re: The OT Book Club & Literary Society, week of 1-20

quote:

---

My pops loves Wodehouse. Jeeves especially

---

LINK ]The World of Wooster

One of the few (only?) surviving episodes of a 1968 BBC TV series which was mostly erased. Jeeves is played by Dennis Price, star of the classic Kind Hearts & Coronets.

I've been reading How to Win Friends and Influence People and it's been changing some viewpoints of mine.

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.

Recently finished this and thought it was excellent. In truth, I wasn't familiar with it before and found it sitting atop a pile of books someone placed in the service hallway of my building to be thrown out/recycled. Picked it up, read the back cover citing it as an American classic that had inspired Hemingway, Faulkner, etc. and my interest was piqued.

It's a collection of short stories, each story being a sort of character study of one of the inhabitants of Winesburg. Anderson gives each character a significant character flaw and the flaw creates the tension that shapes how the character responds to the important choices he or she faces-- choices that either lead them towards meaningful relationships or away from them. The bitterness and frustration of each character becomes an oppressive weight that leads them into further desolation in an already dreary, small Ohio town. The author always seems to include at least one other vantage point from another character that contrasts the flawed view of the main character, and it is in this contrast that we see the flaws of the characters. Sometimes the possibility of choice is subtle or seems remote, but it's there. It's not just a matter of getting dealt a bad hand in life; there is always potential for change and redemption. Failure to make such choices leads to moral failures that mentally and emotionally cripple the characters, turning them into what Anderson calls "grotesques"... grotesques being people whose choices make them so ugly on the inside and disconnected that in a way they aren't really human anymore... or at least not fully human; they become caricatures of sorts.

Each story tends to stand on it's own well enough, but the book also synthesizes into a novel at another level. At the center is a young man, George Willard, the town reporter. He does not appear in all of the stories, but is a frequent character whose presence grows as the book moves along. Sometimes, he is a marginal presence or a minor antogonist; on a couple of occasions he becomes the confidante of another character, and it is through their confiding in George Willard that we learn their stories. Finally, he emerges as the protagonist in a coming of age sort of way. Having grown up and encountered many of the grotesques in Winesburg, and having flirted with his own shortcomings that might result in him falling into a similar orbit as other characters, George succeeds in making the most genuine connection with another person found in the entire book and the possibility of a different future emerges.

Stylistically, the book has a direct, plain style of writing that makes it easy to read, though I wouldn't call it light. Reading about it online afterwards, I see that it's considered an influential early work of modernist literature and that both Hemingway and Faulkner do openly credit this book as an influence (as stated on the book's back cover). I'd imagine Flannery O'Connor was also more than familiar with it, as well. In particular, Anderson's idea of "grotesques" resonates strongly in her work.

The book's strongest point might be it's high degree of psychological insight-- at least I think so. Some might find this book of sad, small town characters to be depressing. It is a starkly realistic view of people in a small town that have gotten themselves into ruts, which is necessarily not happy. But on the whole I don't find it sad or cynical. I see a lot of sympathy and compassion in the writing, and Anderson's depiction of sad characters is not a matter of him pointing his finger just to say what's wrong with them. There's always a thread of hope and an invitation to grab that thread and re-connect with humanity.

quote:

---

yeah I could tell by your gracious comments after the Saints lost

---

I was pretty critical on Jimmy Graham.

quote:

---

The World of Wooster

One of the few (only?) surviving episodes of a 1968 BBC TV series which was mostly erased. Jeeves is played by Dennis Price, star of the classic Kind Hearts & Coronets.

---

Did you ever see the Jeeves & Wooster series with Steven Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie (House) as Bertie Wooster? Classic.

one bump for the night crew

knocked out 3 chapters today. tolstoy, here i come.

quote:

---

Kafka

---

Thanks for the direction. I'll keep a look out for future threads.

Just finished Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath.

And I hope audio is ok in this thread because I both read and whenever I'm in my vehicle I always have one to listen too.

Also just finished Ike's Bluff, Evan Thomas' book on Eisenhower. Really a great read about a president I knew little about.

Read this.

Give me your phone number and I'll give you an audio version.