In an interview on Death

Tell me about Winesburg, Ohio.

This is one of my favourite pieces of fiction by I think one of the great American writers of the 20th century. It’s about a little town, and there’s definitely a historical dimension to the novel. Anderson realises that this is the end of an era, that the Industrial Revolution and all the things happening in America in the 20th century – the migration to cities and so on – marks the end of a way of life that he bemoans, and so there’s a good deal of attention to the juxtaposition of growing up in a little town and the alternative, which is to make it to the city. I like how incisively observant Anderson is in terms of his depiction of, and his sensitivity and respect for, different people – particularly marginalised people. It’s about the death of a community and to some extent the different ways that people manage the terror of death.

The next to last vignette is called “Sophistication” and it’s a lovely, lovely tale that takes place on the county fairgrounds on the very last day of the fair. It’s this guy George along with a woman, Helen, that he’s very fond of, and they’re on the fairgrounds and everything is silent. Anderson points out the juxtaposition between the activity that was there a moment ago and now there’s nothing there and it’s the end of the summer. It sets up what I think is a very lovely passage where it gets this guy George to thinking, and Anderson writes: “For the first time [he] looks out upon the world and sees countless figures of men before him who have come out of nothingness, lived their lives, and disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. He looks around, and already he hears death calling.” And so here’s this striking realisation of his existential position in life. And then there’s a very tender and amorous mutual recognition with Helen, that to be connected to another human being is the ultimate solution to the existential problems that are engendered by knowing that we’ll some day die. In other words, it sounds trite but the idea is that love does indeed conquer death. I love this book; this is a great book!

In an interview on American Stories

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson looks at the strange and secret lives of this make-believe small town.

Yes, there is no Winesburg, Ohio. Most people think it is based on Sherwood Anderson’s home town in Ohio, called Clyde. It is the most remarkable novel, written in 1919 so I think we are going to see some publicity when it celebrates its centenary. Once again, rather like Stoner, it dropped out of circulation for long periods. It was very modern and groundbreaking for its time, an entirely new form of writing.

He draws about 20 portraits of people who lived in this mythical town. Most of them are seen through the eyes of a local newspaper reporter, a chap called George Willard. He calls the people “grotesques”. That is his word in 1919, but as with many English words things change subtly over the years – a better word to describe them now would be “eccentrics”. These are eccentrics that look for their own truths from whatever they were doing in the town, but they became very odd in their quests for those truths.

All of the people in it are very peculiar and have strange stories. But taken as a whole, the portrait of this little town is unforgettable and wonderful and I commend it to anyone. You could see a novel like Main Street by Sinclair Lewis as being a great portrait of an American small town. But you see small towns in a much more impassioned way through the eyes of these grotesques, as reported by George Willard.

Do you think it echoes the sense of freedom that many people living in America feel enables them to be eccentrics and do their own thing?

Yes, although much more then than now. These days there is the scourge of political correctness. Things like television and Walmart and the unifying forces of modern America reduce this eccentricity that was once a motif, particularly of these small towns.

So you think life in America is more constrained and less free that it was earlier in the 20th century?

I think things are becoming more standard. I am writing a book at the moment which looks at the idea of the United States of America. I look at how the States were united and explore whether they are still united. As I mentioned, I really believe that things like huge stores and the homogenising influence of television and radio are reducing eccentricity to a mere trickle compared to what it was like a century ago.

What other ideas are you exploring for your book?

I look into the histories of those people who consciously decided to unite the different states. There is the Lewis and Clark expedition from 1804 to 1806, and I end with the people who built the interstate highway system in the 1950s and 60s. To give you one example from this great pantheon of once again rather “grotesque” people, I follow one remarkable geologist called Clarence King who did a survey of the west of America in the 1860s which took seven years.

King did not like white women, even though he was white. He decided that he would if possible marry a black woman, but that was frowned upon in those days. So he created an alter ego for himself called James Todd, claiming to be a Pullman porter but with fairly pale skin. And ostensibly as a black man, he married a black woman in Baltimore. So he lived two lives. One Clarence King, geologist and ultimately director of the first US Geological Survey, and another James Todd, a black porter married to a woman from Baltimore. He didn’t let on to either of the other lives until a year before his death!