![]() ![]() In this introductory sketch, Anderson suggests one of the unifying devices of the book which is to follow - for most of the characters of Winesburg are grotesque, or distorted, in some way. He explains their grotesqueness by suggesting that each of them seized on one truth and tried to live by it, but the truth which each embraced became a falsehood. He realizes that all of them are grotesques and he decides to write about them. The weeping old man is ludicrous, yet he reminds the writer of the many sad people whom he had known during his lifetime. The old carpenter tells the writer of his experiences in the Civil War and, as he talks, he begins to cry. The sketch describes an elderly writer who hires an old carpenter to raise his bed somehow so that as he lies there he can look out the window. Although the publisher changed the name of the book, he left the title of the Introduction the same, so Winesburg begins with a sketch that is not about Winesburg or George Willard, but about the concept of the grotesque. When Sherwood Anderson submitted his manuscript of Winesburg, Ohio to a publisher it had a different title he had named it The Book of the Grotesque. ![]()
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