Sophistication by Sherwood Anderson, 1919
The magic trick:
Writing a story for the world, representing universal truths and human experiences
Sherwood Anderson, when he’s especially keen on a particular theme or making a particular point, writes beautifully about a shared human experience in the Winesburg, Ohio stories. In these moments, it’s not only George Willard or Doctor Reefy or Kate Swift who the storytelling represents; it’s us, the reader. These are stories of everyone.
F. Scott Fitzgerald built on Anderson’s model and pulled off this magic trick remarkably well throughout the 1920s.
It’s a risky maneuver. Done poorly, that kind of writing comes off as didactic or even condescending. You’ve got to know what you’re talking about. You’ve got to be making a salient point about life.
But if you do actually have something intelligent to say, it can make for powerful literature. More often than not in Winesburg, Anderson delivers the goods, maybe no more notably than here in “Sophistication.”
It’s the story of two young people – George and Helen. Apart from one another, they are experiencing the same overwhelming emotional transformation from child to adult. They know what they’ve had isn’t what they now want, but they can’t quite sort out what it is they now need.
Anderson takes us through the plot, deftly sprinkling in descriptions of the characters that speak blatantly to that shared human experience. They are not unique in this struggle. This is a transformation we’ve all known.
Maybe he’s feeling himself, but he even extends that tone into descriptions of the county fair that provides the story’s setting. He adds philosophical morsels about the fairgoers like: “One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes.”
It’s not a story about George and Helen. It’s not even a book about Winesburg, Ohio. It’s clear he’s writing of the world.
And that’s quite a trick on Anderson’s part.
The selection:
There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. 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 corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers and looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With all his heart he wants to come close to some other human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the hand of another. If he prefers that the other be a woman, that is because he believes that a woman will be gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of all, understanding.
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