Beautiful Country, Darkening Fields: Sherwood Anderson and the Work of Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919) is a book about workers and work, something its author knew well as a businessman in Elyria, Ohio, for several years prior to his choice to commence a writing life in his mid-thirties. His life as a worker never ceased, however, as he approached his new artistic profession with the same entrepreneurial gusto he had his past businesses. The profession required what he could give to both sides: the work of authorship and the work of writing. Beginning with letters to editors, critics, writers, friends, and burgeoning professionals and an examination of the myths surrounding his composition process, this article notes how Anderson attempts to reconcile his relationships to art and commerce, showing that his two selves (businessman and craftsman) regularly collided. The work in the work is then examined, focusing on Anderson’s use of country and fields in his story “The Untold Lie.” Similar to how he lived with the duality of his writing life, Anderson creates a sensuous ambiguity within Ray Pearson, a character dealing with more than the anxieties of fatherhood and marriage.