Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
THE towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and beautifully office-buildings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Hapless salesman in prepostmodern world
Sinclair Lewis wrote many novels about flawed, non-heroic, Americans living in the midwestern heartland of the 1920s.
This one is about George Babbit, a real estate broker living in the up-and-coming city of Zenith. Babbit is a community booster, civic club member, and proud family man. He has an electric cigar lighter in his car and a fashionable sleeping porch on his house. Just the sort of citizen beloved by the Chamber of Commerce.
After describing the details of George's happy, respectable, and utterly unexamined existence, Lewis throws wrenches into the works. An old friend goes off-kilter. Bored by evenings at home with his rather bland wife, George starts hanging out with a fast and loose crowd. He tries out "liberal ideas" in the way that he might try out a new suit, and flirts with the idea of dumping his suburban existence and living in the woods.
George comes off as a hapless boob, vaguely aware that things are terribly wrong with his life and society but unable to effectively deal with them.
Some of the issues Lewis addresses are a bit dated, but _Babbit_ remains an interesting look at American society. Of note is the cringe-inducing lot of married women, and the lost world of railway travel.

Attempted Return To Innocence
This certainly is a wonderful creation. Lewis recognized the jumbled priorities of Americans in the early twentieth century.Out of this relization, which became more obvious and blatant the more he considered it, he created Babbit.He designed this character to show that financial success is worthless.In the capitalistic haven of America, financial success is pushed to the forefront of our hopes and expectations.At the same time,Man is endowed with a yearning to return to nature, to innocence.Babbit heroicly attempts such a return.Lewis also sends us a message similar to Thoreau's.He questions the neccesities of life and reasons for our tempestuous need to complicate them.As a bonus, the pages are riddled with wit and humor.I heartily recomend this novel.

Timeless
Initially I put this down years ago, unable to finish it, but later picked up again, and from page 200 on, this novel takes off.

The plot is essentially about a middle manager in his 50s who has a midlife crisis and goes on a binge with bohemians.Sinclair takes his time in blowing up all the details of Babbit's alleged extra-marrital affair and its consequences. (I won't tell you if he really does--you have to read it).

This novel comes alive through intelligent dialogue, an ever-moving story-line that stays in real-time (what Updike later drew on with his own brand of super-realism),with a deep and satisfying examination of the ever-shifting and garrelous Babbit, husband and father of two, who safeguards his modest material success in the fictional town of "Zenith."

Multi-layered, with keen observations of American consumerism, with a hard look at marriage, spirituality, business, fatherhood and mid-life crisis.

Written in 1922, the subject matter is universal and timeless. This book has laid the groundwork for many other novels that portray the American business man: Updike's "Rabbit" series, for one, (who he quotes from Babbit in the opening of "Rabbit Run"), The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the Organization Man and others.

I'm glad I returned to this book, and recommend it to anyone frustrated by the often shallow and dehumanizing world of business.Keep a coffee at your side, though.

A really boring classic
This classic by Sinclair Lewis is set sometime in the early 1900s (1920s ?).It was written to show the shallowness of life of the average, middle-class men of the day in their pursuit for money, popularity, etc.

I found this book to be incredibly long and boring, but I think that was part of the point.At any rate, it's a classic, and in the words of a great literary critic, "These works are no longer on trial - the readers are." ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A good, dull friend, not a playmate, cures loneliness
For whatever reason you choose to read the novels of Sinclair Lewis and no matter what you are looking for (e.g.his attack on Rotary Clubs, amusing lists of place names, 20th century American colloguialisms, etc.), there are certain people or things which will pop up at you again and again. There is a quixotic young man or woman (or both) yearning to chuck job, neighborhood, small town or boredom for travel and adventure in at least relatively exotic places, yearning hotly for "somewhere else." There is personal loneliness and the hero's growing sense that being lonely is the greatest problem of his life. Experiments are made to counteract loneliness: plunging feverishly into work, seeking unattainable women friends, settling for conventional but reliable male friends, or such blind alleys as drink and dissipation.

Can narrowly focused work alone make a man happy? Must a man have more interests than his work, no matter how distracting those "temptations" are: e.g. golf, a wife, going to operas, children, travel? Can anyone possibly "have it all?" If not, is it desirable to strike a balance between work and play?

Lewis's first novel, the 1914 OUR MR. WRENN: THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN probes such questions. William Wrenn, age 34 in 1910, is a bachelor who frequents motion picture halls and saves his pennies for travel to fabulous India or Java. He has worked for some years for a New York job house buying and selling knickknacks. One fine day, he gets a modest legacy which permits him to quit his work, give notice to the landlady of his boarding house and ship out on a cattle boat for Liverpool. During a few weeks in London and tramping about the English countryside Our Mr. Wrenn continues evolving into his latent personality "Bill Wrenn," a bully boy tough who had proven himself with his fists on the cattle boat. In London Wrenn meets the gorgeous red headed art student Istra Nash who teaches him to "play" with her and be on the lookout with her for rare "interesting persons. But Istra treats him in a motherly albeit palsy way and usually calls him "Mousey," a name he only slowly outgrows thanks to the all too often listless "Bill Wrenn" within him. Istra's key question to him is, "Who do you play with --know?"

In Wrenn's case, at least, "playing" or dalliance is not a permanent solution to loneliness. He had tried a he man version of it earlier with a comrade on the cattle boat. But playmates of either sex are footloose and do not want permanence or commitment. Nor is Wrenn much tempted by alcohol or sex. Our Mr. Wrenn decides that for him happiness will somehow have to be built on "The Job" back in New York, on any humdrum unimaginative friends he will be lucky to meet and on not much else.

Back in New York, Our Mr. Wrenn hurls himself into work with his new found Bill Wrenn drive and hustle and begins to rise within the company. He marries Nelly Croubel, a lingerie saleswoman who offers not much as a playmate, but is kind and loving. His striving, his quest all fall into place for William/Bill during an ordinary walk with his ordinary girl (Ch. XVI): "Then, in a millionth of a second, he who had been a wanderer in the lonely grey regions of a detached man's heart knew the pity of love, all its emotion, and the infinite care for the beloved that makes a man of a rusty sales-clerk." -OOO-
... Read more

Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of (Harry) Sinclair Lewis, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 6255 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
In this sardonic portrait of the up-and-coming middle class during the prosperous 1920s, Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) perfectly captures the sound, the feel, and the attitudes of the generation that created the cult of consumerism. With a sharp eye for detail and keen powers of observation, Lewis tracks successful realtor George Babbitt's daily struggles to rise to the top of his profession while maintaining his reputation as an upstanding family man.

On the surface, Babbitt appears to be the quintessential middle-class embodiment of conservative values and enthusiasm for the well-to-do lifestyle of the small entrepreneur. But beneath the complacent facade, he also experiences a rising, nameless discontent. These feelings eventually lead Babbitt into risky escapades that threaten his family and his standing in the community.

Though published eighty years ago, this acerbic depiction of majority Americans, obsessed with success, material comfort, and mid-life doubt, still rings true. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (5)

A great find.
I actually stumbled into this book because of my interest in the art of Grant Wood.I purchased an old special edition of Main Street that was illustrated by Wood.After enjoying the illustrations, I decided that I might as well read the book.Well, that led to Babbitt and Elmer Gantry (with two more on order.)As I looked for Sinclair Lewis books, I saw this biography by Lingeman and was impressed by the great reviews (and the low price of used copies.)I decided to give it a try.In biographies, I mainly read about Victorian scientists but I have enjoyed a few political and artist's bio's. I did not know what I was in for with this incredibly interesting 554 page story of one of the most interesting people I can imagine.Lingeman is a master who combines an incredible amount of research with a writing style that will make you feel as if you are reading a page-turner of a novel.If you have read this far without buying the book of course you are interested in Sinclair Lewis so go ahead, buy the book, and enjoy it.

Justice
Schorer's 1961 biography of Lewis, while well researched, came off as particularly mean-spirited. I could never understand why a biographer would take on the huge task ofan exhaustive biography when they seem to distain it's subject so much.
Finally Mr. Lingeman has given us a more even handed look at one of America's most neglected authors. Perhaps it was the great popularity of Lewis during the 1920's that brought about a more recent reaction against him but it seems that the time is ripe for another look at this most American of American authors and the Lingeman book makes that clear. This biography is clearly as in depth as Schorer's but, fortunately, does not have some strange axe to grind. Besides, the life of Sinclair Lewis makes for some interesting reading when it is put forth honestly.

Interesting and enjoyable
Okay, I haven't read Mark Schorer's earlier biography, but I have read a number of other critical works about Lewis over the years, and more than half of Lewis' twenty-odd novels.

I found this book fascinating and insightful, and I was moved by Lingeman's final argument - that the time is ripe for a rediscovery of Lewis, that the "license to consider Lewis an irrelevant hack" that Schorer's book had conferred on the academic world is expired. I think it's criminal that Lewis is hardly even read in colleges today, while Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Cather, Faulkner, Steinbeck, etc., are still read and discussed in detail. (Nothing against these great writers, all of whom I've read extensively, but Lewis was there first and made all their paths to brilliance easier.)

As long as America is still loaded with familiar George Babbitts, Elmer Gantrys, Sam Dodsworths, Carol Kennicotts, etc., Lewis will be a classic (if not THE classic) American novelist. And Lingeman's biography presents a revealing picture of the unique, angry, ultimately lonely man behind these characters.

After Schorer
As one of a diminishing number of whole-hearted Lewis enthusiasts in America, having read all of Lewis's novels except *Hike and the Aeroplane,* I have to say that Mark Schorer's biography of 1961 remains the standard. Lingeman does fill in details Schorer wouldn't or couldn't and adds some tangential specifics for which devotees such as I can be grateful. A meeting between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Lewis in 1922 is sketched in (but how does Lingeman know what they talked about after they closeted themselves with a bottle of gin?); we know more about (say) the circumstances surrounding Lewis's researches for *Gideon Planish,* and Lingeman gets down to the brief nitty-gritty of Lewis's sexual performance, but he has no fresh overall understanding, nor are his specifics brought into new focus, or any special focus. Instead, he builds upon Schorer's essential claim: Lewis's limitations and strengths as a writer are his commitment to surface; his refusal to look into himself comes from the painful and constricting boyhood that stunted the writer even as it enabled him.

I'd nominate Schorer's biography as a great one, qualifying my appraisal only by a parodying Hemingway on Gilbert Seldes: "It could only have been better if Sinclair Lewis had been better." The figure in the carpet, the consistent understanding that ties a book together, is vividly present on every page of Schorer. And unlike Lingeman, Schorer could talk with Lewis's two wives, plus Claude and Michael Lewis, Harry Maule, and Bennett Cerf; his account of Lewis's horrifying, seedy end in Italy is enlivened by portraits of the dermatologist Vincenzo Lapiccirella, the old servant whose refusal to discuss Lewis's alcoholism Schorer finds "engagingly reticent" (Schorer bristles with savage and delicious irony), and the enigmatic Alexander Manson. Beside Schorer, Lingeman is thin and pale, but if Lewis's fixing of quintessential American types and his sense of humor and sense of outrage appeal, you'll want to read his biography anyway, as I did.

Highly readable, very informative
I had high hopes for this book before I started, and then had the rare pleasure of having those hopes surpassed.In this immensely readable biography, Lingeman brings us the Sinclair Lewis we have always wanted to admire, but perhaps never dared: the flawed, brash, idealistic cynic that put on the page a world as American as he was.Over and over I was struck by how relevent the world of Lewis was, and how like our own it continues to be.

Neither heavily academic, nor breezy and light, this biography does exactly what it is supposed to do -- shines light upon a writer we remember, but never really knew. ... Read more

Book Description
Since the 1922 publication of Babbitt, its eponymous anti-hero-a real estate broker and relentless social climber inhabiting a Midwestern town called Zenith-has become a symbol of stultifying values and middle class hypocrisy. ... Read more

Book Description
The only one of Sinclair Lewis's later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith, It Can't Happen Here is a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression when America was largely oblivious to Hitler's aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a President who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, rampant promiscuity, crime, and a liberal press. Now finally back in print, It Can't Happen Here remains uniquely important, a shockingly prescient novel that's as fresh and contemporary as today's news. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (38)

Be Militant for at least Once
Lee Roscoe has recently (© 2005) adapted Sinclair Lewis's novel It Can't Happen Here to the stage. This play is a militant agitprop work and is available to people who want to produce it for an audience in a militant perspective to fight against the present erring developments of Bush's presidency and to advocate the necessity to impeach him and his vice-president as the last defense against their systematic attack on the Constitution, hence the American people and the World's population. This enables us to rediscover the plot imaginedby Sinclair Lewis in the mid 30s who was afraid of the possibility for a populist candidate to become President of the US and lead the country to some kind of fascist dictatorship. Apparently this fear isbeing revived in the world, or rather in some countries by the war on terror launched by President Bush and that has brought some fairly frightening developments against basic civil rights: the possibility for the police to know what you borrow or check in and out in public libraries and the restriction under which the librarian is not to tell you about it; the negation of habeas corpus for a whole set of people who have been imprisoned in Guantanamo for years without any basic constitutional or plainly universally recognized rights like the possibility to communicate with the outside world, the right to have a lawyer, the right to be informedabout the charges that are leveled at them, the right to be tried in a normal court in due time and following proper procedures, etc (the procedure is so unbelievably wrong that quite a few of these prisoners have been released without any charges after several years of detention amounting to so many years of suffering, social cultural or professional damage, and even psychological torturing, and no damages, compensation or reparation when released); and of course the normal reaction of some American people who believed what they were told and started leveling harsh words at opponents and even at times taking harsh measures against opponents. The text of this play is being circulated on the Internet. The same mindset is developing in other countries, like for instance in France where some consider that the election of Nicolas Sarkozy for instance is leading to the same kind of mechanism that will necessarily lead to a police state if not fascism.
The process imagined by Sinclair Lewis is simple: a populist elected candidate and the defense of the absolute freedom of all markets to liberate the creative energy of capitalism and get us out of all possible crises. This will lead to work camps for unemployed people; the ruin of all independent newspapers and the hunting down of all alternative expression and media as unpatriotic if not anti-patriotic; the ruin of all businesses that do not support the policy of the President; the creation of some kind of militia to keep an eye on everyone; the increase of the powers of this militia that would have authority over all other police forces and even over justice. Of course one of the first triggering elements this President would need is some menace from a foreign country, hence a war against this menacing country, be it true or imagined, and a designated accomplice inside the country defined as anarchist, communist or terrorist. And the old world is then perverted enough for fascism to be born in the very sanctuary of human rights and civil liberties, and then "M and M" becomes Militia Man.
It is interesting to see this revival. It reveals several elementsthat we must keep in mind if we want to understand what is happening in the world. People are really afraid of the future in this changing world. People are afraid of change because it precisely is change and comfort means no change.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Characteristic Lewis
As other reviews here have stated, this is not a subtle book. Anyone familiar with Lewis's other works will have no problem recognizing him here: he is heavy-handed and obvious, his writing is ham-fisted and clunkey.

But the book works, for the same reasons his more well known books works. Lewis has a fantastic ear for language and tone. His satire is always spot-on. Sure, his characters are exaggerated to the point of being caricatures, but the kernal of truth is always there amid the hyperbole.

It's not Babbit or Main Street, but a good read for Lewis fans.

5 stars isn't enough
While the time isn't clear -- I'd guess shortly after WWII -- it is mandatory reading for anyone who worries about the loss of individual liberties in the US, as well as movement to a "security state", written long before current concerns.

Important Message, Botched Delivery
I was drawn to this book by a quote from it I had read:"When fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the flag and carrying a bible."Strong and provocative stuff, no?I wondered why I had never encountered this book before, and why it is not better known.It turns out there is a good reason, and that is because the book is virtually unreadable--apart from that one quotation, apparently.

Lewis's premise is that fascism could establish itself in America with relative ease if the country is sufficiently worried about some threat--in this case, the great depression.The book's ironic title comes up in slightly varied forms in several early conversations.The clear implication is that it certainly could happen here, "it" being the consolidation of power in the hands of a demagogue who offers relief and protection to a frightened nation.

But the path Lewis takes in making this important point is exasperating beyond words.We first must get to know a small-town newspaper editor and his whole tedious family, and attend cocktail parties and picnics with him, and learn that his hired man won't do as he's told around the garden, and on and on.It's as if you know a person has desperately important news that you want to hear, but you must first allow him to recount, in detail, how his business is doing, and what a splash his daughter made at her ballet recital.I gave up on the book after 60 pages or so.

What decided me in the end was a growing conviction that Lewis himself didn't take his subject seriously.The novel's villainous demagogue is named Berzelius (Buzz) Windrip; he becomes President.His bible-thumping supporter is Paul Peter Prang, and the rational small-town journalist is Doremus Jessup--Doremouse to his wife.

I submit that no one who intends to write a serious novel about his country's descent into fascism would choose such cartoonish names for any of his characters, let alone the main ones.Such flippancy causes readers to smile at things that should be frightening and disturbing.It also comforts them with the false assurance that any potential dictator would be immediately recognizable by his outlandish pronouncements or at least would be ridiculous in some way.

It would have been more effective by far to give evil a bland, friendly face, as Orwell did in "1984," and to give the villain a common, ordinary name such as might belong to the fellow across the street.A name like, oh, I don't know--you think one up.

has it happened yet.... or will it soon?
" Sinclair Lewis, the first American to receive the Nobel Prize For Literature, wrote this satirical political novel in 1935, a time when the United States and Western Europe had been in a depression for six years. In this novel, Sinclair Lewis asks the question - what if some ambitious politician would use the 1936 presidential election to make himself dictator by promising quick, easy solutions to the depression - just as Hitler had done in Germany in 1933."
As frightening and politically current today as it was then... ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (5)

Thank you, Sinclair Lewis
If you made a short list of notable literary efforts from America's first Nobel Prize in Literature winner, the inestimable Sinclair Lewis, titles such as "Main Street," "Babbitt," and "Elmer Gantry" would probably sit near the top. More discerning fans of the master satirist might throw in "Dodsworth," "It Can't Happen Here," and "Kingsblood Royal." What you wouldn't find anywhere on this speculative list are the short stories between the pages of "If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis." Why? According to the intricate yet astoundingly informative introduction by Anthony Di Renzo, none of the fifteen stories contained in the anthology have been republished since their original appearance between the years 1915-1921 in magazines like "The Saturday Evening Post." If you stagger under the knowledge that works of a Nobel Prize winner have been out of print that long, you'll really have a fit once you read this collection. Every one of the tales in this book is wonderful. Everything you know about Lewis-his scathing wit, his boundless cynicism tempered with a secret hope for the triumph of humanity, his spot on ability to recreate the American vernacular-infuses every page of every story.

If I had to pick a specific story as my personal favorite, I would pick the four stories that make up what is the Lancelot Todd cycle. Lewis spent many years of his life working in advertising, loathed the profession, and promptly took his revenge with stories like "Snappy Display," "Slip It to 'Em," "Getting His Bit," and "Jazz." These four tales document the unsavory career of Lancelot Todd, America's premier advertising guru and an unbridled charlatan. Always on the lookout for the perfect con, Todd spends his days writing peppy newsletters for large business concerns and spewing out self-help books designed to teach the workingman how to get ahead. He devotes his free time to seeking a higher position in society and cultivating a cirrhotic liver. Lewis scathingly paints a picture of Todd's machinations only to bring him down in the end as his latest caper falls apart. The best example is "Slip It to 'Em," where Todd runs a car company into the ground only to find he must transport his latest wealthy conquest to an important meeting in one of the lemons his company foisted on the public. You haven't laughed until you have read a Lancelot Todd story. The only thing I could think of after these four stories was where I could get my hands on more of them.

All of the stories in the collection pertain to issues still relevant today. In "If I Were Boss," salesman Charley McClure strives to make a name for himself at his firm only to discover the same issues he excoriated his own boss for come back to haunt him years later when he runs the show. "Honestly-If Possible" explores the sometimes painful relationship between men and women in the office place. So does "A Story with a Happy Ending," but in a different way. Leonard Price eventually undergoes the humiliating experience of working for a woman he initially hired years before. The confusing experience of workplace conflicts finds expression in "Way I See It," where Lewis uses a shifting perspective to examine the contentious relationship between a rental agent and his boss. Even corporate takeovers and office backstabbing get a spotlight in "The Whisperer," an unnerving tale about a fast buck quack obliterating his internal opposition in his bid for the top spot at an unprofitable pharmaceutical company. Repeatedly, I was amazed at how the many issues Lewis raises in these stories continue to have importance in today's corporate world. It would seem we haven't advanced very far since the 1910s and 1920s, at least regarding gender roles and business ethics.

Don't think for a minute that Lewis completely despises his subjects. In "The Good Sport," the author brings one of those fly by night, wiseacre salesman who run from job to job down to earth in a particularly humbling yet ennobling way. "A Matter of Business" finds a businessman agonizing over whether to remain loyal to a local supplier or whether to buy trendy yet shoddy products from a national concern. The last story, "Number Seven to Sagapoose," is a truly beautiful heart wrencher about a traveling shoe salesman's ability to make a huge difference in the lives of certain individuals and, by extension, humanity as a whole. It is in these stories that we see Lewis's caustic barbs and deep cynicism stripped away to reveal a man who fervently hoped that mankind could overcome its ridiculous social constructions and petty trappings in order to achieve a higher, nobler purpose.

As I closed the cover to "If I Were Boss" for the final time, I felt a deep kinship with Sinclair Lewis, realizing that he and I share many of the same thought processes and beliefs. I couldn't help but think that I would have gotten along just fine with Lewis if I had personally known him. I think I understand him as a person, however misguided that assumption might be, and now realize how difficult his life must have been. When one sees humanity in the way Lewis sees it, when one recognizes the pettiness and banalities we surround ourselves with, one quickly understands how difficult it is to function in life. That's why I think Lewis relied so heavily on humor in his stories: if you cannot laugh at the utter ridiculousness of modern life, you will quickly find yourself screaming with rage. These insights on my part hint at the powerful qualities of the author's stories and his writing ability. If you're the eternal cynic who can still laugh, pick this book up right away.

Marvelous Stories Display a Little-Known Side of Lewis
While I have enjoyed Lewis's novels, I have also found them to be somewhat angry and bitter.These stories are a different matter.Several of them are uproariously funny, in many ways reminiscent of Ring Lardner's best, where the outrage is hidden behind a mask of humor.

The introduction provides an interesting background in terms of both America's history and the events of Lewis's own life.

Excellent Collection of Short Stories
I was surprised at how relevant the stories were to the current times.Despite being written between 1915 and the early 1920's, workers ( and employers ) were faced with problems of sexual harrasment, boredom,stealing employees, and office politics.

Definately, you can detect partsof Babbit in many of the characters in the book.

All of the stories wereworth reading.Some are amusing, some sad, and a few happy.All of them,however are thought provoking.

Overall, a great book to get a hold of,especially if you are a Sinclair Lewis fan.

I hope we are entering a Sinclair renaisance...
"Honestly, if Possible" may quite possibly be the most wonderful short story I've ever read. Like other newer Sinclair readers, I'm amazed with the currency of all his work, and even more amazed that he isn't more widely known. I'm doing my best to get the story out-I've got a lot of PEP!

Surprisingly timely.
Lewis' early magazine pieces, printed here for the first time since their original publication in 1915-23, unmistakably contain the seeds of his later Pulitzer Prize-winning satirical novels and are irresistible in their own right.
The language is dated, and the modern reader may find some usage jarring (e.g., "love-making" for what we might call "flirting"), but it is remarkable in this postmodern age of Dilbert and e-mail that so little has changed in human nature, especially as expressed in office romances and politics. Look closely and you may see in some of Lewis' hucksters someone looking back at you; someone uncomfortably familiar.
(P) (The "score" rating is an ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.) ... Read more

Book Description
With Commentary by E. M. Forster, Dorothy Parker,
H. L. Mencken, Lewis Mumford, Rebecca West,
Sherwood Anderson, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, Constance Rourke, and Mark Schorer

Main Street is the climax of civilization," Sinclair Lewis declared with a typical blend of seriousness and irony. "That this Ford car might stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters." Main Street, the story of an idealistic young woman's attempts to reform her small town, brought Lewis immediate acclaim when it was published in 1920. It remains one of the essential texts of the American scene. Lewis Mumford observed: "In Main Street an American had at last written of our life with something of the intellectual rigor and critical detachment that had seemed so cruel and unjustified [in Charles Dickens and Matthew Arnold]. Young people had grown up in this environment, suffocated, stultified, helpless, but unable to find any reason for their spiritual discomfort. Mr. Lewis released them."

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), was born in Sauk Centre, Minne-sota, and graduated from Yale in 1907; in 1930 he became the first American recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Main Street (1920) was his first critical and commercial success. Lewis's other noted books include Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).Download Description
The first mainstream book to attack conventional ideas about marriage, gender roles, and small town life, "Main Street" established Lewis as a major American novelist. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (52)

Retelling of George Eliot's Middlemarch
Just a brief note to add to the already insightful reviews here:Whenread as a retelling of George Eliot's Middlemarch, the book takes on yet another dimension. Carol is a modern Dorothea. Also, none of the previous reviews I read mentioned how beautiful some of Lewis's prose is in this work.There are many truly beautiful passages worth reading just in themselves.

A Satirical Masterpiece and One Hec of a Read!
"The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was." Thomas Carlyle

Like in his other classic works (i.e. "Elmer Gantry", "Babbitt", etc...) Sinclair Lewis seems to relish the role of ripping apart the hypocritical world of mid-America in early 20th century society. This story takes place near the time it was written (circa 1920), and features the trials and tribulations of our main protagonist Mrs. Carol Kennicott. Carol is a young, pretty woman who moves to a small town in Minnesota after marrying the local doctor there. The moment she arrives to this little, quaint, prairie village she is immediately disappointed by not just the ennui of small-town life, but more importantly, by the total lack of culture concerning everything from the town-folk to the architecture (or lack thereof) of the city buildings. Carol is a liberal woman full of a tremendous passion for life, and a mind that seems constantly over sated with grandiose ideas all aimed at one thing - bringing culture to this narrow-minded, provincial population. However, her gallant efforts are not met with open arms by these simple folk. And that's putting it very lightly! She is instead quickly seen as an outcast, and soon endures all of the gossip, greed, pettiness, bigotry, etc... by the closed minded local yokels.

Now I know that from that brief synopsis above, you wish to immediately feel sympathy for our heroine, after all, she is a woman way ahead of her time and she is only trying to help these simple folk improve themselves. However, despite her noble intentions, Carol is far from without her own faults. She is very pretentious, judgmental, opinionated, hard to please, and she tends to give up very easily. In other words, once she begins a new endeavor she rarely ever sees it through from beginning to end because at the very first sign of difficulty, no matter how benign, she ends up quitting and starting all over with a new goal on how to improve her town. This is because, like many people who are extreme and myopic in their politically, social, religious, etc... views they are idealistic to a fault. The beauty of Lewis is that he creates characters that are completely human. She is a woman who we love and admire because of all of her wonderful qualities; however, at the same time she frustrates the hell out of us with her over simplified views and beliefs, as well as her snobbish, showy ways.

At the end of the day, poor Carol Kennicott was born in the wrong time at the wrong place. She also married the wrong man (although, that is more of the norm with most people). Lewis describes her early on as being "a woman with a working brain but no work." If you can imagine a woman who is a cross between Emma Bovary and Hillary Clinton (and even that may be oversimplifying things!) you'll get the feel of the type of person you're dealing with. This is one Sinclair's most complex characters in my opinion and it's impossible to read this novel and not find this character totally intriguing.

Some people accused this novel of being boring and a difficult read at times, nothing can be farther from the truth in my opinion. However, I love satire and also stories about good people, who are not sans their own imperfections and shortcomings. On top of being a brilliant satirist, I also really enjoy the thorough way Lewis develops his characters, especially in this story. If there is one complaint that I can see a lot of people having with this one it would be the way the novel ended. However, for me, it was a very realistic ending and I am pleased that it refrained from any overt moralizing or getting to syrupy like many stories often do.

This one is unquestionably right up there with his best!ENJOY!

welcome to "main street"
I feel like every book I read is time I literally have to steal from the rest of my life.I feel resistance to my reading habits- from my job, my wife, etc.It's like I have to fight for every moment for every single book that I want to read.I guess that makes it more rewarding, but it also means that my reading habits have acquired a patina of guilt- like I'm a drug addict.That's how I feel about it - that I have to keep it secret, that I have no one to share it with, that I am isolated and alone when it comes to my reading habit.It's a small part of my life, but a distinct one.

Main Street was an epic commerical success when it was released in the 20s.It's an odd choice for a commerical blockbuster, but Lewis must have captured the zeitgeist- I see it kind of like an American take on existenalism.Primitive, rudimentary, but accurate and complex in its own way.Main Street tells the story of Carol Kenicott, who marries a small town Doctor from Minnesota in the first fifty pages and then spends the rest of the book bitching and moaning about the vagaries of small town life- with it's close mindedness and preachy intolerance.

After this book "Main Street" entered the American lexicon as a short hand for a collection of attitudes that embodied small town america- and a negative anallysis of those attitudes, but Lewis's book is more sympathetic to small town america then one might expect.

The true hero of this book is Doctor Kennicott- who puts up with wife Carol's complaints with barely a whimper.As for the attitudes of main street- I think all of America, with maybe a few big city exceptions, resembles Main Street- Lewis notes that many of the people in his fictional Minnesota town left for southern california, so in that way I think this is a useful book to read for "blue staters" when they are trying to understand what makes the "red state" world tick.

A timeless quest
I wish I had read this in high school as it was undoubtedly on our reading list. I had confused Sincliar Lewis with the Upton Sinclair (a common confusion I suspect) muckracker novels which didn't appeal to me. How wonderfully Main Street captures the arrogance of youthful certainty about how others should improve themselves or, in this case, the town.If you like movies of the 1930s, you will like this book's dialogue style.This book is not an easy read as one sometimes needs to reread a paragraph to determine whether it is inner thoughts or dialogue, but the book offers a fascinating peek at the issues of the time and how they were viewed by many Americans.Many of those issues and attitudes linger on.Carol's quest to make a difference is a timeless quest that is no more easily solved today than it was then.

Down On "Main Street"
"Is it really my failure, or theirs?"

Carol Kennicott asks herself this question nearly 250 pages into "Main Street," regarding her impossible relations with the residents ofthe town of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. By this time, I was asking a similar question: "Is it really my failure, or Sinclair Lewis's?"

"Main Street" seemed a good idea as it sat on my shelf. Touted as a satirical look at middle-class America, it was Lewis's first successful novel, ushering in a new era upon its publication in 1920, and breaking critical ground for the Golden Age of American Literature, of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. Lewis was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. How could I go wrong picking it up?

The book tells the interminable story of Mrs. Kennicott, who marries a country doctor while imagining herself an improving influence on his as-yet-unseen town of Gopher Prairie. Imagine her surprise when she is greeted not as a liberator but grist for the gossip mill, with her Big City ideas and lack of churchiness.

Carol's alternating turns of resistance and acceptance are about the sum total of this plotless book. Lewis's descriptive powers are much in evidence, and you find yourself trapped in G.P. as much as Carol, his descriptions of noisy neighbors and smug dinner parties bearing the unmistakable imprint of someone who grew up in small-town Minnesota and knew of what he wrote. The problem, when you get past the period slang and the barbed commentary, is that the subjects of Lewis's satire are so miserable and nasty you can't understand why Carol thinks she can change them, except perhaps with the idea nature couldn't possibly create people as one-dimensional as those found here.

I thought I'd never read a duller work about small-town Americana from the early 20th century than Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." My apologies, Thornton. "Main Street" is as down on the same locale that "Our Town" exults, only Lewis lays on derision with a dripping trowel. Wilder, by contrast, seems almost surgical in the delicacy with which he makes his points. Lewis makes sure that when he presents us with the atheistic radical Miles Bjornstam, he is not only a voice of reason and affability to Carol but ultimately run out of town for his beliefs on the heels of having suffered a great tragedy, just in case we didn't otherwise get how miserable a town Carol is stuck in.

"And you want to reform people like that when dynamite is so cheap?" Carol fumes early on.

There is one effective section in the book, when Carol first discovers how isolated she has become and feels the "moist, fleering eyes" of prying neighbors so powerfully she draws down her window shades. Passages with her husband, the stolid, straying, but not worthless Dr. Kennicott, present some desperately-needed ambiguity.

But the book just keeps going, hammering home the same points, before winding down with an ending that feels more like a cop-out, in which the still-radical but more placid Carol settles for the status quo while imagining her sleeping infant daughter as "a bomb to blow up smugness." Polemics can produce great writing, but seldom great literature, and "Main Street" is a case in point.

The Signet Classic edition from 1998 features an introduction by Thomas Mallon which was the most enjoyable part of the book, candidly pointing out the book's faults but arguing for its continued value, as it imagines Carol's experience being like that of a young Hillary Rodham first arriving in Little Rock. Suffice to say I had a lot more fun reading it than I did the rest of this book. ... Read more

Book Description
Possibly the best student of hypocrisy since Voltaire

This portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist-who lives a life of hypocrisy, sensuality, and self-indulgence-is also the chronicle of a reign of vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no record of itself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Excellent!
I was very impressed with the order of Elmer Gantry. The book shipped quickly and arrived between the 7-14 day window. The service was professional. The book details matched the quality of the book. I am very pleased with the service provided.

The Most Hated Novel in US History
When Elmer Gantry was published, author Sinclair Lewis received death threats, an ivitation to be lynched in Virginia, a warning to stay clear of New Hampshire or wind up in a prison cell. I wonder if he would still have the courage to write a similar book today, in the climate of religious fanaticism that prevails. Elmer Gantry is a portrayal of hypocrisy and opportunism among the Evangelical clergy of the early 20th Century. The title character is as hateful and fraudulent as the Bakkers, Swaggerts, and Blackguards of our era, with the same vices, most prominently sexual misbehavior and exploitation. In fact, Gantry is so thoroughly unappealing that the reader's only interest in him is waiting and hoping for his downfall. But the numerous other clergymen, deacons, and congregational leaders portrayed in the novel are none of them very appealing; they are all greedy hypocrites, timorous holders of sinecures, and/or weaklings unable to confront their own doubts about the sanctity of the clerical profession. I have to say that Sinclair Lewis seriously weakens his case by overstating the universality of corruption in the Christian leadership, and damages the literary interest of his book by making his principal character irredeemable. Yet as I survey the current fundamentalist eruption into politics, I also have to say that Lewis was remarkably prophetic. The anti-evolution, anti-science-in-general, anti-diversity rants that fill the pages of Elmer Gantry could be copied-and-pasted right here on our favorite web pages.

The chief woman character of the book, tent evangelist Sharon Falconer, is also portrayed as a power-hungry opportunist, half hypocrite and half delusional madwoman. That portrayal won Lewis no friends, particularly since most readers were certain that Falconer was a thinly disguised representation of Aimee Semple McPherson, one of the founders of modern millenialism, whose personal improprieties are well documented. Likewise, numerous critics supposed that the character of Gantry himself was at least partly a portrait of evangelist Billy Sunday.

We Minnesotans are proud of our Nobel Prize author, though we show our pride mostly by not reading him. Honestly, this is not an easy book to enjoy. The language is stiff and corny at times, the characters are too cartoon-like, and the first half of the book would be better if it were edited in half. Even so, it has intellectual integrity and profound historical relevance, and its unrelenting portrayal of moral shallowness builds enough momentum to make it a worthwhile classic.

A Timeless Classic... Can I get a hyprocritical AMEN!
Excellent read, extremely interesting and intelligent prose.Lewis has a field day exposing the sinful, sanctimonious world of evangelism in early twentieth century Mid-America.And does he ever expose it!You will be hard pressed to find a more disreputable jackass in all of literature than Sinclair's main protagonist the Reverend Elmer Gantry.Long before the days of Jim & Tammy Baker & the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart there was this very funny story about this soulless, vapid, amoral, self-absorbed, overbearing, mama's boy who uses religion as his road to success.He's not smart enough, and far too lazy to make it in the real world, so Elmer decides to become a con man, errrrr Methodist preacher (although, it could have been one of several Christian sects) who's definition of success is about two things - money and power.

One thing that I find truly remarkable about this novel was how Sinclair was able to keep us interested and more importantly keep us from throwing the book in the trash or fireplace.When you finish this book, you will know what I mean.For upon reflection, Elmer Gantry is one despicable excuse for a human being.The man has no soul.He manipulates the masses and those around him without ever a tinge of guilt.He treats his family (except of course for his mama) like a pile of horse manure.And he's the most hypocritical cad you'll ever find in fiction.I could go on and on, but I don't want to divulge too much.Yet, despite how loathsome Elmer is, he does have a certain charm about him (don't they all?).It is that charm that keeps us from truly hating him enough to not care anymore.It is that charm that kept me reading on instead of tossing it in the Good Will box.I don't know about the rest of you, but if I can't stand the main character, no matter how interesting the story is or how well written, I usually can't finish the book.Am I the only one like this?Anyway, that's the beauty of Lewis' creation; the character of Reverend Gantry with all of it's vulgarities still had that undefined 'positive' something that keeps us reading on.

It's a great, great story.I had one hec of a time putting it down.I also recommend reading the book's very interesting 'Afterword' written by Mark Schorer.After reading it, I came away with even greater respect for Sinclair Lewis as a writer.The work and research this man did for a story is quite remakable on top of highly commendable.No wonder this classic (along with several others of his) is such an enjoyable read and definitely not dated at all like many classics unfortunately are.For me one of the keys to being dubbed a classic is being timeless. This book truly is.For there are certainly plenty of real life Elmer Gantry's running around all over the place in this world right now.
If you enjoy it half as much as I did, you'll love it.

Banned in Boston --
-- and Lewis's life threatened in other parts of the country. What better recommendation can there be for a work of fiction?

This paints a vicious picture of a man with no skills (beyond a flair for showmanship), no scruples, and no taste for "honest work." In the buckle of the Bible Belt, he goes to a Baptist college, and there finds his true place in life: preacher. It gives the perfect shield of respectability to his unrespectable womanizing and drinking habit, while arming him with a sword of faith against which no mere fact could defend. Somehow, his indiscretions always catch up to him. Somehow, he always manages a crowd-pleasing display of repentance and a revival-tent plea for forgivenness, which the faithful grant at the tops of their lungs.

Lewis acknowledges that most people in the religion business are honest enough and sincere enough, but also notes that Elmer is hardly unique. As with his other books, Lewis is frightening in the precision with which he draws this truly rapacious character and his depradations on society in the name of morality and faith. It's frightening because of his prescience in describing modern witch-hunts and fundamentalist Christian attack squads, just as much as as for the disdain with which this first of televangelists fleeces his flock.

Gantry's rapacious nature comes through most clearly in his commodity use of women, and especially behindthe closed doors of his married life. Cleo is devoted, wholly loyal, loving, naive, and less than the dirt beneath his feet. I came to dread the passages in which she appears - not for Cleo herself, but for Gantry's treatment of her. Their wedding night is a travesty, in which her gentle and trusting nature encounters his brutality at its animal worst. It turns my stomach to imagine how her children must have been gotten on her. The story needs that poor woman, however, to show just what Gantry would have do to everyone else if his self-serving social restraint were ever to fail.

No wonder Lewis was threatened with hanging. He hit a nerve. Like today, the people he exposed could only retaliate by trying to shout him down with sin and satan, and by physical violence.

//wiredweird

a profile of the USA, not the clergy
I never expected to be moved so much by this book, to feel so strongly about it. Published in 1927, I expected something dated, both in prose and story -- it wasn't at all. This novel isn't just as it's usually described: adventures of a golden-tongued evangelist who lives a live of hypocrisy and self-indulgence. This also isn't a novel whose primary purpose is to attack the clergy. This is a profile of the USA, of the American psyche, a profile that still works today. I finished the book and sat staring out the window for 10 minutes. I didn't know whether to laugh or weep.

What's so disheartening about this book, for me, is, as noted in the afterword by Mark Schorer, "The forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in "Elmer Gantry" are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality." This is a book where all the good guys go down.

Maybe you have to have been raised in the South or Midwest of the USA, and to have been brought up Baptist or Methodist, to really, truly get all the layers of this magnificent book, all the hidden humor, all the razor-sharp and, at times, incredibly subtle, criticism and commentary. If you've never been to a church supper where a person proudly claims to have traced their lineage all the way back to Adam and Eve, if you have never had your school board or local city council hear arguments about why certain books should be banned from school or local libraries, if a significant number of your family wouldn't boycott your wedding if you chose to serve alcohol, if you have never heard Catholics called "Papists" from a pulpit, if school friends haven't told you, in all sincerity, that they are going to pray for you because of your questions and intellect, if you haven't heard "Christians" rationalize about their actions that are in direct contrast to what the Bible says, if you haven't noticed the onslaught of efforts to get science out of our schools, I'm not sure you can really, truly "get" this book.Part of me is ashamed to have only finally read Sinclair Lewis when I'm already 40 -- and part of me wonders if I could ever have understood this book on the level I feel that I do had I not been this age.

Still a landmark in American literature, still a biting, chilling commentary on our country. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (4)

"I am mine own woman, well at ease."
This spicy novel (some called it sordid) is about an independent-minded woman from the rural Midwest who goes east to college, fights for woman's suffrage, and then becomes the head of an "industrial home" (prison), while at the same time falling in love with the wrong men, marrying and divorcing, having an abortion and then a child by another man out of wedlock, feeling lonely and inadequate, and suffering all the difficulties a modern (early twentieth century) woman in a whirlwind position might face. His views of Ann's sexual behavior - that sex is a positive force even outside of marriage and woman need and enjoy it as much as men - were considered quite forward at the time (some said scandalous). Indeed, the novel ends with Ann living openly with a man while both are still married to others awaiting their divorces, and Lewis depicts her as a fulfilled woman ("This is a new age," she declares). Disappointing is Lewis's refusal to take a position or monitor any of this so that we get the feeling by the end he believes anything goes, that all behavior is justified simply by doing it - which is interesting seeing that much of the novel involves prison reform as well. Yet despite all this "advancement" in sexual mores, it's in this novel that Lewis expresses a conservative bent for the first time (to be magnified greatly in the years to come): he satirizes the radical movement and even thinks the Depression a good thing because it reminds people how "noble" poverty is. So the messages become confusing and confused: unrestricted sex is good, but so are far more constraining elements in society. Coming right after DODSWORTH, this book marks a decided step downward in quality for Lewis, a downhill trend that would continue with each succeeding novel.

When America writes books, she sounds like Sinclair Lewis
You are Ann Vickers "of Waubanakee, Illinois, a little south of the center of the state" ( Ch 1, p. 7). You are 17 years old. Your mother died when you were ten. You are an only child. Your father was local school superintendent. But he died a year ago leaving you a legacy of $1,000. What do you do next?

You draw on your father's and Waubanakee's values and walk with open eyes into the ripening American world ahead from 1907 to 1933. You wait tables to put yourself through Point Royal College for Women in Connecticut. You grow through the amorous advances of a lesbian roommate and a playboy male professor. You study nursing. You stuff envelopes for years so that American women can vote. You go to jail for the cause and later become an expert on women's prisons. You write a learned book and are a popular national columnist. You have made love to three men over the decades, had one abortion greatly regretted, and after age 40 joyfully birthed a son whose father may either be your cloying husband or a charming rogue who sits on the New York State supreme court until he is convicted of being on the take and sentenced to six years in jail. When the judge is pardoned by the Governor (FDR?) after only a year behind bars, you, he and your son plan to defy convention and make a life together.

You are the same Ann Vickers, onetime tomboy of Waubanakee, onetime devotee of the YWCA and Presbyterian Sunday School. You have taken things as they came your way, made your choices and lived with them. And you were written up in a novel by Sinclair Lewis which I defy a reader in 2005 to put down prematurely.

Themes in the novel to be pondered:

--A mother is persuaded by a professor of obstetrics to have an abortion she does not want and who dreams ever after of her "murdered" girl "Pride." A mother who will never murder Pride again and who knows that "coming children" have rights.

--A feminist who never despises men utterly. Most males are taken to be "solid, stolid, unpicturesque citizens who liked breakfast, went to their offices or shops or factories at seven or eight or nine, admired sports connected with the rapid propulsion of small balls ... quarreled with their wives and nagged their children yet were fond of them and for them chased prosperity..." ( Ch. 21, p. 256)

--A married liberal woman goes to parties and hears so much TALK in which people per Roget's Thesaurus "cry, roar, shout, bawl, halloo, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, screech, screak, shriek, shrill, squeak ... yawp, vociferate ... rend the air..." (Ch. 35, p. 421f)

--Ann Vickers squeezes her lover's wife's hand when the judge is sentenced to jail. This is not the first novel in which Sinclair Lewis puts two women with claims on the same man face to face.

--America came of age in the early and middle lifetime of Ann Vickers. What a time! "Hijackers murdering bootleggers. ... Aviators crashing on cottages and burning up old ladies in them. Babies kidnaped and murdered. ... Methodist bishops accused of stock-gambling and rigging elections. ... Five-year-old boys in nice suburbs playing gangster and killing three-year-old boys. ... A skinny little Hindu that drinks only goat's milk baffling the whole British Empire. ... A nation of one hundred and twenty million people letting a few fanatics turn it from beer to poison gin." (Ch. 46, p. 541f)

See if you can resist temptation to read and love ANN VICKERS.

-OOO-

Missing pages, uneven story=lesser Lewis novel
It's sort of amusing that I decided to read Sinclair Lewis's "Ann Vickers" considering the only other novel I have read from America's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was "Babbitt," and that one a few years ago. I couldn't tell you why I chose to read this 1933 novel rather than "Main Street," "Arrowsmith," "Elmer Gantry," or even "Kingsblood Royal." Any one of these four books would be the logical choice after reading "Babbitt." I'm nothing if I'm not contrary to people's expectations, so when I saw this book on the shelf at the library I snatched it up without a second thought and headed home to read it. The book, even at 560 pages, doesn't take that long to read as the font is large and the pages small. Nonetheless, it took me four days to get through the novel largely due to the outdated lingo and the uneven quality of the book. There are several reasons why you haven't heard of "Ann Vickers" before now, one of them being that moving through certain sections of the book feels like serving a ten-year sentence of hard labor at the local penitentiary. Overall, though, Lewis's scathing treatise on radical politics and feminism in the first third of the twentieth century is worth the effort.

Lewis follows the titular character from her earliest years as a resident of Waubanakee, Illinois to her emergence as a major reformer on the East Coast. Right from the start, we get the idea that Ann is different from the other little boys and girls. The only child of a college professor, Ann's social position is one of high standing and moderate wealth. Nonetheless, she soon falls under the spell of a fiery socialist German immigrant named Klebs. By the time Ann goes to college, she's well on the way to becoming a true extremist. She drops out of the Y.W.C.A. after learning to reject Christianity with the help of a radical professor. Vickers forms a socialist organization on campus, embarks on a forbidden relationship with a faculty member, and earns a decidedly unsavory reputation amongst her fellow students. After graduating, she joins the suffrage movement, an activity that requires her to deliver oratories on street corners, go to jail for organizing protests, and hobnob with prominent personalities. Vickers, like most leftist radicals, never stays with a single cause for long. After several stints as assistant superintendents at homes that teach the urban poor and new immigrants life skills, she sets out to work as a prison reformer. The best part of the book details Ann's struggles in a southern prison, where she battles unsanitary conditions, lackadaisical treatment of prisoners, capital punishment, and corruption.

Lewis is very careful to examine all aspects of his character's life. "Ann Vickers" constantly looks behind the rhetoric and politics in an effort to capture the emotional aspects of womanhood. Just because Ann is a radical doesn't mean she's cold to the idea of men. In fact, she has several relationships throughout her life, from a soldier during the First World War named Lafe Resnick to fellow radical Russell Spaulding to a corrupt New York judge named Barney Dolphin. Vickers's experiences with abortion, infidelity, and promiscuity fuel much of the narrative drive of the novel. Her experiences also cool her radical fire so that by the end of the book she's a determined liberal living out of wedlock with a disgraced member of the system. There's a great line at the end of the book where Lewis describes Ann as the "Captive Woman, the Free Woman, the Great Woman, the Feminist Woman, the Domestic Woman, the Passionate Woman, the Cosmopolitan Woman, the Village Woman-the Woman." In short, although he often disagrees with the hypocrisy of Ann and her methods, he does believe that conditions in America were changing enough that a female could now realize all aspects of her personality in both the private and public spheres.

The problems of the book are many. First, I've always believed I should support my state university's publishing house, but this University of Nebraska Press edition is an embarrassment. From pages 371 to 394, half of the pages are blank. Yep, someone let a Sinclair Lewis novel go to bookstore shelves without correcting this completely unacceptable blunder. Even worse, the missing pages start up during the best part of the story, when Ann Vickers works in the southern prison. A primal scream is in order here, but I'm hoping this mistake is specific to one copy and not to the entire run. Second, and more in tune to the actual novel, the first 100 pages of the story aren't very interesting. Vickers's childhood and college days reek of boredom. Only when the character heads out into the larger world and starts mixing it up does the book start to soar. Third, I often thought Ann an unpleasant character, especially when her marital machinations emerge towards the end of the story.

I think this last point, Ann's adultery, upsets me because I'm male. It's an unfair accusation for me to make, though, because men routinely leave their girlfriends and wives for other women in exactly the same way Vickers does. In any event, it's another example of what Lewis tries to say with the novel, that women now have the freedom to live their lives as they see fit. Ultimately, would I recommend "Ann Vickers"? I don't know. I think "Babbitt" light years ahead of this effort. I do believe "Ann Vickers" doesn't receive attention from today's leftist literati because Lewis viciously skewers the far left on nearly every page. Give it a shot if you're a Lewis fan or a moderate conservative who likes to see the leftist fringe occasionally take it on the chin.

Interesting and instantly absorbing book
Sinclair Lewis takes a distasteful and controversial subject and spins oneof his best books that I've read.The book examines the feminist / women'ssuffrage during the early 1900's through the 1930's by following AnnVicker's life.He covers her experiences with: abortion, voting rights,marriage, sex rights, and divorce.

However, the primary focus of the bookis on the cruel and primitive jail conditions at the time.Ann's call inlife is to run a prison.Lewis unabashedly describes the gory details ofthe torture and living conditions that Ann finds through her firstexperiences.

The characters in the story, especially that of Ann Vickers,are clearly drawn out.However, I found some of the "innocent"criminals to be a little too fake.At times I felt like Lewis was tryingto tell me that all people in jail didn't deserve to be there.However,Lewis does make some poignant observations about punishment and thepolitics involved with it.

Overall, a great book and I would recommendthat all Lewis fans or those with a passing interest in feminism / women'ssuffrage or jail conditions in the early 1900's to read this book. ... Read more