Will Facebook kill literatures leave the past behind themes?
Behind every American coming-of-age story stands a single passage, in which George Willard, Sherwood Anderson’s alter-ego, sits in a carriage of the B&O railroad, waiting to leave Winesburg, Ohio: The young man, going out of his town to meet the adventure of life, began to think but he did not think of anything very big or dramatic. Things like his mother’s death, his departure from Winesburg, the uncertainty of his future life in the city, did not come to mind. He thought of little things — Turk Smollet wheeling boards through the main street of his town in the morning, a tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once stayed overnight at his father’s hotel, Butch Wheeler the lamp lighter of Winesburg hurrying through the streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his hand, Helen White standing by a window in the Winesburg post office and putting a stamp on an envelope. The young man’s mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have tho
