Poor White

By Sherwood Anderson

Book Overview

Completed one year after his classic Winesburg, Ohio and long regarded as his finest novel, Sherwood Anderson's Poor White captures the spirit of small-town America during the Machine Age. Hugh McVey is a protagonist Robert Lovett once called "a symbol of the country itself in its industrial progress and spiritual impotence." A lonely and passionate inventor of farm machinery, he struggles to gain love and intimacy in a community where "life had surrendered to the machine." Through his story Anderson aims his criticism at the rise of technology and industry at the turn of the century. Simultaneously, he renders a tale of eloquent naturalism and disturbing beauty. Poor White was praised by such writers as H. L. Mencken and Hart Crane when it was first published. It remains a curiously contemporary novel, and a marvelous testament to Sherwood Anderson's "sombre metaphysical preoccupation and his smouldering sensuousness" (The New Republic).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811212424
• ISBN13: 9780811212427
• Release Date: May 1993
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

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" The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far from the old sweet things." This quote from the book sums up its core philosophy very nicely. Surely this is Anderson's best book, also depressing, but not as much as "Winesburg, Ohio", and quite sweet in its depiction of a life now lost. Anderson must have deeply loved the country and its farms to have described it so wondrously. And his skill in depicting even the most minute of characters is quite remarkable. This ability to draw out of the smallest things such vivid detail, is really outstanding. I liked this book very much and would almost wish to return to those "old sweet things". He really abhored the machine age and, as in "Winesburg", all his people, especially Clara and Hugh, are abysmal at trying to connect with their fellow human beings. Created with a lot of suspense.

Excellent tale of America's transition to industrialism!

If you thought that Winesburg Ohio was good, then you'll absolutely love Poor White. It has a similar feel as Winesburg, except this story revolves around two main characters, Hugh McVey and Clara Butterworth. Poor White tells of how the spread of industrialism affected the agrarian towns of the Midwest.

An important document of America's changing landscape.

Sherwood Anderson captures America's change from agrarian to industrial, with insightful and poetic writing. This is a perfect companion to Anderson's best-known work (Winesburg, Ohio) as well as to the many non-fiction books on the same topic (The Machine in the Garden, etc.).