Sherwood Anderson’s lack of plot led to unsatisfying storytelling

Sherwood Anderson is said to have been a major influence on the work of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck. After taking a dive into some of his short stories, I’m still not entirely sure what they saw in him.

Anderson grew up in Ohio and moved all around the Midwest. He became an ad man in Chicago and never actually published his first book until he was older than 40. His most famous work is Winesburg, Ohio, which is a collection of related stories.

“Hands” is one of the stories from Winesburg, Ohio, from 1919. Wing Biddlebaum is a little old man who has lived in Winesburg for 20 years and works in the fields. He keeps to himself and is mostly a mystery to the townsfolk. It turns out his name was once Adolph Myers and he was a school teacher in a Pennsylvania town who was accused of sexually molesting the boys. He denies it and truly doesn’t seem to have been guilty, but nobody believes him and some of the men take him to hang one night before being let go at the last minute and allowed to run away and never come back. This is an enjoyable and short read, but I’m not sure Anderson succeeds in what appears to be some kind of profound metaphor about how the hands perhaps tell the whole story about a person. 3 out of 5 stars

"Brothers" from 1921 tells one of his typical tales of small-town isolation. One man, on his regular walks around his village outside of Chicago, often encounters an old man who people say has lost his mind, and always tells lies and that he is related to famous people. The walking man is nearly totally silent at night when he returns from his bicycle-factory foreman job. But he begins to fantasize about one woman at the factory and then for almost no reason stabs his pregnant wife to death. He is found guilty and later one day somehow encounters the old man again. The old man doesn’t know he’s talking to the murderer but tells the man his brother is the murderer. One of these days I hope to find an Anderson story that clicks, but this is aimless and doesn’t hold up over the past century. 2 out of 5 stars

“Death in the Woods” comes along later, in 1933, and while it feels like the tale of a more mature writer, it still suffers from lack of action and lack of anything exciting happening. He tells the story from the point of view of a boy who sees the body of a lady named Grimes who has frozen in the snow on her walk home from picking up meat. Her dogs eat the meat out of her bag before her body is discovered. The town tries to pin the death on her rotten drunk husband and son but they have alibis and instead are run out of town. 2.5 out of 5 stars

Anderson wrote an essay in 1924 detailing his method, and it explained quite a bit as to why I’m not crazy about his work. He was interested in form rather than plot, going so far as to call plot “contrived fiction.” In that sense, his stories are more like paintings or simply conversations. He mostly related stories from his own life, but his writing worked to get at the meaning of his life at the possible expense of the facts of his life, which, to me, means the lack of facts and plot in his writing make for some pretty unsatisfying stories.

Finding an entryway into the challenging and rewarding writing of William Faulkner

William Faulkner was always a tricky writer for me growing up as a lit major in college. I loved the more direct, journalistic storytelling styles of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, and Tom Wolfe the most. Authors like Faulkner, James Joyce, and Joseph Heller were always much more difficult to decipher. And can you blame me for gravitating to entertaining reads over ones that sometimes take a lot of mental power to comprehend? 

But knowing that, despite digging pretty deeply into Faulkner's classic Absolom, Absolom! during college and loving The Sound and the Fury (my 49th favorite novel of all time), I feel I never gave the iconic Southern writer enough of my time. So I thought it would be good to give a few short stories my attention.

“A Rose for Emily” (1930): His first published short story is a Southern Gothic powerhouse with similarities to Hitchcock’s Psycho. Miss Emily Grierson lived with her father in their Confederate home in a fictional town called Jefferson, Mississippi, and when he dies, the mayor forgives her property taxes so she can afford to stay in the house. But the next generation on the city council comes along and wants her to pay taxes. She refuses and continues living there without ever going out. She eventually invites a Northern sidewalk contractor into her home to marry her. After her death, those going in to clean up the house discover his skeleton in her bed alongside strands of her own hair. 

What propels the story into the acclaimed spot of Faulkner’s best short story (that I’ve read) is the character of Miss Emily herself. She is complex and fascinating, both proud and fairly pathetic, and both admired and mocked by the townspeople. She is unable to come to terms with a society rapidly changing from the way things were before and during the Civil War.

5 out of 5 stars

“That Evening Sun” (1931): Also taking place in Jefferson, this is about a white family that has a nearby Black woman named Nancy wash their clothes and prepare breakfasts. She has suffered all kinds of indignities in her life, including the town’s banker kicking out her teeth and her madman husband running out on her. She is scared of her husband, Jesus, and wants to sleep at the white family’s house and play with their three children, one of whom is the story’s narrator (a rare instance of a young boy being the narrator in a Faulkner story). The text is a bit jarring because of extensive use of racist language, but it’s also a powerful vignette of how white and Black people coexisted, somewhat, 100 years ago in the U.S. South.

It’s also very sad and a tragic glimpse into the offhanded violent racism and lack of basic human caring during that era. Faulkner’s typically cryptic language makes it a little difficult to understand that Jesus has apparently returned and killed Nancy at the end. About the only clue is little Quintin the narrator’s question to his dad asking who will do their laundry now after they all hear the sounds of Nancy supposedly being murdered. It’s heartbreaking to witness the white adults acting with such little empathy while Quintin and the kids can’t quite figure out why the adults act they ways they do.

Perhaps most notable of all about this story is that it’s a prequel to The Sound and the Fury, as the three kids are same Compson family children who go on to narrate much of that classic novel’s further falling, 20 some years later, of this once prominent family.

4.5 out of 5 stars

"Dry September" (1931): 

This story begins in a town barbershop, where a debate ensues about whether a young Black man named Will Mayes "attacked, insulted, frightened" a 40-year-old white bachelorette named Minnie Cooper. Without anyone having any idea what may have happened, a barber is convinced Will couldn't have done anything while several others get more and more heated in their beliefs that he did do "it." This comes to a head when McLendon, a World War I veteran with a gun, bursts through the doors and gathers people to help him find Will. The barber tries to stop them before eventually getting thrown out of their moving vehicle. Meanwhile, Minnie is out with friends at the movies where she appears to break down and, seemingly too late for Will, appears to suggest that nothing happened.

The again typical suggestiveness (Faulkner doesn't tend to spell things out easily for readers) leaves the whole tale as a bit of a mystery, which is probably why people either love the author or don't understand his writing. What is clear is that Faulkner is dropping a serious and very accurate account of the power of rumor and the dangers of mob mentality in the lynch mob-happy culture of the American South in the early 1900s. He does a good job of starting the story showing that (at least most of these) people are not evil but can get swayed into violently taking the law into their own hands via groupthink.

If you're unsure where to start with William Faulkner, before getting to his novels, "A Rose for Emily" and "Dry September" are accessible and beautifully written, and are my recommendations as the top entry points.

4.5 out of 5 stars

"Spotted Horses" (1931): This is the one story here I would not recommend as a starting spot. Although not set in Jefferson - it takes place in Frenchman's Bend, Mississippi - many of the usual themes of Faulkner's recur, namely a place struggling to escape the shadow of the Civil War. The story follows the events that take place after a group of men are tricked into buying a herd of wild horses from traveling salesman Flem Snopes. The horses run wild, and they cause all sorts of havoc in the town. 

This may be the funniest, most slaptick tale of this batch, which contrasts a bit with the downtrodden characters. While it is my least favorite of these five stories, it is still well worth reading if you enjoy the other four beforehand.

4 out of 5 stars

“That Will Be Fine” (1935): This is the story of a boy named Georgie who is involved in helping his Uncle Rodney carry out criminal schemes that his uncle will likely never compensate him for, while he is hoping to make a little money to buy his grandpa a Christmas present. He spends so much time working with his uncle that he runs out of time to get the present so, by the end, he tries to chase a possum to give to his grandpa.

This story comes along a few years after his first published stories, and it shows the development of his distinctive style. The story is told in a stream-of-consciousness style, which allows Faulkner to explore the inner thoughts and feelings of his characters in much detail. Set again in Jefferson, the story provides a glimpse into the lives of the people who live there and how they are being affected by the social and economic changes occuring rapidly in the early 1900s.

4 out of 5 stars

Overall, Faulkner is clearly one of the masters and his work remains powerful, relevant, and entertaining, not to mention challenging.

TV Snide: June 2023

TV Show of the Month: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Season 1 (Hulu): I started watching this hilarious show in Season 2 all those years ago and just now got back to the opening season. The Gang really hits their stride by the time the classic Episode 6 (The Gang Finds a Body) comes along and we learn that Dee can’t stomach old people and thet Dee and Dennis’s grandfather was a Nazi. 5 out of 5 stars

Barry - Season 1 (HBO Max): SNL’s Bill Hader finds his Walter White-like role of a lifetime, and he’s won two Emmys to prove it, as a former Marine hitman who stumbles upon Henry Winkler’s acting studio and falls a bit in love with acting as well as the actress played by Sarah Goldberg. Funny and moving. 5 out of 5 stars

Movies of the Month: Spider-Man: Inside the Spider-Verse (Amazon): This 2018 is a masterpiece of cartooning. Although I had already seen it, I watched it again so I would be prepped for the new sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse, which I also saw this month and it's just as good. Miles Morales is a young Brooklynite who enters a world of many Spider-Mans, including himself, with the typical battles against villains ensuing, but with the aforementioned perfect and mind-boggling production values. 5 out of 5 stars

Piranha (Sling TV): There remained nowhere safe left to swim after 1977’s Jaws and then this one in 1978. The titular fish are accidentally released from a science center high above a series of rivers and lakes that lead to the ocean. The cinematography and character studies are downright excellent and this is definitely a hidden gem of the 70s. The depictions of children at camp getting devoured by the fish is, as Quentin Tarantino recently noted in his excellent podcast Video Archives, undertaken almost with unrequited glee. 5 out of 5 stars

Short Stories of the Month: Chinua Achebe, “Civil Peace” and “Dead Men’s Path:” This classic Nigerian writer taught at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst and once gave a speech about the racism inherent in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Today we might lean towards calling it inherent bias, but his points were made and they were made strongly, much more so because it was a speech made in 1974. “Civil Peace” from 1971 tells the story of Jonathan Iwegbu, who has made it through the constant Nigerian war with most of his house and family intact. Even still, in peace, there are thieves looking to gather any cent he earns. Better yet is 1953’s “Dead Men’s Path.” Michael Obi takes over as schoolmaster of a run-down and “progressive” school. When he and his wife beautify the grounds and block a path that villagers believe their “dead relatives depart by it and ancestors visit by it.” When Michael does not relent to the priest, saying that old way of thinking is exactly what the school’s new way of thinking is trying to replace, nearly the entire school grounds are destroyed in the night, with the supervisor arriving the next day to give damning remarks about Michael’s efforts. 4.5 out of 5 stars and 5 out of 5 stars respectively

Novel of the Month: The Swell, by Allie Reynolds: This novel kept me interested all the way through in the story of three men and three women who claim an isolated beach in a national forest of Australia all to themselves. But the place is far from a paradise. Blending Keanu Reeves’ Point Break with Lost, the premise is the biggest star of this story about how facing your fears can have deadly consequences. 4 out of 5 stars.

The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor: This is a captivating read especially since there was a strong chance I was once headed to the University of Iowa for grad school. I picked Georgetown in the end, but I love coming-of-age stories like this one of grad students from the dance, poetry, and fiction departments and their interactions between themselves and the townies of Iowa City. It loses steam a little at the end but is still a solid read about the choices young people make in shaping their lives. 4 out of 5 stars

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson - Season 1 (Netflix): This wackball comedy is definitely not to everyone's taste, but I like it quite a bit. From the old weirdo who has held a lifetime grudge towards a baby that cried on an airplane to the recurring bit about the shirt that has a knob to help dudes pull it away from their bellies, this very short season has lots to enjoy. 4 out of 5 stars

“The Real Thing,” by Henry James (1891): This short story is representative of the author’s work. He would take an idea, a small slice of life and expand upon it (mainly for however many words were required by the magazine editors who might accept it). This is a simple, yet engaging, piece about an artist who likes “sitters,” or subjects, that his friends don’t think to be compelling. 4 out of 5 stars

You People (Netflix): Excellent performances from Jonah Hill and Lauren London as well as Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus save a little bit of a sappy rom-com that tackles race relations between a Jewish man and a Black woman who want to get married but have a lot of family and cultural issues standing in the way. Light fun on a tough topic. 3.5 out of 5 stars 

Katherine Ann Porter, “Thief,” “The Cracked Looking-Glass,” and “Maria Concepcion”: “Thief” is a small snapshot that seems it could be of its publication date of 1935 or from anytime. It tells a one-night journey of a women and her purse. She drinks with three different men in New York City to find her purse stolen by the “janitoress” after she returns home. The two share heated words about who needs or deserves the purse more. “The Cracked Looking-Glass" from 1933 is better. It’s about an Irish immigrant couple that have made their way after a while outside Boston, even though their style still fights against their more reserved neighbors. “Maria Concepcion” is Porter’s first published short story, from 1922. The tale of a Mexican peasant woman who murders her husband’s lover and is then protected from the police by her husband is my least favorite of this sampling from Porter and seems fairly half baked. 3.5 out of 5 stars, 4 out of 5 stars, and 2.5 out of 5 stars respectively

TV Snide: January 2023

TV Series of the Month (Tie): The White Lotus - Season 2 (HBO Max): Creator Mike White pulls out all the stops for a second season of perfect TV. The seven episodes again bring together the lives of hotel guests and resort employees, as a body washes up on the beach in Italy. We have to guess which starring character it is for the length of the season. 5 out of 5 stars

TV Series of the Month (Tie) Succession - Season 2 (HBO Max): This is a can't-keep-your-eyes-off, old-fashioned shitshow that is fascinating to view. The whole Roy family (patterned perhaps off the Murdoch media empire) is worth throwing to the sharks. The non-family inner circle too. The drama lies in who will fall and how. 5 out of 5 stars

Short Story of the Month: “The Thirteenth Day” by T.C. Boyle: One of my favorite authors appeared with this story in the April/May 2022 edition of Esquire. Enough time has passed since the start of COVID-19 that it is enjoyable to read the tale of a couple stuck on a cruise ship for a month. The conditions are unappealing even in their 5-star balconied cabin. It’s hard to believe anyone would ever want to take a cruise again after reading this. A couple of Boyle’s best novels include Outside Looking In and Drop City. I really need to read The Road to Wellville too. 5 out of 5 stars

Documentary of the Month: McEnroe (Showtime): Favorite athlete ever. Check! Favorite sport ever. Check! I admit I'm biased on this one, but I really like the way the filmmakers blended their own creative vision with great chronological footage of the tenns great's career. 5 out of 5 stars

Belushi (Showtime): A worthy documentary of one of comedy’s legends. I think John Belushi falls in right after Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Gene Wilder, and Richard Pryor in my ranking of funniest 1970s comedic actors. The producers of this probably rank him higher, and this mixes footage with cool graphic treatments to tell his life story. 4.5 out of 5 stats

Novel of the Month: The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager: I really enjoyed this suspense/horror author's The Final Girls. This one is not as good but still worth a quick read. It centers around out-of-work, Upper West Side actor Casey, who is spiralling into alcoholism at her Vermont lakehouse after her husband Len's drowning death. She begins a Rear Window-like relationship with the tech leader/supermodel couple across the lake, and other neighbors in their midst eventually come along for the ride. I'm not sure the supernatural elements of the book work, but if you can get past those, the rest provides for a gripping page turner. 4 out of 5 stars

“Roy Spivey,” by Miranda July (The New Yorker): This short story ran in the magazine in 2007. July is relatively famous for her screenplays along with her fiction. The protagonist is flying first class and sitting next to a famous actor named Roy Spivey. They have a fun time together and he gives her his phone number. But much like with many other things in her life, she procrastinates, waiting to call him many years later while she is watching her husband out the window clean their car. The number is out of service, and probably has been for many years. This makes me want to read more from July, possibly her debut novel The First Bad Man. 4 out of 5 stars

Never Have I Ever - Season 3 (Netflix): This seems like more of a teen-girl watch than one for me, but ever since the debut of this series, having my tennis hero John McEnroe serve as the narrator was all the hook I needed. From there, the cast and storylines of navigating high-school love and relationships has gripped me. It’s based on Mindy Kaling’s own oft-awkward arrival from India to the U.S. and I highly recommend you give it a try. 4 out of 5 stars

Invisible Things by Mat Johnson: The author of this 2022 novel skillfully brings out most of the best elements of sci fi. The only thing missing are aliens, which is odd since the story is about a group headed to Jupiter to study a society of people kidnapped from Earth. The most alien element of these people, living under a dome, is that they and their society are just like those back where they came from. The first half is a rollicking read that bogs down a bit as it wraps up with the crews’s struggles to bring some of the inhabitants back to Earth. The “invisible things” keep the society from being able to progress in ways that classicism, racism, social media, demagogues, and other factors do in our own world. 3.5 out of 5 stars

Confess, Fletch (Showtime): The Chevy Chase Fletch movies are comedy classics, so this new entry had a lot to live up to. If anyone can handle it, it’s Mad Man Jon Hamm. And he is a truly great comedic actor. He holds the whole slightly messy whodunnit art-theft plot together as best he can, and he’s almost entirely the reason (along with somewhat bumbling police investigators) the movie succeeds. 3.5 out of 5 stars

Who Killed Santa? (Netflix): I will forever love Jason Bateman and Will Arnett for Arrested Development and their Smartless podcast, but this is lazy stuff. Oh, it’s still pretty hilarious in several spots, but it’s borderline experimental and Netflix would probably never air something like this if it didn’t have the two stars’ star power. Like an SNL skit, but not one worthy of drawing out for an hour. 3 out of 5 stars

Stephen King Offers a New "Bazaar of Bad Dreams"

I have a soft spot for Stephen King. Reading his books always take me back to my teen years, when I devoured almost everything he had written up to that point. (See my opinion of his best books.)

His short stories are some of my favorites, so it's exciting to dig into his new The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.

It begins with an old story he conceived at age 19. He wrote it but claims he lost it due to doing too much acid. While recently driving down I-95 in Maine, he remembered the story and rewrote it. "Mile 81" starts with a young kid named Pete who bikes to an abandoned rest area along the interstate. After looking at pictures of nude women hanging on the walls and drinking found vodka, he falls asleep.

What happens within shouting distance during his nap is a horrible chain of events starting with an abandoned, muddy station wagon that lures motorists from the road to the rest stop to help. Bad mistake.

5 out of 5 stars.

Next we have the Raymond Carver-inspired "Premium Harmony." About halfway through, I realized I had read this in, I believe, The New Yorker many months ago. It's a minor story about a middle-aged couple that argues all the time. She doesn't like him smoking and he doesn't like her eating Twinkies. Then everything changes when she goes into a convenience store to get a purple ball for her niece.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

In "Batman and Robin Have an Altercation," no superheroes are involved, Even better: an Alzheimer's patient and a big tattooed Texas roughneck are involved. When a road rage incident gets out-of-hand, the unexpected happens and the police are too late to help. This is a touching story, especially to any grown adults who have had to care for dying parents. And especially if they have done it by regularly taking them from the care facility to Applebee's for lunch.

4.5 out of 5 stars

I was lulled to sleep for a few pages of the short "The Dune," about an old man who paddles out to a small island in Florida frequently. He calls a fellow lawyer to revise his will after seeing disturbing things written in the sand, which he has actually seen in this same spot ever since he was a boy but never told anyone until now. The ending is positively wicked and abruptly makes the story one of Kings's best.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Rounding out the first third of the collection (I'll save the rest for later when my Stephen King withdrawals set in) is probably the best of the batch. Offering a Shawshank-like prison scene and a life-spanning story of one man's battle with a devil who appears in little-boy-with-a-beanie-propeller-hat form, "Bad Little Boy" will almost certainly be opted into a movie or TV show in the future. There are many points that offer spine-tingling chills. And, after all, what more do you want in a King story?

5 out of 5 stars

I'll be back with more about this book later.

What F. Scott Fitzgerald Had Against Jelly Beans

An odd thing: Over the years, I've read hundreds of short stories by a handful of my favorite authors (Poe, Vonnegut, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Capote). But, other than a few select classics, I rarely remember them.

One of the reasons I started Pop Culture Lunch Box was to jot down things I should remember from the things I read, watch, or see. Kind of like an, uh, journal. So my next endeavor is to reread F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age and try to remember it so I never have to read any of its lesser short stories. (As a bonus, the Kindle edition is free at Amazon, even though the Library Journal review there curiously calls the collection "nice if you can afford it.")

The first story, "The Jellybean," takes place in small-town Georgia and was apparently co-written by Fitzgerald's wife Zelda. The Jelly Bean is 21-year-old Jim Powell, who is immediately described as an unappealing character coming home from the war in trousers that are too short and too tight.

He is invited to a party with his childhood friend Clark Darrow. Clark has lived a full social life and is a sought-after commodity by the ladies, while Jim is completely stunted and detests girls just as he had as a boy before the war. At the party, Clark asks Jim if he thinks Nancy Lamar, a girl who does "crazy stunts" and is dating the son of the owner of a safety-razor company, looks beautiful.

Somehow, Jim and Nancy end up sharing some strong drinks and a chat later in the evening. It's not long before she kicks aside her chair and stands up to announce her devoted love to Jim Powell - whom she calls King of the Jelly Beans - to the entire party.

Well, Nancy is obviously very drunk and that's pretty much where her night ends. But Jelly Bean leaves the party and walks the streets thinking about a successful woman Nancy had told him about and how unmotivated he'd been so far in life. He later tells Clark that he has decided to stop being a bum, go fix up his aunt's farm, and start a family.

But just a little while later, Jim the Jelly Bean turns into a pool hall on Jackson Street "where he was sure to find a congenial crowd who would make all the old jokes - the ones he knew."

This is a pretty depressing story, but at the same time, it's a brilliant look into how delusional we can be. Moments of brilliance and great ideas often flash past us, but only the truly motivated people turn those moments into something substantial. The other people are, well, jelly beans, which I guess in Fitzgerald's world means the ordinary people who don't stand out in a crowd in any way and float through life as just another jelly bean in the jar.

**** out of ***** stars