Winesburg, Ohio

By: Sherwood Anderson

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Winesburg, Ohio is a little-known masterpiece that forever changed the course of American storytelling. Bittersweet and richly insightful, it reveals Sherwood Anderson’s special talent for taking the small moments of life and transforming them into timeless folk tales - a talent that inspired a generation of writers including William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck.

At the center of this collection of stories stands George Willard, an earnest young reporter for the Winesburg Eagle who sets out to gather the town’s daily news. He ends up discovering the town’s deepest secrets as one by one, the townsfolk confide their hopes, dreams, and fears to the reporter. In their recollections of first loves and last rites, of sprawling farms and winding country roads, the town rises vividly - and poignantly - to life.

With polished prose and fresh imagery, Winesburg, Ohio is an American classic that celebrates small-town life in the lost days of innocence and good will.

Public Domain (P)1995 Recorded Books, LLC

The beginning of the American short story cycle

A beautiful (though melancholic) journey through small-town middle America. While set in the early 1900s, George Willard's complex relationship with his hometown and ultimate path to adulthood still resonates.

Winesburg, Ohio

This one is different but I liked it. We were told about many different peoples lives in a town through one of the occupants eyes.

Stories of LongingDisappointments, the Human Condition and Aspirations

This is an affecting book. It took me a short while to get used to the narrator, but I really enjoyed both the writer and the narrator.

Pieces of You - Probably Better in Print

I wanted to like 'Winesburg', but this book is probably better in print.

- There are zero seconds between chapters. That doesn't sound like a huge deal, but I promise: it gets annoying fast, and seriously takes away from your internalization of what you just read.
- I'm not a fan of Guidall's narration for this title. With all the different characters and disjoint scenes, the stories feel like one homogeneous blur. And it shouldn't.

'Winesburg' presents some great unspoken honesty into the human condition. Some of the scenes are real gems: the priest/Kate Swift/George Willard sequence, the married men in the cornfield, the final chapters with Helen and George. Perhaps this title will grow on me with time. If I read it again, it will be after a trip to the library/bookstore.

Plot didn’t age well…

The performance was great. The story not so much… I know I know! It’s a classic. But I feel that the plot has not aged well. The lives of the various characters are less than relatable.
I will say however; the first segment, the prologue, is remarkable, poetic, and truly Individual. I had not read (or rather, listened) to prose put forth in this way before.
I give it 3 stars.
-Noah Balfour

An unusual, mannered performance -- but brilliant

Though it may outwardly resemble Disneyland's Main Street, U.S.A., the rural town of Winesburg, in this famous collection of related short stories, is far from quaint and pastoral; rather, it's a hotbed of thwarted dreams, stifled passions, and suicidal loneliness. Anderson couldn't write explicitly about sex in those days, but it's a central element in many of the lives he examines, most of them tragic. There's so much misery in this community, so many painful or twisted emotions bubbling beneath the proper surface of daily life, that the stories seem at times almost self-parodies. (The style invites parody and has indeed been parodied.)

What sets this audiobook apart is the amazing performance that George Guidall gives. All I can say is that his reading is extremely unusual, extremely mannered, all the more so if you try listening to it, as I did, played at half speed. His delivery is somber and portentous, emphasizing every single word, and every single sentence somehow reads like a death sentence, ending on a somber, despairing note. I don't know how Anderson would have felt about it, but I think it's a brilliant performance that brings out the best in the stories.

Better read than heard?

This early 20th century American classic was read with wonderful nuance by George Guidall, but the editing destroyed it. I think this one is better read, at least for the first time. The poignancy of the stories is lost by the abruptness of chapter shifting. A beautifully written masterpiece of American life in all its struggles, hopes, and failimgs.

Another destination resolved

I was not familiar with this work before making the commitment to consume all Top 100 picks from the New York Times Modern Library but found it an interesting selection.

Set in a small Midwest town at the Turn of the 20th Century and published in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio is sculpted as a series of vignettes about various people in the town commonly linked to George Willard, sole reporter of the Winesburg Eagle. Though there is an actual Winesburg, the town presented actually bears a closer resemblance to the author's home town of Clyde, OH.

Each of the short stories ultimately weave into George's story as he wrestles with his instincts to stay in a small town where he feels emotionally and psychologically abandoned even though he has always resided in his mother's boarding house.

It has been variously adapted for film and stage but I have seen none and, to be frank, won't likely actively seek out. Like some of the other selections in the Modern Library Top 100, such as Sons and Lovers and To The Lighthouse, the work didn't engage me as I had hoped though critically acclaimed by the likes of Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Miller and Philip Roth. Perhaps I'll give her another go down the road.

On a personal note, this is my 40th book completed for the year. I will say that the ending is lovely for both the book and for me as we are where we hoped to be at the end of our respective literary sojourns.

No Time Between Chapters

Gives NO time between chapters. kinda frustrating. Because plot is similar from story to story, as are names you sometimes don't know when a new story starts. Normally this wouldn't be an issue but due to the nature of the story's somewhat ambiguous beginnings and endings the lack of clarity between chapters is difficult while purely listening.

The American Nocturne

A spiritual predecessor of Denis Johnson, Ray Bradbury, Steven Millhauser, George Saunders and a thousand others, Anderson's shadow -- cast in the yellow pool of a neighborhood streetlight, at 3:30 AM -- looms large over the American literary landscape. Guidall does his prose a great justice, coloring with his deliberate pace and musical lilt the landscape with grays and oranges like Edward Hopper. A triumph.