Sinclair Lewis

Although Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was the most celebrated American literary figure of the 1920s, his popular, mildly satirical novels today are valued mainly for their sociohistorical relevance.

In his best work Sinclair Lewis wrote with infectious exuberance, and his visual detail and sensitive dialogue provide a striking, though superficial, verisimilitude. He lacked the insight into social complexities characteristic of the naturalistic authors of the next generation, but Lewis's satire of the smugness, hypocrisy, and puritanism of American small-town life served as a needed contrast to the sentimental literary traditions that had enshrined so much of provincial America. The importance of this achievement, however, should not obscure Lewis's artistic failings: a commonplace world view, little literary imagination, and a style that often failed to rise above journalism.

Born in Sauk Centre, Minn., the son of a small-town physician, Lewis was a lonely, awkward, introspective boy. He first left his provincial environment to study at Yale, briefly interrupting his education in 1907 to work at Upton Sinclair's socialist colony in New Jersey. After his graduation in 1908, Lewis spent several years doing newspaper and editorial work in various sections of the United States. His first four novels were all unsuccessful and insignificant, containing little indication of the satire and realism to follow.

Main Street and Babbitt

In 1920 Lewis achieved instant worldwide recognition with the publication of Main Street, which, according to Lewis's biographer Mark Schorer, "was the most sensational event in 20th-century American publishing history." It is the story of a gifted young girl, married to a dull, considerably older village doctor, and her futile attempts to bring culture and imagination to vapid small-town life. "This is America," wrote Lewis, "a town of a few thousand in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves. The town is, in our tale, called Gopher Prairie, Minn. But its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere." Lewis's satire on smug provincial complacency, though devastating and admirable for its cultural criticism at the time, seems curiously naive today.

Lewis next focused on the American businessman in Babbitt (1922), perhaps his major work and the novel more likely to retain its impact. The reason for Babbitt's success is that Lewis, never a master of literary realism despite his reportorial skills, deliberately wrote in a fantastic, almost surrealistic style. Abandoning formal plot development or structure, the work achieves a quality of improvisational spontaneity. The prose, consistently energetic, often rises to such Dickensian flourishes as, "His shoes were black lace boots, good boots, honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots," and "Babbitt loved his mother, and sometimes he rather liked her." The creation of George F. Babbitt - whose name has become synonymous with bourgeois mediocrity - an intellectually empty, emotionally immature man of dubious morals who nevertheless remains a lovable comicstrip figure, is Lewis's greatest accomplishment. The ineffectiveness of the satire is attributable less to the obviousness of the attack and the author's lack of ingenious wit than to the irony that Lewis himself embodied the Philistinism which he derided. But to fault the satirical impotence of the novel appears superfluous for, as one critic has remarked, "If Babbitt could write, he would write like Sinclair Lewis."

Later Novels and Nobel Prize

Lewis's next popular novel, Arrowsmith (1925), returns to the conventional form of Main Street to portray a young doctor's battle to maintain his integrity in a world of pettiness, dishonesty, and commercialism. Despite its often simplistic treatment of the dedication of pure scientists as a means of spiritual salvation, Arrowsmith was offered the Pulitzer Prize. Lewis, however, immediately refused it, because the terms of the award require that it be given not for literary merit, but for the outstanding presentation of "the wholesome atmosphere of American Life."

Elmer Gantry (1927), an extremely emotional assault on religious hypocrisy, seems more concerned with the main character's degeneracy than with the failings of organized religion. Dodsworth (1929), a sympathetic portrait of a wealthy retired manufacturer seeking happiness in Europe, is more successful. Here Lewis makes little effort to conceal his liking of, and even admiration for, the values of Babbittry. In 1930 Sinclair Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize, but this distinction brought little personal happiness.

The large quantity of writing Lewis produced in the following years is almost without interest. To the earlier superficiality of his fiction was now added a fatal dullness. Ann Vickers (1933) traces the career of a neurotic woman who starts as a social worker and ends as the mistress of a politician; It Can't Happen Here (1935) warns of the possibility of a fascist takeover of the United States; Gideon Planish (1943) is an expose of organized philanthropy; Cass Timberlane (1945) deals with an unhappy marriage between a middle-aged judge and his loving wife; Kingsblood Royal (1947) takes on the subject of racial prejudice; and The God-Seeker (1949) tells the story of a New England missionary's attempts to convert the Indians of Minnesota in the 1840s.

Final Years

Lewis spent his last years traveling throughout Europe, unable to find publishers for his work and poignantly aware that his place in American literature was far less significant than his early admirers had led him to believe. Writing before the reputations of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner were established, and at a time when Theodore Dreiser was encountering critical and public hostility over the uncouth nature of his genius and assault on conventional traditions, Lewis by the nature of his talent and intellectual limitations had been able to fill the literary vacuum. But later critics accused him of depriving the stronger novelist Dreiser of the Nobel Prize in 1930. Married and divorced twice, Lewis retreated into almost total solitude. Increasingly sensitive to his physical deterioration, he was reluctant to be seen even by his few friends. He died on Jan. 10, 1951, of heart seizure, in an obscure small-town clinic just outside Rome.

Lewis's unique place in American literary history is perhaps best expressed by Mark Schorer: "He was one of the worst writers in modern American literature, but without his writing one cannot imagine modern American literature. That is because, without his writing, we can hardly imagine ourselves."

Further Reading

The definitive biography of Lewis is Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (1961). For early critical estimates of Lewis's work see sections in Carl Van Doren, The American Novel (1921; rev. ed. 1955); Walter Lippmann, Men of Destiny (1927); and James Branch Cabell, Some of Us (1930). In addition, note Vernon L. Parrington's short study, Sinclair Lewis: Our Own Diogenes (1927). Later estimates include Robert Cantwell's "Sinclair Lewis" in Malcolm Cowley, ed., After the Genteel Tradition: American Writers since 1910 (1937); Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds (1942; abr. 1956); sections in Maxwell Geismar, The Last of the Provincials (1947); and Frederick J. Hoffman, The Twenties: American Writing in the Postwar Decade (1955; rev. ed. 1962).

For more information on Harry Sinclair Lewis, visit Britannica.com.

(1885-1951), novelist, satirist of middle-class values. Born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the son of a stern hardworking doctor, Lewis matured slowly, writing a number of minor novels and working as a publicist and editor. In 1920 he found his voice with Main Street, a devastating portrait of the American small town, its dullness, mindless prejudices, and lonely stultified women. He followed this book with Babbitt (1922), an equally vigorous assault on a typical small-town businessman and his narrow, contradictory values.

Lewis was more than a critic of American culture, however. In his next novel, Arrowsmith (1925), which he wrote in collaboration with the bacteriologist Paul de Kruif, he revealed his admiration for the heroic side of the American dream. Martin Arrowsmith is a brilliant medical researcher who struggles against the temptations of irresponsible women, unethical opportunists in the medical profession, and his own human impulses, which threaten his professional integrity. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize, but Lewis created a literary sensation by rejecting it. In 1920 the Pulitzer judges had awarded the prize to Main Street, but the trustees of Columbia University had declined to confirm the choice. In a stinging letter, Lewis claimed this kind of tacit censorship would emasculate American literature.

Next, Lewis returned to satiric assault with his most controversial novel, Elmer Gantry (1927), the story of a hypocritical evangelist. Although it created another sensation, it now seems among the weakest of Lewis's novels. One critic has called it a work of "pure revulsion." In Dodsworth (1929) Lewis returned to his favorite subject, the American businessman--but with far more sympathy and understanding. Sam Dodsworth is no George Babbitt. He goes abroad to expand his cultural and intellectual horizons, and there he realizes that his frivolous wife, Fran, sums up the emptiness he feels. He divorces her and marries a calm, perceptive woman who encourages him to launch a new business, building well-designed, artistically superior homes. Dodsworth's contrast of European and American values and its international setting helped Lewis become the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize in 1930. Lewis's acceptance speech attacked the genteel tradition in American literature and praised such writers as Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner.

For the next twenty years, Lewis continued to search for problems in American life and to dramatize them in his fiction. It Can't Happen Here (1935) described the rise of fascism in the United States, Gideon Planish (1943) exposed organized philanthropy, and Kingsblood Royal (1947) explored race prejudice. The best of these later novels is Cass Timberlane, about a thoughtful Minnesota judge who divorces his pushy wife and marries a younger playgirl. Since his death, critics have handled Lewis roughly, some calling him the literary equivalent of George Babbitt. But others have pointed out this criticism ignores the most salient fact. Only Lewis saw Babbitt and created him. Lewis's artistic reach may have exceeded his grasp, but he led the way in urging writers to use the novel to confront America critically, without illusions.

Bibliography:

Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (1961); Vincent Sheean, Dorothy and Red (1963).

Author:

Thomas Fleming

See also Literature.

Lewis, Sinclair, 1885–1951, American novelist, b. Sauk Centre, Minn., grad. Yale Univ., 1908. Probably the greatest satirist of his era, Lewis wrote novels that present a devastating picture of middle-class American life in the 1920s. Although he ridiculed the values, the lifestyles, and even the speech of his characters, there is affection behind the irony. Lewis began his career as a journalist, editor, and hack writer. With the publication of Main Street (1920), a merciless satire on life in a Midwestern small town, Lewis immediately became an important literary figure. His next novel, Babbitt (1922), considered by many critics to be his greatest work, is a scathing portrait of an average American businessman, a Republican and a Rotarian, whose individuality has been erased by conformist values.

Arrowsmith (1925; Pulitzer Prize, refused by Lewis) satirizes the medical profession, and Elmer Gantry (1927) attacks hypocritical religious revivalism. Dodsworth (1929), a more mellow work, is a sympathetic picture of a wealthy American businessman in Europe; it was successfully dramatized by Lewis and Sidney Howard in 1934. In 1930, Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. During his lifetime he published 22 novels, and it is generally agreed that his later novels are far less successful than his early fiction. Among his later works are It Can't Happen Here (1935), Cass Timberlane (1945), Kingsblood Royal (1947), and World So Wide (1951). From 1928 to 1942 Lewis was married to Dorothy Thompson, 1894–1961, a distinguished newspaperwoman and foreign correspondent.

Bibliography

See memoir by his first wife, G. H. Lewis (1955); biographies by C. Van Doren (1933, repr. 1969), M. Shorer (1961), V. Sheean (1963), and R. Lingeman (2001); studies by S. N. Grebstein (1962, repr. 1987), D. J. Dooley (1967, repr. 1987), M. Light (1975), and M. Bucco, ed. (1986).

(1885-1951)

1914	Our Mr. Wrenn. Following a potboiler for boys written under a pseudonym (Hike and the Aeroplane, 1912), Lewis's first serious novel concerns a timid clerk whose dream of travel is granted. He tours bohemian London in the company of an expatriate artist before returning home to marry a down-to-earth girl and settle back into his commonplace life.
1915	The Trail of the Hawk. Lewis's second mature novel is an idealistic romance about the boyhood, youth, and later career of an adventurer who escapes from his provincial small town in Minnesota to become an aviator.
1917	The Job. This is the best of the author's early apprentice works before Main Street (1920). It tells the story of a woman's experience in business in New York and anticipates the satire of Lewis's mature work. He also publishes The Innocents, about an elderly couple.
1919	Free Air. The last of the author's apprentice works before his breakthrough Main Street (1920) is a sentimental story of a transcontinental romance, based on a cross-country trip Lewis had made himself. It is chiefly of interest in reflecting source material for his later satirical treatment of American life.
1920	Main Street. Lewis's attack on small-town American life, expressed through the frustrations and eventual rebellion of Carol Kennicott in Gopher Prairie, establishes him as an iconoclastic voice of the era. In daring to criticize sanctified topics such as marriage, gender roles, and American values, the book would prompt Lewis's biographer Mark Schorer to declare it "the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history."
1922	Babbitt. Considered by many Lewis's masterpiece, the novel is a satirical indictment of American provincialism through its portrayal of businessman and booster George Babbitt of Zenith, who desires "to seize something more than motor cars and a house before it's too late," but eventually bows to his conventional, materialistic fate. As Lewis biographer Mark Schorer observes, "Since the publication of Babbitt everyone has learned that conformity is the great price that our predominantly commercial culture exacts.... But when Babbitt was published, this was its revelation to Americans."
1925	Arrowsmith. Angered that the Columbia University trustees had overturned the Pulitzer Prize fiction jury's selection of Main Street (1921) and the Pulitzer committee's neglect of Babbitt (1923), Lewis declines the Pulitzer Prize for his novel about an idealistic doctor and scientist who encounters self-interest, corruption, and jealousy at every level of his profession.
1926	Mantrap. Lewis in "a holiday mood" is the critical consensus concerning this minor novel about a New York lawyer in the Canadian wilderness who is befriended by a backwoodsman and attracted to his flirtatious wife.
1927	Elmer Gantry. Lewis's satire on American religious fundamentalism provokes an uproar. Gantry is a religious charlatan who trades on his good looks and promotional skills to become a popular evangelist and a leader of a large Midwestern church. The novel is denounced by clergymen of all faiths, and its creator is threatened with violence by those who considers him an agent of the devil.
1928	The Man Who Knew Coolidge. Lewis continues his documentation of Babbittry in this extended ironic monologue by a businessman whose conventional opinions on many matters make Lewis's satirical points.
1929	Dodsworth. Retired businessman Samuel Dodsworth reassesses his marriage and his life while traveling in Europe. The novel marks a shift from Lewis's previous satirizing of Midwesterners by presenting a sympathetic portrait of his title character. The author would collaborate with Sidney Howard on a dramatic version in 1934.
1933	Ann Vickers. Lewis, criticized for his treatment of his women characters, undertakes a novel with a female protagonist, an idealistic social worker. The novel features an acknowledgment of lesbianism and a moral justification for extramarital relationships.
1934	Work of Art. Reviewers detect a less angry author in this account of the travails of a hotel manager driven to create the perfect inn.
1935	It Can't Happen Here. Lewis projects present-day Germany into America's future in this social satire describing the rise to power of an American dictator. The author would collaborate with John C. Moffitt in a 1936 dramatization simultaneously performed by all units of the Federal Theatre Project. Also published in 1935 is Lewis's Selected Short Stories.
1938	The Prodigal Parents. Lewis's novel describes the revolt of middle-aged parents from their two selfish and demanding offspring. Seen by many as second-rate Lewis, the novel draws fire from critic Malcolm Cowley, who charges that "From the first page to the last there wasn't a character that rises above the level of a good comic strip."
1940	Bethel Merriday. The novel traces a young actress's theatrical career from high school dramatics, through summer stock and a touring company, to her first Broadway appearance.
1943	Gideon Planish. Lewis's satirical attack on philanthropic scam-artists is generally greeted as a retread of previous themes he had visited in Babbitt and Elmer Gantry.
1945	Cass Timberlane. Subtitled "A Novel of Husbands and Wives," Lewis's book satirizes American marriage in a portrait of a Minnesota judge's second marriage to a woman half his age, along with side-glances at others' marital and extramarital relations. Critics generally regard this novel as the best of the author's books written after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1930.
1947	Kingsblood Royal. Lewis takes up the theme of racial intolerance in this problem novel about a Midwestern banker who learns that he is biracial. Ebony magazine recognizes Lewis's efforts to dispel racial preconceptions with an award. Some find the book a heavy-handed tract; others applaud the perceived renewed power of one of America's most controversial novelists.
1949	The God-Seeker. Lewis's penultimate novel is a historical story set in Minnesota in the 1850s. Intended as part of a projected series that Lewis never completed, it is mainly noteworthy for exposing the decline of Lewis's skills, evident as well in his final novel, World So Wide (1951), about an American in Europe, which would be published posthumously.

Quotes:

"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless."

"The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, The trouble with this country is..."

"Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead."

"What is love? It is the morning and the evening star."

"Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment."

"Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country."

See more famous quotes by Sinclair Lewis

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)