The Arts of Winesburg and Bidwell, Ohio

Abstract

In Sherwood Anderson's stories, the road that leads from village to town to city, passing by half-remembered fields and untilled countryside, is taken by almost all of his protagonists. They usually are also representative artist-narrators. The road leads from the fictional Winesburg and Bidwell, Ohio, to untransmuted cities: Erie, Cleveland, Chicago, or even New York. If Bidwell, the town, was the hero of Poor White,' the road is a condition for most of Anderson's stories. That road has also been taken by most other Americans, past and present. It has been so instrumental in our history as to displace the mnyth of the wilderness. We seldom acknowledge that the open road leads to the city. We cast the city as villain in most public announcements, and no longer expect to find a city set upon a hill or a Utopic Manhatta in which all men are brothers; nevertheless, we continue to head for the big town. The way to the city has seemed to offer liberation and achievement, to say nothing of anonymity and amorality. It has therefore drawn the poor and the rich, the runaway adolescent and the dead-centering millionaire, the intellectual and the hardhat. And for most Americans intent upon that prodigality, there has been no turning back. The road returning from the city has always been far less traveled by; we nix stix. Traffic upon it has been infrequent, as in the isolated instances of Thoreau and a few rural communes, or inconsistent, as in a rush to the wilderness that takes all the city along. Despite the institutionalized nostalgia of our greeting cards, political pastoralisms