Sixteenth book I read since May 2008:
Certain Things Last: The Selected Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson (edited by Charles E. Modlin)
I enjoyed every single minute of this book. Anderson's spare style and simple phraseology make him easy to read and get into, and he pulls a lot of life knowledge from simple things.
His landscape is mostly rural Ohio, and yet his stories plumb the depths of human experience. Frustration, sexual desire and promiscuity, family obligations and limitations, status, artistry, the innocence and lack of innocence of youth, race relations, class distinctions, and even gender bending.
He also portrays his world with simple grace, bringing back visions of old town and slick cities as they moved from the industrial revolution and the great depression. But not the down sides of this transformation but the simple realities those events created for the people who had to survive them. And the yearnings and discarded dreams of those people.
The stories are short but chock full of great writing and vast knowledge. My favorites were Death in the Woods, Virginia Justice, and Fred. Anderson is a thoroughly modern and accessible writer, and I'd recommend these or any of his works to anyone.
- Scott
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