work. This small book also helps explain why Anderson has earned an enduring place in 20th century American literature… (mehr)