On Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio"

Sherwood Anderson belongs to the epoch of writers of the Lost Generation. The Generation that was deeply disillusioned with gruesome reality and abhorred it so much because of ignorance of people soaked in everyday problems and not taking any particular interest in anything else, but hustle and bustle of their own existence. And what scares the most is the naivete of such people, which is absolutely understandable at the same time – they have not seen the other life, yet they are scarcely aware that it exists. Because in reality there are thousands of provincial towns like fictional Winesburg – not only in the state of Ohio where Sherwood Anderson was from, but all over the States and not solely there where you will find “a suppressed volcano of frustrations, passions, and bitterness”1 – in a word, so much ado about nothing! And what is more terrible – Joe Welling, the Kings, Jesse Bentley, Wash Williams and many others - are “entirely happy or complacent”2. Most often, they have no goal, and even if there is some aim, it is usually of some dubious character.…