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The Persistence of Place

Building on correspondence, essays, and public statements, the second chapter examines the ongoing significance of place to contemporary cycles. Although Winesburg, Ohio did not originate the genre, it has had the most enduring and wide influence on cycles in recent decades, a period which has seen the resurgence of the cycle because community itself is being reimagined in response to the volatility of the economy. This chapter focus on texts whose authors explicitly cite Anderson’s influence: Russell Banks’s Trailerpark (1981), Cathy Day’s The Circus in Winter (2004), and Rebecca Barry’s Later, at the Bar (2007). Anderson hails Winesburg as enabling “a new looseness” in fiction; that sense of novelty and innovation recurs in authors’ statements about reading Winesburg for the first time, citing its transformative and revelatory power. These contemporary writers narrow even within the small town settings to focus on a particular, marginalized population, thereby amplifying the pervasiveness of alienation in contemporary America.