Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Having heard quiet a few references to this book with most of them containing adjectives such as superb, classic, and influential in describing these stories of small town life in the late eighteen hundreds I picked this up from the library.

Further pleased to find out it was originally published in the year of my father's birth, that is 1919, there were no superlatives for me to use to describe this. I confess freely that I did not read the whole book. I read the first six stories and do admit there is in theory a chance that the stories get better deeper into the book. On the assumption that they do not I can only describe stories that are odd, often out of sequence and context and with characters that apparently have no value whatsoever.

Hearing these stories described as a precursor to some of the great American writers to follow left me in the dark. I found Faulkner to be dense and Cheever is self absorbed in his own world. Perhaps most authors are but these stories were just bad. I can say nothing positive about this work.