Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from theAmericas) to receive theNobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." Lewis wrote six popular novels:Main Street (1920),Babbitt (1922),Arrowsmith (1925),Elmer Gantry (1927),Dodsworth (1929), andIt Can't Happen Here (1935).
Several of his notable works were critical of Americancapitalism andmaterialism during theinterwar period.[1] Lewis is respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women.H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."[2]
Lewis was born February 7, 1885, in the village ofSauk Centre, Minnesota, to Edwin J. Lewis, a physician ofWelsh descent,[3] and Emma Kermott Lewis. He had two older siblings, Fred (born 1875) and Claude (born 1878). His father was a stern disciplinarian, who had difficulty relating to his sensitive, unathletic third son. Lewis's mother died in 1891. The next year Edwin married Isabel Warner, whom young Lewis apparently liked. Lewis began reading books while young, and kept a diary. Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly child—tall, extremely thin, stricken withacne and somewhat pop-eyed—had trouble making friends and pined after local girls. At the age of 13, he ran away from home and unsuccessfully tried to become a drummer boy in theSpanish–American War.[4] In late 1902, Lewis left home for a year at Oberlin Academy (the then-preparatory department ofOberlin College) to qualify for acceptance atYale University. While at Oberlin, he developed a religious enthusiasm that waxed and waned for much of his remaining teenage years. Lewis later became an atheist.[5] He entered Yale in 1903, but did not receive hisbachelor's degree until 1908, taking time off to work atHelicon Home Colony,Upton Sinclair'scooperative-living colony inEnglewood,New Jersey, and to travel toPanama. Lewis's undistinguished looks, country manners and seeming self-importance made it difficult for him to win and keep friends at Oberlin and Yale. He did make a few friends among the students and professors, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer.[6]
Lewis's earliest published creative work—romantic poetry and short sketches—appeared in theYale Courant and theYale Literary Magazine, of which he became an editor. After graduation Lewis moved from job to job and from place to place in an effort to make ends meet, writing fiction for publication and to chase away boredom. In the summer of 1908, Lewis worked as an editorial writer at a newspaper inWaterloo, Iowa. In September of that year, he moved to theCarmel-by-the-Sea writers' colony nearMonterey, California to work for theMacGowan sisters and to meet poetGeorge Sterling in person. He left Carmel after six months, moving to San Francisco where Sterling helped him get a job at theSan Francisco Evening Bulletin. Lewis returned to Carmel in spring 1910 and metJack London.[7][8]
While working for newspapers and publishing houses he developed a facility for turning out shallow, popular stories that were purchased by a variety of magazines. He also earned money by selling plots to London, including one for the latter's unfinished novelThe Assassination Bureau, Ltd.
Lewis's first published book wasHike and the Aeroplane, aTom Swift-stylepotboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham.
Upon moving toWashington, D.C., Lewis devoted himself to writing. As early as 1916, he began taking notes for a realistic novel about small-town life. Work on that novel continued through mid-1920, when he completedMain Street, which was published on October 23, 1920.[9] His biographerMark Schorer wrote in 1961 that the phenomenal success ofMain Street "was the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history".[10] Lewis's agent had the most optimistic projection of sales at 25,000 copies. In its first six months,Main Street sold 180,000 copies,[11] and within a few years, sales were estimated at two million.[12] Richard Lingeman wrote in 2002, "Main Street made [Lewis] rich—earning him about 3 million current dollars" (almost $5 million, as of 2022).[13]
Lewis followed up this first great success withBabbitt (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture andboosterism. The story was set in the fictional Midwestern town ofZenith, Winnemac, a setting to which Lewis returned in future novels, includingArrowsmith,Elmer Gantry,Gideon Planish andDodsworth.
Lewis continued his success in the 1920s withArrowsmith (1925), a novel about the challenges faced by an idealistic doctor. It was awarded thePulitzer Prize, which Lewis declined,[14] still upset thatMain Street had not won the prize.[15] It was adapted as a 1931Hollywood film directed byJohn Ford and starringRonald Colman which was nominated for fourAcademy Awards.
Next Lewis publishedElmer Gantry (1927), which depicted anevangelical minister as deeply hypocritical. The novel was denounced by many religious leaders and banned in some U.S. cities. It wasadapted for the screen more than a generation later as the basis of the 1960 movie starringBurt Lancaster, who earned aBest Actor Oscar for his performance in the title role. The film won two more awards as well.
Lewis next publishedDodsworth (1929), a novel about the most affluent and successful members of American society. He portrayed them as leading essentially pointless lives in spite of great wealth and advantages. The book was adapted for theBroadway stage in 1934 bySidney Howard, who also wrote the screenplay for the1936 film version directed byWilliam Wyler, which was a great success at the time. The film is still highly regarded; in 1990, it was selected for preservation in theNational Film Registry, and in 2005Time magazine named it one of the "100 Best Movies" of the past 80 years.[16]
During the late 1920s and 1930s, Lewis wrote many short stories for a variety of magazines and publications. "Little Bear Bongo" (1930) is a tale about a bear cub who wants to escape the circus in search of a better life in the real world, first published inCosmopolitan magazine.[17][18] The story was acquired byWalt Disney Pictures in 1940 for a possible feature film. World War II sidetracked those plans until 1947. Disney used the story (now titled "Bongo") as part of its featureFun and Fancy Free.
In 1930 Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first writer from the United States to receive the award, after he had been nominated byHenrik Schück, member of theSwedish Academy.[19] In the academy's presentation speech, special attention was paid toBabbitt. In his Nobel Lecture, Lewis praisedTheodore Dreiser,Willa Cather,Ernest Hemingway, and other contemporaries, but also lamented that "in America most of us—not readers alone, but even writers—are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues," and that America is "the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today." He also offered a profound criticism of the American literary establishment: "Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead."[20]
Sinclair Lewis examinesLewis Browne's new novel as they begin their 1943 lecture tour.Sinclair Lewis on the terrace of the villa "La Costa" in the San Miniato area in Tuscany
After winning the Nobel Prize, Lewis wrote eleven more novels, ten of which appeared in his lifetime. The best remembered isIt Can't Happen Here (1935), a novel about the election of afascist to the American presidency.
After praising Dreiser as "pioneering", that he "more than any other man, marching alone, usually unappreciated, often hated, has cleared the trail from Victorian and Howellsian timidity and gentility in American fiction to honesty and boldness and passion of life" in his Nobel Lecture in December 1930,[20] in March 1931 Lewis publicly accused Dreiser of plagiarizing a book by Dorothy Thompson, Lewis's wife, which led to a well-publicized fight, wherein Dreiser repeatedly slapped Lewis. Thompson initially made the accusation in 1928 regarding her work "The New Russia" and Dreiser's "Dreiser Goes to Russia", thoughThe New York Times also linked the dispute to competition between Dreiser and Lewis over the Nobel Prize.[21][22] Dreiser fired back that Sinclair's 1925 novelArrowsmith (adapted later that year as afeature film) was unoriginal and that Dreiser himself was first approached to write it, which was disputed by the wife ofArrowsmith's subject, microbiologist Dr.Paul de Kruif.[23][22] The feud carried on for some months.[24] In 1944, Lewis campaigned to have Dreiser recognized by theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters.[22]
After an alcoholic binge in 1937, Lewis checked in for treatment to theAusten Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital inStockbridge, Massachusetts. His doctors gave him a blunt assessment that he needed to decide "whether he was going to live without alcohol or die by it, one or the other."[25] Lewis checked out after ten days, lacking any "fundamental understanding of his problem", as one of his physicians wrote to a colleague.[25]
In the autumn of 1940, Lewis visited his old acquaintance,William Ellery Leonard, in Madison, Wisconsin. Leonard arranged a meeting with the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a tour of the campus. Lewis immediately became enthralled with the university and the city and offered to remain and teach a course in creative writing in the upcoming semester. For a month he was quite enamored of his professorial role.[26] Suddenly, on November 7, after giving only five classes to his select group of 24 students, he announced that he had taught them all that he knew. He left Madison the next day.[27]
In the 1940s, Lewis and rabbi-turned-popular-authorLewis Browne frequently appeared on the lecture platform together,[28] touring the United States and debating before audiences of as many as 3,000 people, addressing such questions as "Has the Modern Woman Made Good?", "The Country Versus the City", "Is the Machine Age Wrecking Civilization?", and "Can Fascism Happen Here?". The pair were described as "theGallagher and Shean of the lecture circuit" by Lewis biographer Richard Lingeman.[29]
In the early 1940s, Lewis lived inDuluth, Minnesota.[30] During this time, he wrote the novelKingsblood Royal (1947), set in the fictional city of Grand Republic, Minnesota, an enlarged and updated version of Zenith.[30] It is based on theSweet Trials inDetroit in which anAfrican-American doctor was denied the chance to purchase a house in a "white" section of the city. Lewis' creation of the novel was preceded by his introduction to the black community viaEdward Francis Murphy, aJosephite priest with whom he had attended school as a child.[31]Kingsblood was a powerful and very early contribution to thecivil rights movement.
In 1943, Lewis went to Hollywood to work on a script withDore Schary, who had just resigned as executive head ofMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer's low-budget film department to concentrate on writing and producing his own films. The resulting screenplay wasStorm In the West, "a traditional American western"[32] — except for the fact that it was also an allegory of World War II, with primary villain Hygatt (Hitler) and his henchmen Gribbles (Goebbels) and Gerrett (Goering) plotting to take over the Franson Ranch, the Poling Ranch, and so on. The screenplay was deemed too political by MGM studio executives and was shelved, and the film was never made.Storm In the West was finally published in 1963, with a foreword by Schary detailing the work's origins, the authors' creative process, and the screenplay's ultimate fate.
Sinclair Lewis had been a frequent visitor to Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 1946, he rented Thorvale Farm on Oblong Road. While working on his novelKingsblood Royal, he purchased this summer estate and upgraded theGeorgian mansion along with a farmhouse and many outbuildings. By 1948, Lewis had created a gentleman's farm consisting of 720 acres (290 ha) of agricultural and forest land. His intended residence in Williamstown was short-lived because of his medical problems.[33]
In 1914 Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger (1887–1981), an editor atVogue magazine. They had one son, Wells Lewis (1917–1944), named after British authorH. G. Wells. Serving as a U.S. Army lieutenant duringWorld War II, Wells Lewis was killed in action on October 29, 1944 amid Allied efforts to rescue the"Lost Battalion" in France.[34][35]Dean Acheson, the futureSecretary of State, was a neighbor and family friend in Washington, and observed that Sinclair's literary "success was not good for that marriage, or for either of the parties to it, or for Lewis's work" and the family moved out of town.[36]
Lewis divorced Grace on April 16, 1928.[7] On May 14, he married the noted international correspondant and newspaper columnistDorothy Thompson. In 1928, he and Dorothy purchased a second home in rural Vermont.[37] They had a son, Michael Lewis (1930–1975), who became a stage actor. Their marriage had virtually ended by 1937, and they divorced in 1942.[38]
Lewis died in Rome from advanced alcoholism, on January 10, 1951, aged 65. His body was cremated and his remains were buried at Greenwood Cemetery inSauk Centre, Minnesota. His final novelWorld So Wide (1951) was published posthumously.
William Shirer, a friend and admirer of Lewis, argued that Lewis did not die from alcoholism. He reported that Lewis had a heart attack and that his doctors advised him to stop drinking if he wanted to live. Lewis did not stop, and perhaps could not; he died when his heart stopped.[39]
It has become rather commonplace for so-called literary critics to write off Sinclair Lewis as a novelist. Compared to ...Fitzgerald,Hemingway,Dos Passos, andFaulkner ... Lewis lacked style. Yet his impact on modern American life ... was greater than all of the other four writers together.
Compared to his contemporaries, Lewis's reputation suffered a precipitous decline among literary scholars throughout the 20th century.[40] Despite his enormous popularity during the 1920s, by the 21st century most of his works had been eclipsed in prominence by other writers with less commercial success during the same time period, such asF. Scott Fitzgerald andErnest Hemingway.[41]
Samuel J. Rogal editedThe Short Stories of Sinclair Lewis (1904–1949), a seven-volume set published in 2007 byEdwin Mellen Press. The first attempt to collect all of Lewis's short stories.[47]
^Kauffman, Bill. America First!: Its History, Culture, and Politics. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1995. Print. "Sinclair Lewis was...town atheist..." Pg. 118
^abLewis, Sinclair; Schary, Dore (1963).Storm In the West. New York: Stein and Day.
^Gagnon, Order of the Carmelites, Pius M.Before Carmel Came to the Berkshires. Courtesy of the Williamstown Historical Museum, 1095 Main Street, Williamstown, MA 01267. pp. 19–22.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
^Steidl, Franz (2008)Lost Battalions: Going for Broke in the Vosges, Autumn 1944. New York: Random House. p. 87.ISBN0307537900
^Scharnhorst, Gary and Hofer, Matthew eds. (2012)Sinclair Lewis Remembered. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. p. 278.ISBN978-0-8173-8627-6
^Acheson, Dean (1962).Morning and Noon. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 44.
^Lewis, Sinclair (September 23, 1929),"Thoughts on Vermont",Vermont Weathervane; talk given to the Rutland, Vt. Rotary.
^David J. Eisenman, "Rereading Arrowsmith in the COVID-19 Pandemic".JAMA 324.4 (2020): 319–320.online
^Ellen Strenski, "It Can't Happen Here, or Has It? Sinclair Lewis's Fascist America".Terrorism and Political Violence 29.3 (2017): 425–436, compare with Donald Trump.https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2017.1304760
Agran, Edward Gale.Sinclair Lewis: The 1920's and the Shaping of American Identity. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.ISBN9780881469967.
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Hutchisson, James M. "Sinclair Lewis, Paul De Kruif, and the Composition of" Arrowsmith"."Studies in the Novel 24.1 (1992): 48–66.online
Hutchisson, James M. "All of Us Americans at 46: The Making of Sinclair Lewis'Babbitt."Journal of Modern Literature 18.1 (1992): 95–114.online
Hutchisson, James M.Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920–1930 (Penn State Press, 2010).online
Light, Martin.The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis (1975)online.
Love, Glen A.Babbitt: An American Life
Love, Glen A. "New Pioneering on the Prairies: Nature, Progress and the Individual in the Novels of Sinclair Lewis."American Quarterly 25.5 (1973): 558–577.online
Michels, Steven J.Sinclair Lewis and American Democracy (Lexington Books, 2016).
Poll, Ryan.Main Street and Empire. (2012).
Schorer, Mark, ed.Sinclair Lewis, a collection of critical essays (1962)online
Strenski, Ellen. "It Can't Happen Here, or Has It? Sinclair Lewis's Fascist America."Terrorism and Political Violence29.3 (2017): 425–436, compare with Donald Trump.https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2017.1304760
Tanner, Stephen L. "Sinclair Lewis and Fascism."Studies in the Novel 22.1 (1990): 57–66.online
Winans, Edward R. "Monarch Notes: Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt" (1965)online
Witschi, Nicolas. "Sinclair Lewis, the Voice of Satire, and Mary Austin's Revolt from the Village."American Literary Realism, 1870–1910 30.1 (1997): 75–90.online
Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 31.3, Autumn 1985, special issues on Sinclair Lewis.
Sinclair Lewis at 100: Papers Presented at a Centennial Conference, 1985.
