Biography of Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Harry Lewis (1885 - 1951) was born in Sauk Center, Minnesota. Son of a country doctor, Edwin J Lewis, he had a very rigorous childhood. It was dominated, firstly by his elder brother, Claude and later by some literary and rebellious influences. He was very proud of the medical tradition of his family. Besides his father, three of his relatives, including his own brother were practicing doctors. 

At Yale, though academically bright, he was a non-conformist at the core. He edited a literary magazine and wrote long medieval poems,

"(O God!) lady's (sic) clad in white Samite,

mystic, won-der-ful."

In another poem, he wrote about

"The Little Ones and the gas-stove that was 

really a beastie."

He had even planned a great four-generation novel, "The Children's Children", though he could not ultimately write it.

He made a trip to England in a cattle boat and in steerage to Panama. He also roamed around in the United States extensively. He had the taste for an experimental life under the socialistic Upton Sinclair at the Helicon farm, as a Janitor of the group. As the editor of "Trans-Atlantic Tales and Adventures" he had served on his first assignment. He also worked for "Stokes and George H Doran" the book publishers. He had even gone to the extent of selling his ideas to Jack London for a price of $1 a piece. His marriages to Grace Livingston Heggar and Dorothy Thompson had both ended in a debacle. His temperament, wanderlust and a derelict life given to drinking bouts, had all made him an irresponsible husband. 

His early novel "Hike and Aeroplane" (1914) was a juvenile book. The second one "Our Mr. Wrenn" (1914) written under the shadow of H G Wells, was dedicated to Grace Livingston Heggar. It had won for him a wife too, in the same person. "The Trial of the Hawk" (1915), "The Job" (1917), "The Innocents" (1917), and "The Free Air" (1919) were his pre-Nobel Prize novels. They dealt with the traditional pre-Main Street values of life. They also dealt with the early mechanized society with a machinist hero as envisaged by Thornstein Veblen.

The declaration of the Nobel Award in 1930 for his "Main Street" (1920) created a great controversary because some academic critics like Professor Van Wyok Brooks and Carl Van Doren held that this award to Sinclair Lewis had amounted to an insult to the American heritage and ideals. They said that his "Main Street had picturized something that was opposed to the popular American Middle West".

The profit motive of Gopher Prairie town was an anti-progress trend against the newer co-operative movement, when the local pastor preached on “America, Face your problems”, he was considering Mormonism and Prohibition. Even the church members themselves had no real belief in the Christian doctrines. The village aesthete preferred movies to standard literature because their purity was more carefully guarded through censorship. It all added up to an unimaginably standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, and a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It was contentment, of the quiet dead, who were scornful of the living for their restless walking. It was negation canonized. It was a prohibition of happiness, a slavery, which was self-fraught and self-defended. It was dullness made God. Though Lewis was not the first to state all these views, it was he who dramatized the national mind so effectively. The appearance of this novel “Main Street” (1920) was quite well timed. It came at a time when Americans were beginning to believe that they had been bulldozed into fighting a quite needless and useless war. In the era of debunking which ensured, there was a deplorable tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water.

After this novel, the author, within two years, was to deal with the businessman, and the clergyman. In the 1930’s the American had grown earnest again. Thus Lewis’ most important period had come to an end, not before his mission was completed.

“Babbitt” (1922) was his next novel, which many critics considered his masterpiece. “Arrow Smith” (1925) was Lewis’ new find, “the role of a pure science researcher in a commercial-medical-and-drug-world”. The heroine Leora was a favorite character with Lewis. Leora and Martin Smith might be called a “made-for-each-other” pair. It was a most painstaking novel written right under the nose of Paul De Kruiff, an eminent microbiologist of the times. It was easily a very authentic novel on the theme of research in the field of medicine. The hero ultimately had to beat an inglorious retreat to a self-made exile as a voluntary isolationist. In characterization, “Babbitt” stood superior to “Main Street”. He was a superb zenith realtor, who had tremendous vitality in him. So his name had grown into a bye-word in American Literature, “Babbittry and the speech, Babbilogue”. The basic trouble with the hero was that, “He made nothing in particular, neither butter, nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay”. (2) He was soon to get tired of his business efficiency and lead a life of secession from commitments and responsibilities. The urge for freedom in him was so intense that he had carved out for himself a questionable personal life in the company of young imbecile people. But this was to end soon and he was to get back into the fold of conformity well within the respectable society of Zenith and its Floral Heights residences. Lewis had made a merciless attack upon the cultural imbecility, the childishness, the coarseness and the cowardice of too many solid American-Citizens. The period under study was America in the post-World War I. Decent men were shocked by Attorney General Palmer’s raids and sickened by the Ku Klux Klan. It was feared, then, that America was going to be ruled by the mob spirit. In his formative years Babbitt was an eloquent socialist lawyer of promise. In the end, he expected his son at least to find the way he missed.

 Next to appear was his most controversial novel “Elmer Gantry” (1927) dealing with the career of Elmer Gantry, the Fundamentalist Scoundrel. The hero was a caricature. He was no doubt a swine, but there was no adequate proof to call him a hypocrite. His perfect sincerity was revealed when he responded to the ecclesiastical life, though not to a religion. But he could not control his passions or his mind. The grossness of his mind has obviated the possibility of a struggle and suffering. As he kneeled in his prayer and when he was welcomed back by his congregation after having been “cleared” of the accusation brought against him by a woman, his heart was filled with gratitude. At the same moment, he noticed a new singer in the choir - “a girl with charming ankles and lively eyes, with whom he would certainly have become acquainted”.

His “Dodsworth” (1929) was a fine novel about the American businessman abroad. It was one of Lewis’ most convincing characters. Dodsworth was specifically “not a Babbitt” who could not even talk like an intellectual. It was a book with the theme of “Europe versus America antithesis”.

His next novel, “Ann Vickers” (1933) was an experimental novel suggestive of H.G. Well’s “Ann Veronica”, dealing with a career woman, becoming a social worker and a penologist. But that part of the novel dealing with the sociological aspect was very moving. But it was poor fiction. In his next novel “Work of Art” (1934), Lewis had suggested that a man in hotel business was a better hero than a low quality artist. His “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935) was received better, though it was a political fantasia. But apart from the improbabilities, it served as a fit warning to all the lovers of democracy in the world as well as in the U.S.A. This was also a typical Wellsean fantastic romance. In place of science, sociology was brought in. It was a propaganda piece with much literary value.

In the next two novels, Lewis drifted from the popular thinking of the times. In his “Prodigal Parents” (1938), Fred Cornplow, an automobile salesman, was shown to be superior to the young radicals. In “Bethel Merriday” (1940), Lewis made an actress rise up to the expectations of the world. He had, however, a natural gift to withdraw himself at will from the unsatisfactory world.

“In “Gideon Planish” (1943), Lewis returned to the level of his first successful novels. The element of probing had made a reentry into the world to begin his attack against the “philanthrobbers”, with side-glances in the direction of the career woman. But then this hero was less of a scoundrel than Elmer Gantry, but was more foolish. Lewis thought that the speaker’s table had replaced Broadway as New York’s Main Street. The story of this novel fell flat on the public mind, far weaker than that of the twenties of the century. His “Cass Timberlane” (1945) was a novel of marriage between an old man and a young lady, which was a sentimental portrait of a wife. “King’s Blood Royal” (1947) was a very dynamic novel, a thesis-novel that devoured the very novel itself. Neil KIngs-blood’s investigation into his ancestry had landed him in an inconvenient position of his being a 1/30th part Negro and a descendent of a heroic pioneer. From this point, the novel became a mere format, the course of action left for the hero and the general disabilities from which the entire race had suffered. “The God-Seeker” (1949) was a historical novel on the missionary movement of the Minnesota Frontier of the 1840s. The underlying theme was Evangelism pitted against Humanism. In his treatment of race relationships, Lewis was on the side of the Indians.

“The World So Wide” (1951), published posthumously, was written as an extension of “Dodsworth” as far as the theme was concerned. It was the theme of an American businessman in Europe, and a typical senior Dodsworth up against the culture.

Butt the last days of Sinclair Lewis made him bitter through frustration because he found his life of license and liberty offering no opiate to him. His incompatible marriages to well-rooted career women Mrs. Grace Heggar and Mrs. Dorothy Thompson had failed miserably. It could not be anything but ingrained frustration. His sense of liberty was but a euphoria. Faster than ever, Lewis was heading for his grave. In 1951, in Rome, he died a miserable death in the company of his doctor brother Claude, who remained a silent spectator to this end of a man, who was a spent genius.

(2) Babbitt: A novel