Reviews for The Egg and Other Stories

The average rating for The Egg and Other Stories based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-06-11 00:00:00 Richard Hammond The Triumph of the Egg by Sherwood Anderson There are perhaps two solid reasons to read this collection of short stories. 1. Sherwood Anderson is a renowned American writer of the early 20th century. He produced several masterpieces about middle America including Winesburg and a short story called A Death in the Woods. 2. The signature story in this collection is called the Egg and it's also a masterpiece. A second story in this collection called Senility is quite good and reminded me of Faulkner's writing. Yet another story about an anguished young woman in Iowa called the New Englander is also quite good. The other nine stories are probably not at the same level. Some are just okay, some are a little too preachy, some have some overtones of racism and some were just a little too focused on the protagonist's ruminations. So I will briefly review those three stories that I most liked. The Egg. Poignant story with well placed sarcasm. Also a lot of symbolism in the story and how humans compare to chickens. I developed a feeling of great compassion for the father and mother when they give up what little security they have in life to open what will become a failing restaurant. I loved this rant about the stupidity of chickens, it is so skillfully written. One hopes for so much from a chicken and is so dreadfully disillusioned. Small chickens, just setting out on the journey of life, look so bright and alert and they are in fact so dreadfully stupid. They are so much like people they mix one up in one's judgments of life. If disease does not kill them they wait until your expectations are thoroughly aroused and then walk under the wheels of a wagon'to go squashed and dead In Senility, we hear an old man's conversation with a stranger as the senile old man mixes up the past forty years with the present. My brother is a bad man'he is full of hate'he is pretty and has pompadour hair, but he would kill and kill. I hate old age'I am ashamed that I am old. I have a pretty new wife. I wrote her four letters and she replied. She came here and we married'I love to see her walk'O, I buy her pretty clothes. In the New Englander, we see a young and unmarried woman, Elsie Leander, lying in a cornfield and feeling out of place in her family's new homestead in Iowa. Then from the cornfield she sees her pretty niece kiss the man that Elsie had been flirting with the whole summer leaving Elsie feeling jilted. Sharp pains shot through her body. Presently she was compelled to stop and sit on the ground. For a long time she sat with closed eyes. Her dress became soiled. Little insects that live in the ground under the corn came out of their holes and crawled over her legs. 3.5 stars. Rounded up. It is Sherwood Anderson after all.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-08-07 00:00:00 Scott Caird Some of the comments that people have left about this book leave me baffled. The Egg and Other Short Stories is the greatest collection of short stories in the past one-hundred years. There, I said it! Like, Winesburg, Anderson explores a side of society, many people in his time refused to talk about and explore--the eccentrics, the lonely, and those who who were not accepted such as the homosexuals. Not only that, he shows the hypocrisy, humanity and charity that exists in American people. In the end, this book will make you laugh one second, and cry the next. There is a reason Anderson is the Godfather of the American Modern Generation (Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck). The bad reviews on goodreads of this book will die--The Egg and Other Stories will live on.