Harry 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). □

Sinclair Lewis

Born: February 7, 1885
Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Died: January 10, 1951
Rome, Italy
American writer

Although Sinclair Lewis was one of the most famous American writers of the 1920s, today his popular, mildly satirical (poking fun at human folly) novels are valued mainly for their descriptions of social institutions and relationships of that time.

Early life

Harry Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, on February 7, 1885, the third son of Edwin J. Lewis and Emma Kermott Lewis. His father, grandfather, and older brother were all small-town doctors. Lewis was a lonely, awkward boy who liked to read. He began writing while in high school, and some of his articles appeared in Sauk Centre newspapers. After high school Lewis left Minnesota to study at Yale University in Connecticut, interrupting his education in 1907 to work briefly at Helicon Hall, a New Jersey socialist colony (a group of people living and working together as equals for the benefit of all) set up by the writer Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). After his graduation in 1908, Lewis spent several years doing newspaper and editorial work in various parts of the United States. His first four novels were all unsuccessful.

In 1920 Lewis achieved instant worldwide recognition with the publication of Main Street, the story of a gifted young girl married to a dull, considerably older village doctor who tries to bring culture and imagination to empty, small-town life. Next Lewis focused on the American businessman in Babbitt (1922), perhaps his major work. Lewis purposely wrote in a fantastic style, ignoring formal plot development or structure. The creation of George F. Babbitt, an intellectually empty, immature man of weak morals who nevertheless remains a lovable comic figure, is Lewis's greatest accomplishment. One critic remarked, "If Babbitt could write, he would write like Sinclair Lewis."

Later novels and the Nobel Prize

Lewis's next popular novel, Arrowsmith (1925), returned to the form of Main Street to portray a young doctor's battle to maintain his dignity in a petty, dishonest world. Despite its often simplistic look at science as a means of saving one's soul, Arrowsmith was offered the Pulitzer Prize. Lewis, however, immediately refused the honor because the terms of the award required that it be given not for a work of value, but for a work that presents "the wholesome atmosphere of American Life."

Elmer Gantry (1927), an extreme assault on religious hypocrisy (the false expression of the appearance of goodness), seems more concerned with the main character's morals than with the failings of organized religion. Dodsworth (1929), a sympathetic description of a wealthy, retired manufacturer seeking happiness in Europe, is more successful. Here Lewis makes little effort to hide his liking of, and even admiration for, the values described earlier in Babbitt. In 1930 Sinclair Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but this honor brought him little personal happiness.

Lewis produced a great deal of writing in the following years, but none of these works were as successful as his earlier efforts. Ann Vickers (1933) traces the career of an unstable woman who starts as a social worker and ends as the mistress of a politician; 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 Native American Indians of Minnesota in the 1840s.

Final years

Lewis spent his last years traveling throughout Europe, unable to find publishers for his work and aware that his impact on American literature was far less than his early admirers had led him to believe. Lewis was overshadowed by other American writers, including Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) and William Faulkner (1897–1962), who had yet to appear when Lewis first attracted attention. Later critics also felt that the Nobel Prize Lewis had won in 1930 should have gone to the stronger novelist Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) instead.

Married and divorced twice, in Lewis's last years he retreated almost completely from other people. Increasingly self-conscious about his physical decline, he refused to be seen even by his few friends. He died on January 10, 1951, of a heart attack in a small-town clinic just outside of Rome, Italy. Although Lewis is not considered to have been a great writer, his place in the history of American literature is secure.

For More Information

Hutchisson, James M. The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920–1930. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

Lewis, Sinclair. Minnesota Diary, 1942–46. Edited by George Killough. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 2000.

Lingeman, Richard. Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street. New York: Random House, 2002.

Lingeman, Richard R. Sinclair Lewis: America's Angry Man. New York: Random House, 2002.

Lewis, [Harry] Sinclair (1885–1951),born in Sauk Centre, Minn., graduated from Yale (1907), although he left college for a time to work at the Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's socialist experiment in New Jersey. After engaging in hack writing, travel in the U.S., and editorial positions in New York, he wrote several minor novels, including Our Mr. Wrenn (1914), The Trail of the Hawk (1915), and The Innocents (1917). The Job (1917), a realistic novel of life in New York, was his first distinguished work of fiction, and with the publication of Main Street (1920) he achieved wide recognition. This story, which contrasts cosmopolitan and Midwestern small‐town culture, was followed by Babbitt (1922), a satirical portrayal of an “average” American businessman, and Arrowsmith (1925), on the career of a man of science. The latter was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1926, which Lewis declined. Elmer Gantry (1927) is a satirical novel concerned with religious shams and hypocrisy in the U.S., and The Man Who Knew Coolidge (1928) is a depiction of a mediocre businessman. These books, although inferior as fiction, are examples of the author's popular iconoclasm, influenced by the criticism of H.L. Mencken. Dodsworth (1929), generally ranked with his better novels, is a sympathetic portrayal of a retired manufacturer who seeks new interests in European travel.

In 1930 Lewis became the first American author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for distinction in world literature. His later books are Ann Vickers (1933), about a woman social reformer; Work of Art (1934), the story of a successful businessman; It Can't Happen Here (1935), concerned with a future fascist revolt in the U.S.; Selected Short Stories (1935); The Prodigal Parents (1938), on family relations; Bethel Merriday (1940), about a girl in a theatrical touring company; Gideon Planish (1943), an exposé of organized philanthropy; Cass Timberlane (1945), about the marital problems of a middle‐aged Minnesota judge and his young wife; Kingsblood Royal (1947), on race prejudice as met with by a Midwestern banker who finds he has some black blood; The God Seeker (1949), about a New England missionary to Minnesota Indians; and World So Wide (1951), about the romances of a Coloradan in Italy with young American girls. From Main Street to Stockholm (1952) collects letters, and The Man from Main Street (1953) collects essays and ephemera.

Lewis is an ingenious satirist of the American middle class, mimicking its speech and actions with what seems to be photographic realism but is actually more or less good‐humored caricature. Critics have accused him of romanticism in overstressing his effects, and often declared that he was himself proof that his charges against American culture were just. It Can't Happen Here shows his shift from large‐scale social analysis to a more immediate political concern, with a bias seemingly in favor of middle‐class liberalism. His plays include Dodsworth (1934), written with Sidney Howard; Jayhawker (1934), about Free‐Soil battles in Kansas before the Civil War, written with Lloyd Lewis; and It Can't Happen Here (1936), with John C. Moffitt. Mark Schorer wrote a comprehensive biography, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (1961).

Lewis, Sinclair (1885–1951), novelist.Although he attended Yale, Harry Sinclair Lewis, a native of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, always remained something of a provincial midwesterner. Deeply insecure about his personal appearance, ill at ease among intellectuals, prone to alcoholic binges, and in and out of well‐publicized marriages, he remains a perennial critical problem, an uncouth realist in an age of uncertain modernism. Perhaps the most gifted mimic in American letters, he was best at seeming to caricature small‐town businessmen and religious hucksters.

Although cosmopolitan eastern critics such as H.L. Mencken assumed that he shared their scorn at the cultural wasteland west of the Hudson River, Lewis in fact was deeply sympathetic to those he only appeared to satirize. Main Street (1920), loosely based on Sauk Centre, and Babbitt (1922), about a Republican real‐estate broker in the fictional midwestern city of Zenith, entered the language as generic terms for the aridity of American culture and the emptiness of business values. Both novels became best‐sellers, securing Lewis's reputation and epitomizing the post–World War I mood of cynicism and condescension toward rural and provincial America. Almost as popular were Arrowsmith (1925), on the pressures that constricted a career devoted to medical research; Elmer Gantry (1927), featuring a flamboyantly hypocritical touring evangelist; and Dodsworth (1929), about the impact of European values and behavior patterns on a seemingly conventional business couple.

Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930, Lewis won a huge following abroad, as foreigners saw in his work some essence of capitalist democracy. His later works, dealing with social problems, included Ann Vickers (1933), on gender issues, It Can't Happen Here (1935), on fascism; and Kingsblood Royal (1947), on race and miscegenation. Sinclair Lewis remains a somewhat ambiguous observer of American mores, a critic of bourgeois life who was deeply implicated in its consumer values and advertising techniques.
See also Literature: Since World War I; Twenties, The; Urbanization.

Bibliography

Mark Schorer , Sinclair Lewis, 1961.
Christopher P. Wilson , White Collar Fictions: Class and Social Representation in American Literature, 1885–1925, 1992.

Robert M. Crunden

Sinclair Lewis 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).

Lewis, (Harry) Sinclair (1885–1951), American novelist, achieved success with his novel Main Street (1920), which describes with realism and satire the dullness of life in a small mid-western town. He strengthened his reputation with Babbitt (1922), the story of George Babbitt, a prosperous and self-satisfied house- agent in the mid-western town of Zenith; Arrowsmith (1925); Elmer Gantry (1927), a satiric view of mid-western religious evangelism; and Dodsworth (1929). Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930.

Lewis, (Harry) Sinclair (1885–1951) US writer. Lewis' debut novel Main Street (1920) introduced his central theme, the hypocrisy and parochialism of small town, Midwestern society. Babbitt (1922), regarded as his greatest work, is the story of a businessman forced to conform. Lewis refused the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith (1925). In 1930, he became the first US writer to receive the Nobel Prize in literature.