As advertised in the heading, tonight is monthly book club. We have been meeting via Zoom since March, and this is our last meeting of the year. Tonight is a little bittersweet, as we don’t usually meet during the month of December because instead we usually have a party (which I have described on other years). This year no parties, just more bookclub.
I think appropriately for the final book of 2020, we have read Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. The book is comprised of 22 character sketches, capturing the various persons of the small fictitious town of Winesburg near the end of the 19th Century. The stories are interwoven, and several plot lines follow through in different chapters from a different focus. Probably the best analogy might by Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, Wilder’s Our Town, or Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine.
I have read most of this book before, but only as individual chapters, never straight through as a novel. It was a different experience and a richer one. The tapestry of joy and pain that the author gives us transcends the limitations of the small town and the book becomes a feast of recognition in the heart of the reader. In fact…well, we’re not supposed to talk about the book until bookclub starts…
One quote though, from the penultimate chapter “Sophistication”:
“The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like com to wilt in the sun.”
Damn fine.
Be safe, be strong.
All we are is dust in the wind.