Queer by Sherwood Anderson, 1916
The magic trick:
Expert use of third-person omniscient narration that veers specifically toward one character’s point of view
Another Winesburg story featuring a protagonist who is driven to fury by his own inability to express himself. The public schools there really should’ve done a better job with their language arts curriculum. Maybe some kind of adult education class on communications would have helped. Seriously, it’s crazy how torn up these poor townspeople get about not being to say what’s on their mind.
Here it’s Elmer, son of a local general store proprietor. He feels he has never made a single friend on this earth, and he blames this “queerness” on his family for being queer, and by extension the entire town of Winesburg for being the normal to his queer.
Like many of the stories in the collection, we get a very nice use of third-person narration that veers almost exclusively into our protagonist’s mindset. It’s like we’re walking through the town next to him. We don’t see everything only through his eyes, but we definitely see the town through his point of view.
And that’s quite a trick on Anderson’s part.
The selection:
Elmer Cowley was extraordinarily tall and his arms were long and powerful. His hair, his eyebrows, and the downy beard that had begun to grow upon his chin, were pale almost to whiteness. His teeth protruded from between his lips and his eyes were blue with the colorless blueness of the marbles called “aggies” that the boys of Winesburg carried in their pockets. Elmer had lived in Winesburg for a year and had made no friends. He was, he felt, one condemned to go through life without friends and he hated the thought.
Sullenly the tall young man tramped along the road with his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. The day was cold with a raw wind, but presently the sun began to shine and the road became soft and muddy. The tops of the ridges of frozen mud that formed the road began to melt and the mud clung to Elmer’s shoes. His feet became cold. When he had gone several miles he turned off the road, crossed a field and entered a wood. In the wood he gathered sticks to build a fire, by which he sat trying to warm himself, miserable in body and in mind.
For two hours he sat on the log by the fire and then, arising and creeping cautiously through a mass of underbrush, he went to a fence and looked across fields to a small farmhouse surrounded by low sheds. A smile came to his lips and he began making motions with his long arms to a man who was husking corn in one of the fields.
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