Sophistication Essay & Criticism

Sophistication Critical Overview

Published as one of the final chapters of Winesburg, Ohio, "Sophistication" received positive criticism when it first appeared in 1919. In the New Republic, Maxwell Anderson remarked, "As a challenge to

the snappy short story form, with its planned proportions of flippant philosophy, epigrammatic conversation and sex danger, nothing better has come out of America than Winesburg, Ohio. . . . It was set down by a patient and loving craftsman; it is in a new mood, and one not easily forgotten." The acerbic critic H. L. Mencken, whom Anderson himself criticized for making fun of small-town folks, nevertheless declared that "What remains is pure representation— and it is representation so vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own. Nothing quite like it has ever been done in America. It is a book that, at one...
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