"...the very index of his humanity", with the potential to symbolize a continuum going from a general fear of sexuality to sublimated homosexuality. Wing Biddlebaum and Dr. Reefy are just two examples of how throughout Winesburg, Ohio, Anderson builds myriad themes by adding symbolic significance to gestures, weather conditions and time of day, and events, among other features of the stories. Another major characteristic of Winesburg, Ohio that separates its style from Anderson's contemporaries, as well as his previous novels, is the minimal role of plot. According to critic David Stouk's article "Anderson's Expressionist Art", "As an expressionist drama, there is little development of a story line in the Winesburg tales in term of cause and effect." Indeed, it is this de-emphasis of traditional story elements in lieu of experimentation with language that provides both a link and a rift between Winesburg, Ohio and the novels of the following decades; whereas the simple, stripped-down vernacular that Gertrude Stein found so appealing in Anderson's writing of the time became an exemplar of quintessential American style most famously associated with Ernest Hemingway, the expressionistic portrayal of emotional states in Winesburg, Ohio was later, by some critics, considered "undisciplined" and "vague". Literary significance and criticism The critical reception to Winesburg, Ohio upon its publication in 1919 was mostly positive, even effusive. Hart Crane, for example, wrote that "...America should read this book on her knees," while H.L. Mencken wrote that Winesburg, Ohio "...embodies some of the most remarkable writing done in America in our time". Despite criticism that Anderson's "sordid tales" were humorless, and "mired...in plotlessness", Winesburg, Ohio was reprinted several times, selling a total of about by 1921. The popularity of Winesburg, Ohio among readers and critics has remained fairly high but has fluctuated with Sherwood Anderson's literary reputation. His reputation, while steady through the 1920s, began to decline in the 1930s. William L. Phillips, following the lukewarm reception of The Letters of Sherwood Anderson in 1953, commented that "...Anderson is out of fashion." Throughout that decade, however, the author and his most popular book were the subject of a "...re-examination, if only as a neglected literary ancestor of the moderns." Into the 1960s and beyond, this "re-examination" became a "reevaluation" by critics who today generally consider Winesburg, Ohio a modern classic. Cleveland Review of Books reviewed the book after a new edition came out through Ohio University Press in 2019, calling