Sinclair Lewis

Born February 7, 1885 (Sauk Centre, Minnesota)
Died January 10, 1951 (Rome, Italy)

Novelist

"In any strict literary sense, he was not a great writer, but without his writing one cannot imagine modern American literature."

Biographer Mark Schorer

Sinclair Lewis may have been the most popular novelist of the Roaring Twenties. In such best-selling works as Main Street and Babbitt, he captured many details of daily life while exposing the dullness, conformity, and hypocrisy of average, middle-class citizens of the United States. Part of what made Lewis such an effective chronicler of this era was his great skill in imitating the speech of ordinary people. Some critics felt that his harsh social criticism reflected his internal struggle between a desire for respectability and a yearning for deeper meaning and discovery.

A restless wanderer and writer

Almost all of Sinclair Lewis's fiction features characters and settings drawn from the midwestern setting he knew so well. Born Harry Sinclair Lewis in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, he was one of three sons of a physician. His mother died when he was six, and his father soon remarried. Lewis remembered his father, who sometimes allowed his son to accompany him when he visited patients, as stern and dignified, and he admired his dedication to hard work. Nevertheless,

Lewis felt an early dissatisfaction with small-town life. When he was only thirteen, he made an unsuccessful attempt to run away from home to become a soldier in the Spanish-American War (1898).

Lewis grew into a tall, slim, book-loving young man with a face scarred by acne, a factor that no doubt contributed to his shyness. In 1903 he enrolled in Yale University (located in New Haven, Connecticut), where he felt like an outsider but contributed many stories, poems, and essays to various campus publications. During his first summer vacation, he sailed to England on a cattle boat, thus beginning a pattern of restless travel that would last his entire life.

Lewis returned to Yale in the fall, but he left in 1906 and spent several months as a janitor at a utopian community (based on the ideal of communal living, in which every member is equal) run by the famous novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). After short periods spent in New York City and the Central American country of Panama, Lewis returned to Yale in December 1907 and graduated the following June.

For the next few years he wandered between Iowa, New York, California, and Washington, D.C., working as a newspaper reporter and occasionally selling his short stories. Despite all of his travels, however, he always felt the pull of his native Midwest. While living in New York in 1914, Lewis married Grace Hegger. Five years later the couple's son Wells was born (he would be killed in World War II [1939–45]).

A changing society

As the 1920s approached, U.S. society was changing. For the first time in the nation's history, more people were living in towns and cities than on farms; the population was becoming more diverse as immigrants streamed in; and new developments in science, technology, and industry were dramatically altering the ways in which people lived, worked, and thought. Literature was changing too, as some leading writers practiced a new kind of realism while others offered the comfort of romanticism, sentiment, and an escape from ordinary life. In his own writing, Lewis was influenced both by contemporary trends and by the great authors of the nineteenth century, such as Charles Dickens (1812–1870) and H.G. Wells (1866–1946). The works of these authors feature a concern for social issues, satire, and sentimentality, qualities that would be evident in Lewis's writing as well.

Having settled in New York in 1910, Lewis began a period of experimentation and development, writing short stories in a conventional style marked by a light, humorous tone. After selling stories to such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, he published his first novel, Our Mr. Wrenn: The RomanticAdventures of a Gentle Man (1914). Like Lewis himself, the hero of this book ships out for England but eventually returns to an ordinary existence in the United States.

The Trail of the Hawk (1915) also involves a young man's quest for fulfillment. In The Job: An American Novel (1917), the story of an ambitious young woman's experiences in work and love, Lewis attempted for the first time to re-create the speech of the salesmen he had encountered during his frequent travels. Generally, however, these early novels are not considered as accomplished as his later works.

Exposing small-town dullness and hypocrisy

The first of Lewis's truly distinguished novels appeared, very appropriately, in the first year of the 1920s. Main Street (1920) centered on what Lewis would term "the village virus," meaning the negative effects of life in the stifling atmosphere of a small U.S. town. It takes place in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, closely modeled after Lewis's hometown, where young, idealistic college graduate Carol Kennicott has gone to live after marrying an older doctor. She has imagined Gopher Prairie as a charming village full of good-hearted folk, but she finds the actual town dreary and run-down and the people dull, ignorant, and hypocritical. They are not interested in her ideas about bringing culture and improvements to their town. Carol leaves for a year to live in Washington, D.C., but she finally returns to Gopher Prairie and settles back into her old routines.

Despite its harsh criticism of U.S. society, the book was a best-seller. Readers were both shocked and fascinated by this new view of familiar places and people, and they rushed to buy the book. Lewis became a literary celebrity, a stature he would maintain throughout the decade. He was particularly praised for his ability to accurately imitate the speech patterns of ordinary U.S. citizens.

Main Street was soon followed by Babbitt (1922), which most commentators consider Lewis's best work. The central character is businessman and booster (someone who enthusiastically, and rather mindlessly, promotes mainstream culture) George Follansbee Babbitt, the middle-aged, middle-class manager of a real-estate office in the fictional town of Zenith. In detailed prose that paints a vivid picture of daily life in the 1920s, Lewis tells the story of Babbitt's vague dissatisfaction with his conservative, proper life and his dreams of escape as he begins an extramarital affair and flirts with liberal political views. In the end, however, Babbitt returns to his wife and family, adhering once again to his old habits and views.

Though some critics question whether Lewis was successful in blending within one character the opposing strands of conformity and rebellion, Babbitt was as popular with readers as Main Street had been. Lewis was lauded for his portrayal of many of the major issues and themes of the 1920s, including Prohibition (the popular name for the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks), consumerism, and the conflict between parents and children. In addition, the word "Babbitt" became a permanent part of the U.S. vocabulary, signifying someone who is an uncultured, narrow-minded conformist.

Lewis produced another unflattering portrayal of U.S. society in his next novel, Arrowsmith (1926), which also takes place in and around Zenith. The title character is a brilliant medical researcher who struggles between his yearning for meaningful work and the demands of both his materialistic society and his own family. Lewis was named the winner of the Pulitzer Prize (a prestigious yearly award) for Arrowsmith, but he declined it on the grounds such awards were corrupting to writers. Probably the main reason that Lewis declined the Pulitzer, however, was because he was still angry over the judges' failure to award it to Babbitt four years earlier.

More success, and then a decline

Lewis's next major novel offered an extremely negative view of the fundamentalism (a form of Christianity that includes the belief that the stories in the Bible are literally true) that had gained strength during the 1920s. This was a time when many people, shaken by perceived threats to traditional values in their fast-moving society, turned to such dynamic and deeply conservative religious leaders as Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944; see entry). The title character of Elmer Gantry (1927) is a fraudulent evangelist (someone who tries to persuade others to follow his or her own religious beliefs) who engages in a series of deceptions, including adultery. Many readers were angered by the book, and a number of critics felt that Lewis's portrayal of Gantry was too extreme.

After writing The Man Who Knew Coolidge (1928), a series of monologues by a shallow, hypocritical character named Lowell Schmaltz (another resident of Zenith), Lewis turned to the theme of the U.S. citizen abroad. In Dodsworth (1929) he chronicled the travels and soul-searching of the central character, a wealthy automobile manufacturer who travels through Europe with his wife and is stirred by the art and history he encounters there. By the end of the novel, Dodsworth has left his shallow wife and formed a relationship with a calmer, more serious woman, and he has made plans to become a builder of artistically designed homes.

Lewis's success in capturing with accuracy and power both the material details and the deeper themes of the Roaring Twenties was confirmed in 1930, when he became the first U.S. citizen to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In accepting this honor, Lewis praised a number of other promising young writers, including Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) and William Faulkner (1897–1962). Those who expected Lewis to achieve new heights of accomplishment after the 1920s were disappointed, however, for his career now began a steady decline.

During the remaining two decades of his life, Lewis seemed to run out of ideas and insights. His later work lacked the satire and realism of his earlier novels and became increasingly sentimental. Neither critics nor readers were enthusiastic about Ann Vickers (1933), the story of a woman's search for fulfillment, or It Can't Happen Here (1935), in which the United States is taken

Pioneering Journalist Dorothy Thompson

Married to novelist Sinclair Lewis in 1928, Dorothy Thompson was a talented and celebrated writer herself. Her articles, radio broadcasts, and weekly newspaper columns made her one of the best-known journalists in the United States.

Thompson was born in 1894 in Lancaster, New York. She was an adventurous and sometimes rebellious child who did not get along with her stepmother. Sent to live with her aunts in Chicago, Illinois, Thompson finished high school there and then attended Syracuse University in New York. She graduated in 1914, determined to become a writer.

In 1920 Thomson traveled to Europe. While crossing the ocean on a ship, she met a group of Zionists, people who were working to establish a Jewish state in the Middle Eastern land of Palestine. Sheconvinced a news service to let her write an article on the subject, beginning her career as one of very few female journalists working in Europe.

Thompson covered such stories as worker strikes in Italy and the Irish independence movement. Assigned to head the New York Evening Post's Berlin office in 1925, Thompson moved to Germany, where she would live for varying periods over the next nine years. After several failed efforts, in 1931 she met and interviewed Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party.

In the article Thompson wrote about Hitler for Cosmopolitan magazine, Thompson described him as unimpressive and incapable of ruling Germany. Over the next few years, Hitler gained more and more power, eventually becoming Germany's leader. This greatly alarmed Thompson. Her articles denouncing Hitler, and particularly his hatred for and harsh treatment of Jews, resulted in her being forced to leave Germany in 1934.

Meanwhile, Thompson had married Sinclair Lewis in 1928 and given birth to a son two years later. The relationship, however, grew strained under the pressure of two careers. The couple would divorce in 1942.

In 1936 Thompson began writing a column called "On the Record" for the New York Tribune. She used this forum, as well as frequent radio broadcasts, to issue urgent warnings about the troubling developments in Europe, particularly the growing flood of refugees and the rising power of the Nazis. The next year, Thompson began writing a column for the Ladies Home Journal that would appear for the next twenty years. She also wrote articles for such publications as the Saturday Evening Post and Foreign Affairs, building a reputation as one of the most influential U.S. journalists.

During World War II Thompson advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the refugee problem and reported on the war, also making radio broadcasts into Germany to urge its people to rebel against Hitler. In the decades following the war she wrote about such issues as tensions between Arabs and Israelis, the women's movement, and the dangers of nuclear weapons. She died in 1961.

over by a tyrannical ruler. In his subsequent novels—including Gideon Planish (1943), Cass Timberlane (1945), Kingsblood Royal (1947), and The God-Seeker (1949)—Lewis tried unsuccessfully to breathe life into such themes as fraudulent charity organizations, marriage, and racial prejudice.

Meanwhile, Lewis's personal life also disintegrated as he succumbed to alcoholism and restless wandering. He had married journalist Dorothy Thompson in 1928 (having divorced his first wife) and fathered another son, Michael, born in 1930; the two were divorced in 1942.

Lewis died of a heart attack in Rome, Italy, in 1951. Despite the disappointments of his later career, Lewis is still considered an important figure in literature and especially of the 1920s. His biographer, Mark Schorer, has suggested that, "In any strict literary sense, he was not a great writer, but without his writing one cannot imagine modern American literature."

For More Information

Books

Dooley, D.J. The Art of Sinclair Lewis. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1967.

Fleming, Robert E., and Esther Fleming. Sinclair Lewis: A Reference Guide. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980.

Grebstein, Sheldon N. Sinclair Lewis. New York: Twayne, 1962.

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

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

Love, Glen A. Babbitt: An American Life. New York: Twayne, 1993.

Schorer, Mark. Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.

Web Sites

"Sinclair Lewis and His Life." The Sinclair Lewis Society Web Page. Available online at http://www.english.ilstu.edu/separry/sinclairlewis/. Accessed on June 24, 2005.

"Sinclair Lewis—Autobiography." Nobelprize.org. Available online at http://www.nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1930/lewis-autobio.html. Accessed on June 24, 2005.