THE BOOK OF THE GROTESQUE

Hands, concerning Wing Biddlebaum

Paper pills, concerning Doctor Reefy

Mother, concerning Elizabeth Willard

The philosopher, concerning Doctor Parcival

Nobody knows, concerning Louise Trunnion

Godliness, a Tale in Four Parts
       I, concerning Jesse Bentley
       II, also concerning Jesse Bentley
       III Surrender, concerning Louise Bentley
       IV Terror, concerning David Hardy

A man of ideas, concerning Joe Welling

Adventure, concerning Alice Hindman

Respectability, concerning Wash Williams

The thinker, concerning Seth Richmond

Tandy, concerning Tandy Hard

The strength of god, concerning the
       Reverend Curtis Hartman

The teacher, concerning Kate Swift

Loneliness, concerning Enoch Robinson

An Awakening, concerning Belle Carpenter

“Queer,” concerning Elmer Cowley

The untold lie, concerning Ray Pearson

Drink, concerning Tom Foster

Death, concerning Doctor Reefy
       and Elizabeth Willard

Sophistication, concerning Helen White

Departure, concerning George Willard

INTRODUCTION

by Irving Howe

I must have been no more than fifteen or sixteen years old when I first chanced upon Winesburg, Ohio.  Gripped by these stories and sketches of Sherwood Anderson’s small-town “grotesques,” I felt that he was opening for me new depths of experience, touching upon half-buried truths which nothing in my young life had prepared me for.  A New York City boy who never saw the crops grow or spent time in the small towns that lay sprinkled across America, I found myself overwhelmed by the scenes of wasted life, wasted love—­was this the “real” America?—­that Anderson sketched in Winesburg.  In those days only one other book seemed to offer so powerful a revelation, and that was Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.

Several years later, as I was about to go overseas as a soldier, I spent my last week-end pass on a somewhat quixotic journey to Clyde, Ohio, the town upon which Winesburg was partly modeled.  Clyde looked, I suppose, not very different from most other American towns, and the few of its residents I tried to engage in talk about Anderson seemed quite uninterested.  This indifference would not have surprised him; it certainly should not surprise anyone who reads his book.