The Early Novels - The Pre-Nobel Prize Period
The novels of Sinclair Lewis serve as the right antidote for the tedium experienced by the businessman. The effect of his novels has more significance than the expression of a dissatisfaction with the conditions of life in America as well as an innate urge for change, and a change for the better. His first novel “Our Mr. Wrenn”, or his Nobel Prize winner “The Main Street” or the most influential “Babbitt”, serve this purpose.
Lewis had in him, a very high degree of complacency and rebelliousness that got exposition in the novels preceding “The Main Street”.
Between the two writers again, there is a contrast. Unlike Wells, Lewis is unsympathetic to his hero. He makes his “Wrenn” a replica of his own experiences, loneliness and yearning, unlike Wells again, Lewis cannot portray the depth of his feeling for the little man, who is a tool in the hands of circumstances of the society. Lewis moulds his hero into a shape of his choice.
Now to resolve the improbability of a tiny man conquering a burly man, we are inside Wrenn’s boarding house, which is no less repulsive than the Orwellean “The Road to Wigan Pier”. However unpleasant the hero is, as depicted by him, the novel lacks real social criticism. It is not his aim to focus attention on this aspect. The book is enveloped in an atmosphere of make-believe. But this novel is not typically Wellsean, in that a society is presented. To him, his novel has not yet grown societal.
Lewis at times considers his novel as a parade of morals, and an instrument of self-examination. This vision lacks the comprehensiveness of Wells. “To ventilate a point of issue”, a Wellsean concept of the purpose of a novel would not be agreed to by Lewis. That there existed a Wellsean influence upon Lewis, needs a qualification. It is the first consideration of Lewis that evil in society needs exposure. He might have thought like Wells that society needed a reconstruction. Lewis had assimilated many current ideas, through his reading of Wells and Thornstein Veblen, especially the ideas of warfare between the creative and acquisitive instincts. It needed a new social framework that would liberate a man’s potentialities. According to Van Wyck Brooks, there was in Lewis’ mind something in common with the “Circle of Randolph Bourne, the hovering presence of the image of a world with which the author was always comparing the visible world as it was” (1), a perceptible feature in the novels of Sinclair Lewis. Mr. Brooks thought that Lewis’ treatment was secondary through the documentation of the subject was his first concern. It is difficult to concur with this view. Imbued with a sense of the subject, Wells said that he was a journalist and so would refuse to play the artist. If he was an artist, it was a freak of Gods. Lewis views the matter differently. In order that one’s name be secure in the world of literature for the next hundred years, one should produce one thunderingly good novel. Wells was a reformist first and novelist later. But in the case of Lewis, it was his ambition to write a great American novel but the urge to reform was secondary. Though Lewis had read the realists and naturalists, it meant nothing significant to him except Shaw and Wells, who had shown what might be done with the Dickensian exaggeration of modern situations it was the evocation of a social milieu through characterization that captured the heart of Sinclair Lewis rather than his social commentary and a powerful instinct to reform. Lewis, in 1924, declared in his “A Man’s Progress” (2), that of all the topics in the world, the most interesting is humankind, people and what they are like… That is why fiction - the recounting of human customs - is the most popular form of writing, that is why, in fiction, a garrulous account of human foibles is more stirring than the trickiest melodrama or the sublimiest philosophy. (2)
Very few of the characters in “Our Mr. Wrenn” are satirical. Even if they are satirical, they are not radical, but are at times Philistine.
A Stanford processor in the novel, would write poetry which he would file under the letter “P”. The cigarette-smoking Istra Nash gets very charitable treatment, though a 20th century novelist would have caricatured her. In her restlessness and in her state of unfulfillment, she appears more pathetic than ridiculous. However, some people who talk about their practicing arts, get a rough treatment at the hands of Lewis. “Then came the super radicals, to confuse the radicals who confused Mr. Wrenn. For always there is a greater rebellion and though you sell your prayer-book to buy Bukunin and esteem yourself revolutionary to the point of madness, you shall find one who calls you reactionary. The scorners came together - Moe Chatzeky, the syndicalist and the direct actionist and Jane Schott, the writer of the impressionistic prose - and they sat silently sneering on a couch”. (3)
Lewis does not individualize his arty types. They have grotesque names in tune with grotesque attitudes. Some other characters are crudely exaggerated, yet fully and vividly. His Mrs. Zapp, the fat landlady: “When she sat down, there was a straight line from her chin to her knees. She was usually sitting down when she moved, she groaned and her apparel creaked. She groaned and creaked from bed to breakfast and ate five griddle cakes, two helpings of scrapple, an egg, some grumpy steak and three cups of coffee slowly and resentfully. She creaked and groaned from breakfast to her rocking chair and sat about wondering why Providence has inflicted upon her a weak digestion. Mr. Wrenn also wondered why, sympathetically, but Mrs. Zapp was too conscientiously dolorous to be much cheered by the sympathy of a nigger-lovin’ Yankee, who could not appreciate the subtle sorrows of a Zapp of a Zapp’s Boq, allied to all the First Families of Virginia”.(4)
Here Lewis created a character in two senses of the term, viz., an imaginary person and an odd or eccentric person. This is the normal English method before George Eliot. Lewis has Wells and Dickens as his masters in endeavoring to secure humorous effects by gross exaggeration of physical details. Mrs. Zapp is a decayed representative of the Southern aristocracy; and the total effect is plainly American. Lewis belongs to the Twainean tradition of American humor. It is vulgar, earthly and absurd. It is blunt, obvious, and cynical, at times reliant upon an understatement or an exaggeration. His is a typical American stand of attacking pretensions. It is the scoffing tone of a common man and common sense, directing his gun against innovation, theory and trappings of culture. It is all, in the traditions of Horatio Alger and Norman Vincent Peale, with the emphasis on gaining material rewards through a practice of virtue, industry and an optimum level of self-confidence. Unlike Wells, Lewis does not reject the codes of behavior initiated from the past. He is guided by a code of individualism stereotyped from the heroic image of the frontier. (5) “In Lewis’ mind are ingrained the cultural myths derived from the impact of a new and pure land upon its settlers.” (6) The character of America is not formed by an influence or culture from the past, but by responses to the challenges offered by the American Continent itself. A faith in progress and indigeneity and an idea of the American as a new man unspoiled by the sinister past of mankind, with an immense prospect of growing into a figure of great capacities, still at the dawn of a new history and with a society without any class distinction - this was the American he hoped for; every shortfall, distancing one away from this cherished goal would merit a satire from Sinclair Lewis. His first novel however, received an appreciative review from the majority of critics. His wife Grace Heggae Lewis affirms her view that this was a bright patch in the domestic life at Post Washington. He had a balance of home and roots to his inexhaustible energy to work on his own novel while he commuted to work full-time at Doran’s. His was a typical American success story.
“The Trail of the Hawk”, published in September 1915 was dedicated to a group of “Optimistic Rebels”. The phrase “Rebellious Optimism” was Allen Updegraff’s, developed from "Optimistic Rebels”, the dedicatory - Soule, Smith, Updegraff, Noyes, Harcourt and Heubsch. (7)
It is different from “Our Mr. Wrenn” in that it is radical in tone, but yet another Horatio Alger-story.Carl Ericson, a small town buy becomes an aviator and marries an aristocratic New York family girl. He is a born rebel against conventions. As a student of Plato College, he would side with his socialistic professor in a controversy only to be expelled in dishonor. The professor’s viewpoint was the summary of Well’s anticipations.
“The great visions of the glory that shall be, not in one sudden millennium, but slowly advancing towards the joys of life, we can no more prevision than the aboriginal medicine man could imagine the x-ray.” (8)
It is his rallying cry, a near Rotarianism than a socialism with a political program. Socialism is not the major motivating force in the novel. Carol Ericson is opposed to the leisure class. But the urge for social reform does not transcend his desire for freedom. It is a freedom from unreasonable restrictions and one that would contribute to progress through inventions. This is a novel helping to bring out the essence of the American system.
“Since Carl Ericson … was the divinely restless seeker of the romance that must- or we die! Life beyond the hills, you first see him in action….”. But equally since this is a serious study of an average young American, there should be an indication of his soil nourished ancestry.
“Carl was a second generation Norwegian; American born, American in speech, American in appearance, save for his flaxen hair and China blue eyes; and thanks to the flag decked public school, overwhelmingly American in tradition. When he was born, the ‘typical Americans’ of earlier stocks had moved to city palaces or were marooned on run-down farms. It was Carl Ericson, not a Trowbridge, or a Stuyversant, or a Lee or a Grant, who was the typical American of this period. It was for him to carry on the American destiny for extending the Western Horizon; to restore the Wintry Pilgrim Virtues and the exuberant October. Partridge-drumming days of Daniel Boone; then to add, in his own or another generation, new American aspirations for beauty”.(9)
This long passage serves as a variant of the frontier myth. The frontier in American Literature “had been divided into regional pioneering, industrial pioneering and spiritual pioneering.” Lewis explores the possibility of the pioneering spirit which is suitable for 20th Century America. There exists a more boundless prospect for the spirit than before. But this requires the very best in life of a man. The geographical frontier had already vanished. But the other frontiers will have to be searched; otherwise the American spirit will be stunted. He makes his hero a restless seeker, a doer and a man of action. As if to prove that the age of heroism has not yet come to an end, Lewis finds a new type of hero for his novel, the aviator, a decade before Colonel Lindbergh. Unlike Well’s hero, Remington in Tono Bungay, Lewis’ hero, Carl Ericson was a flier, inventor and a new American. Instead of wandering into higher things, the hero seasons himself through newer and different things. The packer in a department store is elevated to part owner of an automobile repair shop, realizes a better future in aviation after hearing the exploits of Curtis and Wright brothers. And this becomes the climax of his career. Still in quest of something more, Lewis’ hero invents a Touricar and markets it. He exposes his hero to yet another career, business. Here Lewis gives another turn to his story - romance and marriage. A stagnation point is soon reached when he is locked up in his own world of an office job and a New York apartment. He is finally fired with a zeal to flee into freedom, into Buenos Aires as Argentine Republic Manager for the Van Ziles Motor Corporation. Lewis’ satire is directed against the impediments to his hero’s free movement, like the small town, the small college and the restrictive social groups. Lewis’ answer to the tiredness of a businessman lay in a Bohemian way of life.
Lewis’ mockery is directed against the president of the Plato College, S Alcott Road, for his conservatism, anti-socialist mentality and perverted reading of the Bible. The characterization of President Wood is sacrificed for the author’s sense of exaggeration. Lewis’ Mrs. Cowles and her daughter Gertie, the social lioness of Joralemon as well as New York are more complex characters than President Wood. The snobbery of these people is to be blamed and pitied as they are the products of the small town environment. To Carl, Gertie acts as a restraint through conventionalism. To her, Carl is a deliverer from a desperate situation. Both Gertie and her mother are creations of a typical weakness and folly. Lewis is very tolerant to these people. He finds out the cause of their anti-social behavior but he is yet unwilling to ridicule them. Lewis’ attitude to Ruth Winslow’s foibles also proceed from a readiness to understand her. The heroine, like every Lewis’ heroine, hails from the East, and is full of refinement and education, but the hero is an unsophisticated, enterprising young man. It is the very author personified through this hero and Grace Heggar, his wife is echoed in his early heroines. Ruth comes from an old established New York family, dominated by the bulwark of a dowager aunt. Lewis, instead of making her a butterfly, moulds herself into a self-conscious individual, fighting her way against the narrow atmosphere. She has a living interest in settlement houses. Ruth is as restless as Carl and the purpose of her first meeting with him was to find out for herself something enlivening.
Another interesting feature of this novel is the “Play” instinct. It can be an indulgence in games, make-believe, fantasy and an escape into Nature. As a palliative against the oppressive realism, Lewisean men and women have this stock answer of “Play”. Both the hero and heroine are whimsical and become playmates to each other. Their final escape is necessitated by their refusal to surrender their dream, or give up play or accept their environment. The ending of this novel sketches an egocentric defence of escapism. Almost all the critics viewed it rather indulgently. It is a joyous and spontaneous burlesque requiring an element of credulity to enjoy this novel.
Lewis’ next novel, “The Job” (February 1917) is a feminist document with an alternative title, perhaps to indicate its exclusive American make-up, for there existed a novel “Ann Veronica” (1909) of HG Wells, different from Lewis’ novel it is full of American sentiments. In the case of a Wellsean heroine, it is a personal achievement, when face to face with the woman’s position in the world. With the freedom permitted to a woman in the real world, with all limitations of working under some man, even a foothold in this world is the epitome of this novel. Lewis presents America’s escape from the doll’s house into a free and a full life, all a deterministic activity. As a company of immense opportunities, it must offer this heroine as many opportunities as are thrown open to a man of equal capabilities. Lewis’ heroine, Una Golden, is a feminine Horatio Alger character. Through initiative, hard work, and a shrewd grasp of opportunities, she rises up the ladder of business, as a manager in a hotel chain, creating for herself the kind of life which she wants to live. The Horatio Alger element comes to the true surface at the end of the novel. His main character in this novel is neither a caricature nor a strongly individualized one, but a type by itself. Such a person, in quite a commonplace, small-town gurl imbued with the village is kind of virginal vacuousness like a documentary writer. Lewis studies this social phenomenon - the ‘metropolis-ward’ women in search of work, adventure and emotional fulfilment. A bourgeois theme is a valid material for tragedy. After making the claim, he turns his story into a tragicomedy with everyone living happily ever after.
But then the portrayal of Schwertz displays an ambivalent attitude. In this novel, Lewis has something to hate. He has viewed Schwertz in ‘the cold life of a perfect distance’. The salesman’s rambling, slangy monologues, though amusing in themselves, illustrate his hypocrisy and moral confusion. He is considered honest in spite of his drunken and slovenly habits. In the scene in which Schwertz and Una face each other for the last time, Lewis builds sympathy for him. Una has grounds to hate her husband when she puts an end to her talk saying that even if they talked for a thousand years, they will never understand each other. She is very proud of her freedom and calls him a ‘poor decent man’. Mr. Lewis is beyond satirizing. His perspective grows into a novelistic one. He sets up a standard against which Schwertz is to be judged indecent. But even this standard is fleeting.
Lewis’ presentation of the business world is also ambivalent. Una’s early experience in an office is savage. The rules of the conduct of this business will crush her if she transgressed, at least, one of them. The executives at the Pemberton’s stick to its faith, and work in such a way as ‘not to waste their evenings, making love, or reading books or hearing music’ but they will carefully read about ‘soaps and syrups and window displays’. (11)
There is a strong streak of Veblenism in this novel. Chapter XIV of this novel is a popular account of Veblen’s point of view. (12) When Lewis exemplifies the qualities that a person develops in this system either to emulate or to simply survive, this novel strongly echoes Veblen. One ideal that is idolized in this novel is Big Business.
“For ‘Business’, that one necessary field of activity to which the egotistic arts and sciences and theologies and military puerilities are but servants, that long deposed and always valiant effort to unify the labor of the world, is at last going to be something more than dirty smithing. No longer does the man thank the better classes for permitting him to make and distribute bread and motor cars and books. No longer does he crawl to the church to buy pardon for usury. Business is being recognized and is recognizing itself - as a ruler of the world.” (13)
For Lewis, business is superior to all other things, theology and arts and sciences. As inconsistency would have it, Lewis is all admiration for applications of systems and charts and scientific mind to industry and describing the vision of an efficiency so broad that it can be kindly and sure. Lewis is confused as not to discriminate between the parasites of the industrial system and the technicians, the workforce.
Lewis affirms what Veblen and Wells thought about mankind working at a fraction of their potential. It should reconstruct all its clumsy, outworn procedures. Mr. Fein, the benevolent businessman, becomes the spokesman of this view. He says that “in most lines, experts are at work showing up their deficiencies”, while the Wellsian utopia is evolving Mr. Fein and by inference Mr. Lewis advocates nothing more revolutionary than being patient and cultivating one’s garden.
Again, between Lewis and Wells, there is an ideological distance. Lewis’ benevolence is Dickensean in nature, like the Churyble brothers in Nicholas Nickelby. But through his commonsense prescription of “honesty and freedom from care”, Lewis is more complacent than Dickens, which would have made Wells desperate. In “Job”, Lewis had produced “The Main Street” and “Babbitt” in which he described business as the highest form of human activity. But the argument that this imposes a lovely tedium of routine on man, cannot make an effective front.
“The Innocents” which saw light simultaneously with “Job” was first serialized in “Woman’s Home Companion” before it came in book form. It was named “A Story for Lovers”. But none of his publishers of New York, even the author, think this book worth including in his work during the 1920’s.
An old couple after an early-encaged life had fled into two adventures. A set of bohemians and socialites got lost and went hiking across the country in mid-winter. “This was an ideal outing for people over sixty”, pontificated Lewis; they would go along with their wives with their mouth organs. Lewis, in spite of his voluminous writing, did not lose his sentimentality, and his medievalism which of course was a false one. Having fallen into the hands of gangs, they attempted to reform the tough hobos. The one man became their de facto ruler. There followed a new publicity for this man. They continued their journey. At Lippetville, he took charge of a show-store through which he would grow into a successful businessman and pillar of society. Then the respected son-in-law arrived to rescue them and place them in an old home. The old couple had been subjected to severe humiliation. From this point on, the novel would pivot on the success myth. Lewis would give his “Innocents” wide experience enabling them to season themselves for an advancement. The progress of America according to Lewis was due to the initiative taken by the people. The wealth of the country was not in the sophisticated East but among the small town people of the Middle West.
Like his characters, Lewis and Grace Lewis also practiced their wanderlust in spite of his son Wells Lewis, being an infant. She tried to prove that a family was not going to hinder her husband's love of wandering.
Apart from stories, Lewis had contributed articles to various magazines like the “Saturday Evening Post”. He had another serialized novel “Free Air” before it also got published as a charming novel “An Odyssey of the North West”. The serialized magazine work consisted of “Free Air - Its Continuation”, “Danger - Run Slow”, and a series of articles, including “Adventure of Autobumming”. Encouraged by its success, Lewis allowed Alfred Harcourt, his publisher, to bring it out in a novel form. He sold the movie rights to the Famous Players Company.
Even in the book form, it was yet a “Modern Fairy Tale” written by a “Master Realist on a Lark”.Lewis instructed his publisher to send a copy of “Free Air” to the Pulitzer prize committee, for this fulfilled the essential condition laid down by the committee, that the writing should consist of a wholesome atmosphere of the American life.
Wanderlust, snobbery, the rich girl, the up-and-coming-mechanic hero, were the aspects that dealt within this novel. Lewis could not make his snobs appear as credible human beings or as representatives of various types of snobbery. It was the sweep and exhilaration of the great country, which went to make this novel a really attractive one.
It was a novel dealing with and growing out of a Trans-continental automobile journey. The hero, Milt Daggett of the Mid-Western origin and a mechanical American of no sophistication, was exposed to Claire Boltwood, an aristocratic Easterner. He followed the heroine in his Teal Bug motor and saved her from time to time, from muddy roads and motorized bandits. Even if the social distance could not be overcome, a distance of three thousand-mile journeys on a bad highway was easily out-distanced. Claire Boltwood had lost all her snobbery through an exposure to the heart of America. It was a journey of life, full of understanding shared between them. Claire Boltwood was too happy to carve this health-minded American into one capable of leading a wholesome purposeful life. It was a happy blending of the mechanical and vitalistic elements in Man.
An interesting chapter of “Free Air” was laid in Gopher Frairie, the scene of “Main Street” (1920). When Boltwoods arrived at the place late one evening, the rudeness, the dirtiness, the unwelcoming attitude and the uninspiring aspect of it all struck them profoundly.
“In the house Claire was conscious of the ugliness of the poison green walls and brass cuspidors and insurance calendars and bare floor of the office; conscious of the interesting fact that all air had been replaced by the essence of cigar smoke and cooking cabbage; of the stares of the travelling men lounged in bored lives; and the lack of welcome on the part of the night clerk, an oldish bleached man with whiskers instead of collar”. (14) But in the morning, the sun shining bright, everybody pleasant, the question of unimportance would be reduced to mere human interest.
Then the morning’s bright sun would make everything appear good, including the morning’s coffee. Their troublesome inquisitiveness, starting from no social stratum, gave rise to a touch of humor. Looking to the depth, everything could not be satirized, but it required only to be understood.
The Middle West appeared raw and hideous to a cultured Easterner. But one should look at its problems and its potential greatness. Subduing Nature was a primary work. The assimilation of foreigners would be its next issue. These two problems were to be solved first. Last of all, there cropped the problem of culture. Lewis made this his apologia for the new region. The reason for Lewis’ early novels ending happily, is not the readers’ expectation of a serialized novel. It is conditioned by his own congeniality.
The opportunism of Sinclair Lewis was under discussion by various critics. Stewart Sherman in 1922 said, “It was the study of the needs of self and the age”. But Mark Schorer thought that Lewis never understood himself at all. But the truth is that was the endeavour of Lewis to understand the age. Mark Twain thought it was a difficult thing for a novelist to do because of the vastness of his country and a generalization of his nation would amount to an act of oversimplification of facts.
Lewis tried to look outward, instead of inward, in analyzing the behaviour of his own countrymen in a confusing transitional period. The hopes and frustrations of women, white-collar workers, engineers and garage mechanics of his time were all considered. It was his attempts to understand the experiences of an ordinary middle class individual. He was immune to the feelings of a sensitive soul, fleeing from the common herd, taking refuge in an ivory tower of a bohemian recluse. The problem was how to eke out one’s life in this business world. It is curious that in spite of his intensely documentary precise analysis, he should remain detached from the ranks of social, political and cultural analysis like Veblen, Mumford, Riesman and Galbrain.
As a novelist, Lewis thought that it was his one means to an end. He even entertained a fantastic concept of the Great American novel, one that would express the spirit for which his country stood. He wanted his “Babbitt” to serve this purpose of presenting the average efficient American. But in Lewis, there was evidence of this spirit in his first novel. But the fact was, he was as yet undetached. Though Lewis could present a full picture of his point of view, as effectively as Galsworthy did in his “Man of Property” and “Strife”, it lacked a settled viewpoint. His mind was in a state of flux, lacking in well-needed maturity. His mind was geared up to the future of his society. Lewis’ critical bent would fall short of his scope, as not to view the myth of “an unbounded prospect for an American individual”. To become the President of the country or at least rise to the top of the business world would prove evidence of a robust optimism.
The contemporaries who tried to paint their country in the rosiest terms had been criticized by scholars like William Couch. He proved conclusively that Lewis was a conscious revealer of truth in the form which he chose.
Lewis had in him, a very high degree of complacency and rebelliousness that got exposition in the novels preceding “The Main Street”.
His maiden novel had the unique privilege of winning a bride for him, Grace Heggar Lewis, way back in 1914. He had dedicated his work to her. “Our Mr. Wrenn” with the sub-title “The Adventurers of a Gentleman” echoed the indelible influence of HG Wells. Mr. Wrenn, a sales order clerk in a New York office was a pathetic little man fulfilling his romantic dreams in an inimical world. Like Kipps, the Wellsean hero, Wrenn would secure his release from the dreary routine, only to find the new-found world as enchanting as the first one. His trip to England proves to be yet another “Cold and friendless prison”. Again, like Kipps, he finds money to be a passport to the next higher class. Istra Nash, the disappointed future-artists and the heroine of “Our Mr. Wrenn” would place him in the arty world of “Hobohemia”, a name by which he popularized this new world. The fate of Wrenn is not much different from that of Kipps’ in being befuddled and bewildered by polite manners. His agony finds no tongue when asked to comment upon the sins committed by the eternal bourgeoisie. Like Kipps, he wants to marry a girl above his station. But ultimately Kipps enters “The Happy Shore” where a romantic marriage props up his dreams of Arcady and Mandalay. Both the heroes seem to have the same preconception that life is worth changing if it really needs it. But one essential difference between the heroes of Wells and Lewis is that it requires a “High Brow” gentleman to await change in the whole scheme of things. Till such time, the marginal men, the small shopkeepers must have their race run, however insignificant it be. This is Polly’s life. In the case of Kipps, he is again a silent spectator, allowing money to do its part. But Lewis’ hero can alter everything to his taste. His trip to England is the metamorphosis of the hero. He is no longer meek. He is at times tough like a rough neck to subdue a bully he-man. On his return to America, he looks on every aspect of life with new eyes. Life to him is vivacious. From a slattern old boarding house, he moves into a decent home, with a set of congenial friends. Even office life can become a joyous adventure. In his hands, his firm improves its business in the South. Artiness is the price one pays for taking an opportunity at the ripe moment. At the end of this novel, Wrenn becomes the captain of the industry. Lewis had taken the Wellsean theme in part and shaped the implications differently from Wells.
Between the two writers again, there is a contrast. Unlike Wells, Lewis is unsympathetic to his hero. He makes his “Wrenn” a replica of his own experiences, loneliness and yearning, unlike Wells again, Lewis cannot portray the depth of his feeling for the little man, who is a tool in the hands of circumstances of the society. Lewis moulds his hero into a shape of his choice.
Now to resolve the improbability of a tiny man conquering a burly man, we are inside Wrenn’s boarding house, which is no less repulsive than the Orwellean “The Road to Wigan Pier”. However unpleasant the hero is, as depicted by him, the novel lacks real social criticism. It is not his aim to focus attention on this aspect. The book is enveloped in an atmosphere of make-believe. But this novel is not typically Wellsean, in that a society is presented. To him, his novel has not yet grown societal.
Lewis at times considers his novel as a parade of morals, and an instrument of self-examination. This vision lacks the comprehensiveness of Wells. “To ventilate a point of issue”, a Wellsean concept of the purpose of a novel would not be agreed to by Lewis. That there existed a Wellsean influence upon Lewis, needs a qualification. It is the first consideration of Lewis that evil in society needs exposure. He might have thought like Wells that society needed a reconstruction. Lewis had assimilated many current ideas, through his reading of Wells and Thornstein Veblen, especially the ideas of warfare between the creative and acquisitive instincts. It needed a new social framework that would liberate a man’s potentialities. According to Van Wyck Brooks, there was in Lewis’ mind something in common with the “Circle of Randolph Bourne, the hovering presence of the image of a world with which the author was always comparing the visible world as it was” (1), a perceptible feature in the novels of Sinclair Lewis. Mr. Brooks thought that Lewis’ treatment was secondary through the documentation of the subject was his first concern. It is difficult to concur with this view. Imbued with a sense of the subject, Wells said that he was a journalist and so would refuse to play the artist. If he was an artist, it was a freak of Gods. Lewis views the matter differently. In order that one’s name be secure in the world of literature for the next hundred years, one should produce one thunderingly good novel. Wells was a reformist first and novelist later. But in the case of Lewis, it was his ambition to write a great American novel but the urge to reform was secondary. Though Lewis had read the realists and naturalists, it meant nothing significant to him except Shaw and Wells, who had shown what might be done with the Dickensian exaggeration of modern situations it was the evocation of a social milieu through characterization that captured the heart of Sinclair Lewis rather than his social commentary and a powerful instinct to reform. Lewis, in 1924, declared in his “A Man’s Progress” (2), that of all the topics in the world, the most interesting is humankind, people and what they are like… That is why fiction - the recounting of human customs - is the most popular form of writing, that is why, in fiction, a garrulous account of human foibles is more stirring than the trickiest melodrama or the sublimiest philosophy. (2)
Very few of the characters in “Our Mr. Wrenn” are satirical. Even if they are satirical, they are not radical, but are at times Philistine.
A Stanford processor in the novel, would write poetry which he would file under the letter “P”. The cigarette-smoking Istra Nash gets very charitable treatment, though a 20th century novelist would have caricatured her. In her restlessness and in her state of unfulfillment, she appears more pathetic than ridiculous. However, some people who talk about their practicing arts, get a rough treatment at the hands of Lewis. “Then came the super radicals, to confuse the radicals who confused Mr. Wrenn. For always there is a greater rebellion and though you sell your prayer-book to buy Bukunin and esteem yourself revolutionary to the point of madness, you shall find one who calls you reactionary. The scorners came together - Moe Chatzeky, the syndicalist and the direct actionist and Jane Schott, the writer of the impressionistic prose - and they sat silently sneering on a couch”. (3)
Lewis does not individualize his arty types. They have grotesque names in tune with grotesque attitudes. Some other characters are crudely exaggerated, yet fully and vividly. His Mrs. Zapp, the fat landlady: “When she sat down, there was a straight line from her chin to her knees. She was usually sitting down when she moved, she groaned and her apparel creaked. She groaned and creaked from bed to breakfast and ate five griddle cakes, two helpings of scrapple, an egg, some grumpy steak and three cups of coffee slowly and resentfully. She creaked and groaned from breakfast to her rocking chair and sat about wondering why Providence has inflicted upon her a weak digestion. Mr. Wrenn also wondered why, sympathetically, but Mrs. Zapp was too conscientiously dolorous to be much cheered by the sympathy of a nigger-lovin’ Yankee, who could not appreciate the subtle sorrows of a Zapp of a Zapp’s Boq, allied to all the First Families of Virginia”.(4)
Here Lewis created a character in two senses of the term, viz., an imaginary person and an odd or eccentric person. This is the normal English method before George Eliot. Lewis has Wells and Dickens as his masters in endeavoring to secure humorous effects by gross exaggeration of physical details. Mrs. Zapp is a decayed representative of the Southern aristocracy; and the total effect is plainly American. Lewis belongs to the Twainean tradition of American humor. It is vulgar, earthly and absurd. It is blunt, obvious, and cynical, at times reliant upon an understatement or an exaggeration. His is a typical American stand of attacking pretensions. It is the scoffing tone of a common man and common sense, directing his gun against innovation, theory and trappings of culture. It is all, in the traditions of Horatio Alger and Norman Vincent Peale, with the emphasis on gaining material rewards through a practice of virtue, industry and an optimum level of self-confidence. Unlike Wells, Lewis does not reject the codes of behavior initiated from the past. He is guided by a code of individualism stereotyped from the heroic image of the frontier. (5) “In Lewis’ mind are ingrained the cultural myths derived from the impact of a new and pure land upon its settlers.” (6) The character of America is not formed by an influence or culture from the past, but by responses to the challenges offered by the American Continent itself. A faith in progress and indigeneity and an idea of the American as a new man unspoiled by the sinister past of mankind, with an immense prospect of growing into a figure of great capacities, still at the dawn of a new history and with a society without any class distinction - this was the American he hoped for; every shortfall, distancing one away from this cherished goal would merit a satire from Sinclair Lewis. His first novel however, received an appreciative review from the majority of critics. His wife Grace Heggae Lewis affirms her view that this was a bright patch in the domestic life at Post Washington. He had a balance of home and roots to his inexhaustible energy to work on his own novel while he commuted to work full-time at Doran’s. His was a typical American success story.
“The Trail of the Hawk”, published in September 1915 was dedicated to a group of “Optimistic Rebels”. The phrase “Rebellious Optimism” was Allen Updegraff’s, developed from "Optimistic Rebels”, the dedicatory - Soule, Smith, Updegraff, Noyes, Harcourt and Heubsch. (7)
It is different from “Our Mr. Wrenn” in that it is radical in tone, but yet another Horatio Alger-story.Carl Ericson, a small town buy becomes an aviator and marries an aristocratic New York family girl. He is a born rebel against conventions. As a student of Plato College, he would side with his socialistic professor in a controversy only to be expelled in dishonor. The professor’s viewpoint was the summary of Well’s anticipations.
“The great visions of the glory that shall be, not in one sudden millennium, but slowly advancing towards the joys of life, we can no more prevision than the aboriginal medicine man could imagine the x-ray.” (8)
It is his rallying cry, a near Rotarianism than a socialism with a political program. Socialism is not the major motivating force in the novel. Carol Ericson is opposed to the leisure class. But the urge for social reform does not transcend his desire for freedom. It is a freedom from unreasonable restrictions and one that would contribute to progress through inventions. This is a novel helping to bring out the essence of the American system.
“Since Carl Ericson … was the divinely restless seeker of the romance that must- or we die! Life beyond the hills, you first see him in action….”. But equally since this is a serious study of an average young American, there should be an indication of his soil nourished ancestry.
“Carl was a second generation Norwegian; American born, American in speech, American in appearance, save for his flaxen hair and China blue eyes; and thanks to the flag decked public school, overwhelmingly American in tradition. When he was born, the ‘typical Americans’ of earlier stocks had moved to city palaces or were marooned on run-down farms. It was Carl Ericson, not a Trowbridge, or a Stuyversant, or a Lee or a Grant, who was the typical American of this period. It was for him to carry on the American destiny for extending the Western Horizon; to restore the Wintry Pilgrim Virtues and the exuberant October. Partridge-drumming days of Daniel Boone; then to add, in his own or another generation, new American aspirations for beauty”.(9)
This long passage serves as a variant of the frontier myth. The frontier in American Literature “had been divided into regional pioneering, industrial pioneering and spiritual pioneering.” Lewis explores the possibility of the pioneering spirit which is suitable for 20th Century America. There exists a more boundless prospect for the spirit than before. But this requires the very best in life of a man. The geographical frontier had already vanished. But the other frontiers will have to be searched; otherwise the American spirit will be stunted. He makes his hero a restless seeker, a doer and a man of action. As if to prove that the age of heroism has not yet come to an end, Lewis finds a new type of hero for his novel, the aviator, a decade before Colonel Lindbergh. Unlike Well’s hero, Remington in Tono Bungay, Lewis’ hero, Carl Ericson was a flier, inventor and a new American. Instead of wandering into higher things, the hero seasons himself through newer and different things. The packer in a department store is elevated to part owner of an automobile repair shop, realizes a better future in aviation after hearing the exploits of Curtis and Wright brothers. And this becomes the climax of his career. Still in quest of something more, Lewis’ hero invents a Touricar and markets it. He exposes his hero to yet another career, business. Here Lewis gives another turn to his story - romance and marriage. A stagnation point is soon reached when he is locked up in his own world of an office job and a New York apartment. He is finally fired with a zeal to flee into freedom, into Buenos Aires as Argentine Republic Manager for the Van Ziles Motor Corporation. Lewis’ satire is directed against the impediments to his hero’s free movement, like the small town, the small college and the restrictive social groups. Lewis’ answer to the tiredness of a businessman lay in a Bohemian way of life.
Lewis’ mockery is directed against the president of the Plato College, S Alcott Road, for his conservatism, anti-socialist mentality and perverted reading of the Bible. The characterization of President Wood is sacrificed for the author’s sense of exaggeration. Lewis’ Mrs. Cowles and her daughter Gertie, the social lioness of Joralemon as well as New York are more complex characters than President Wood. The snobbery of these people is to be blamed and pitied as they are the products of the small town environment. To Carl, Gertie acts as a restraint through conventionalism. To her, Carl is a deliverer from a desperate situation. Both Gertie and her mother are creations of a typical weakness and folly. Lewis is very tolerant to these people. He finds out the cause of their anti-social behavior but he is yet unwilling to ridicule them. Lewis’ attitude to Ruth Winslow’s foibles also proceed from a readiness to understand her. The heroine, like every Lewis’ heroine, hails from the East, and is full of refinement and education, but the hero is an unsophisticated, enterprising young man. It is the very author personified through this hero and Grace Heggar, his wife is echoed in his early heroines. Ruth comes from an old established New York family, dominated by the bulwark of a dowager aunt. Lewis, instead of making her a butterfly, moulds herself into a self-conscious individual, fighting her way against the narrow atmosphere. She has a living interest in settlement houses. Ruth is as restless as Carl and the purpose of her first meeting with him was to find out for herself something enlivening.
Another interesting feature of this novel is the “Play” instinct. It can be an indulgence in games, make-believe, fantasy and an escape into Nature. As a palliative against the oppressive realism, Lewisean men and women have this stock answer of “Play”. Both the hero and heroine are whimsical and become playmates to each other. Their final escape is necessitated by their refusal to surrender their dream, or give up play or accept their environment. The ending of this novel sketches an egocentric defence of escapism. Almost all the critics viewed it rather indulgently. It is a joyous and spontaneous burlesque requiring an element of credulity to enjoy this novel.
Lewis’ next novel, “The Job” (February 1917) is a feminist document with an alternative title, perhaps to indicate its exclusive American make-up, for there existed a novel “Ann Veronica” (1909) of HG Wells, different from Lewis’ novel it is full of American sentiments. In the case of a Wellsean heroine, it is a personal achievement, when face to face with the woman’s position in the world. With the freedom permitted to a woman in the real world, with all limitations of working under some man, even a foothold in this world is the epitome of this novel. Lewis presents America’s escape from the doll’s house into a free and a full life, all a deterministic activity. As a company of immense opportunities, it must offer this heroine as many opportunities as are thrown open to a man of equal capabilities. Lewis’ heroine, Una Golden, is a feminine Horatio Alger character. Through initiative, hard work, and a shrewd grasp of opportunities, she rises up the ladder of business, as a manager in a hotel chain, creating for herself the kind of life which she wants to live. The Horatio Alger element comes to the true surface at the end of the novel. His main character in this novel is neither a caricature nor a strongly individualized one, but a type by itself. Such a person, in quite a commonplace, small-town gurl imbued with the village is kind of virginal vacuousness like a documentary writer. Lewis studies this social phenomenon - the ‘metropolis-ward’ women in search of work, adventure and emotional fulfilment. A bourgeois theme is a valid material for tragedy. After making the claim, he turns his story into a tragicomedy with everyone living happily ever after.
The novel deals with the significance of “JOB” in the commercial world. Job is an impersonal and a mechanical routine. The heroine is but a willless instrument during the working day, which consumes a large part of her time and nearly all her energy. Bringing this passive prisoner of routine into contact with a rebellious spirit is an obvious plotline. Walter Babson is like Lewis in his flamboyant youth, spontaneity, his taste for Shaw and Wells. These two children of the City, where there is no place for lovemaking, for discovering and testing each other’s hidden feelings; in the commercial metropolis, Nature is steel bound. When sprint makes its ‘Scornful lusty demand’, Ina can only cry out to be spared from it and when it becomes insistent she has to fall back upon “We’ll be good”, a cliche which Walter ridicules as the perfect expression of the American women, but which he cannot subvert. Since marriage or any other continuing relationship is impossible for them, Walter goes out of Una’s life by taking a job a thousand miles away from New York.
As the next step, Lewis drives Una into the arms of a typical businessman. As he seems to offer her a refuge from slavery, she marries Julius Edward Schwirtz. He is a garrulous paints salesman. Soon she finds that she exchanged one prison for another. In her life, “amidst the blank procession of phantoms who haunt cheap family hotels”, nothing happens to make her believe that life has certain beauties and meanings. With the exit of the undependable Julius, Una has to go out to work. But she gains her prize - freedom. It is on the job that she is dependent, never again to be trapped or enslaved. The theme almost becomes the development of an intelligent and purposeful feminine will. She is elevated to an honorable position but her Walyter Bobson is restored to her, a mere melodramatic turn to the novel. Through this novel Lewis tries to capture the true nature of life in America. It is his personal experience that many people in society had led to a narrow and frustrated life. In this novel, Lewis presents two irreconcilable visions of America.
As the next step, Lewis drives Una into the arms of a typical businessman. As he seems to offer her a refuge from slavery, she marries Julius Edward Schwirtz. He is a garrulous paints salesman. Soon she finds that she exchanged one prison for another. In her life, “amidst the blank procession of phantoms who haunt cheap family hotels”, nothing happens to make her believe that life has certain beauties and meanings. With the exit of the undependable Julius, Una has to go out to work. But she gains her prize - freedom. It is on the job that she is dependent, never again to be trapped or enslaved. The theme almost becomes the development of an intelligent and purposeful feminine will. She is elevated to an honorable position but her Walyter Bobson is restored to her, a mere melodramatic turn to the novel. Through this novel Lewis tries to capture the true nature of life in America. It is his personal experience that many people in society had led to a narrow and frustrated life. In this novel, Lewis presents two irreconcilable visions of America.
But then the portrayal of Schwertz displays an ambivalent attitude. In this novel, Lewis has something to hate. He has viewed Schwertz in ‘the cold life of a perfect distance’. The salesman’s rambling, slangy monologues, though amusing in themselves, illustrate his hypocrisy and moral confusion. He is considered honest in spite of his drunken and slovenly habits. In the scene in which Schwertz and Una face each other for the last time, Lewis builds sympathy for him. Una has grounds to hate her husband when she puts an end to her talk saying that even if they talked for a thousand years, they will never understand each other. She is very proud of her freedom and calls him a ‘poor decent man’. Mr. Lewis is beyond satirizing. His perspective grows into a novelistic one. He sets up a standard against which Schwertz is to be judged indecent. But even this standard is fleeting.
Lewis’ presentation of the business world is also ambivalent. Una’s early experience in an office is savage. The rules of the conduct of this business will crush her if she transgressed, at least, one of them. The executives at the Pemberton’s stick to its faith, and work in such a way as ‘not to waste their evenings, making love, or reading books or hearing music’ but they will carefully read about ‘soaps and syrups and window displays’. (11)
There is a strong streak of Veblenism in this novel. Chapter XIV of this novel is a popular account of Veblen’s point of view. (12) When Lewis exemplifies the qualities that a person develops in this system either to emulate or to simply survive, this novel strongly echoes Veblen. One ideal that is idolized in this novel is Big Business.
“For ‘Business’, that one necessary field of activity to which the egotistic arts and sciences and theologies and military puerilities are but servants, that long deposed and always valiant effort to unify the labor of the world, is at last going to be something more than dirty smithing. No longer does the man thank the better classes for permitting him to make and distribute bread and motor cars and books. No longer does he crawl to the church to buy pardon for usury. Business is being recognized and is recognizing itself - as a ruler of the world.” (13)
For Lewis, business is superior to all other things, theology and arts and sciences. As inconsistency would have it, Lewis is all admiration for applications of systems and charts and scientific mind to industry and describing the vision of an efficiency so broad that it can be kindly and sure. Lewis is confused as not to discriminate between the parasites of the industrial system and the technicians, the workforce.
Lewis affirms what Veblen and Wells thought about mankind working at a fraction of their potential. It should reconstruct all its clumsy, outworn procedures. Mr. Fein, the benevolent businessman, becomes the spokesman of this view. He says that “in most lines, experts are at work showing up their deficiencies”, while the Wellsian utopia is evolving Mr. Fein and by inference Mr. Lewis advocates nothing more revolutionary than being patient and cultivating one’s garden.
Again, between Lewis and Wells, there is an ideological distance. Lewis’ benevolence is Dickensean in nature, like the Churyble brothers in Nicholas Nickelby. But through his commonsense prescription of “honesty and freedom from care”, Lewis is more complacent than Dickens, which would have made Wells desperate. In “Job”, Lewis had produced “The Main Street” and “Babbitt” in which he described business as the highest form of human activity. But the argument that this imposes a lovely tedium of routine on man, cannot make an effective front.
“The Innocents” which saw light simultaneously with “Job” was first serialized in “Woman’s Home Companion” before it came in book form. It was named “A Story for Lovers”. But none of his publishers of New York, even the author, think this book worth including in his work during the 1920’s.
An old couple after an early-encaged life had fled into two adventures. A set of bohemians and socialites got lost and went hiking across the country in mid-winter. “This was an ideal outing for people over sixty”, pontificated Lewis; they would go along with their wives with their mouth organs. Lewis, in spite of his voluminous writing, did not lose his sentimentality, and his medievalism which of course was a false one. Having fallen into the hands of gangs, they attempted to reform the tough hobos. The one man became their de facto ruler. There followed a new publicity for this man. They continued their journey. At Lippetville, he took charge of a show-store through which he would grow into a successful businessman and pillar of society. Then the respected son-in-law arrived to rescue them and place them in an old home. The old couple had been subjected to severe humiliation. From this point on, the novel would pivot on the success myth. Lewis would give his “Innocents” wide experience enabling them to season themselves for an advancement. The progress of America according to Lewis was due to the initiative taken by the people. The wealth of the country was not in the sophisticated East but among the small town people of the Middle West.
Like his characters, Lewis and Grace Lewis also practiced their wanderlust in spite of his son Wells Lewis, being an infant. She tried to prove that a family was not going to hinder her husband's love of wandering.
Apart from stories, Lewis had contributed articles to various magazines like the “Saturday Evening Post”. He had another serialized novel “Free Air” before it also got published as a charming novel “An Odyssey of the North West”. The serialized magazine work consisted of “Free Air - Its Continuation”, “Danger - Run Slow”, and a series of articles, including “Adventure of Autobumming”. Encouraged by its success, Lewis allowed Alfred Harcourt, his publisher, to bring it out in a novel form. He sold the movie rights to the Famous Players Company.
Even in the book form, it was yet a “Modern Fairy Tale” written by a “Master Realist on a Lark”.Lewis instructed his publisher to send a copy of “Free Air” to the Pulitzer prize committee, for this fulfilled the essential condition laid down by the committee, that the writing should consist of a wholesome atmosphere of the American life.
Wanderlust, snobbery, the rich girl, the up-and-coming-mechanic hero, were the aspects that dealt within this novel. Lewis could not make his snobs appear as credible human beings or as representatives of various types of snobbery. It was the sweep and exhilaration of the great country, which went to make this novel a really attractive one.
It was a novel dealing with and growing out of a Trans-continental automobile journey. The hero, Milt Daggett of the Mid-Western origin and a mechanical American of no sophistication, was exposed to Claire Boltwood, an aristocratic Easterner. He followed the heroine in his Teal Bug motor and saved her from time to time, from muddy roads and motorized bandits. Even if the social distance could not be overcome, a distance of three thousand-mile journeys on a bad highway was easily out-distanced. Claire Boltwood had lost all her snobbery through an exposure to the heart of America. It was a journey of life, full of understanding shared between them. Claire Boltwood was too happy to carve this health-minded American into one capable of leading a wholesome purposeful life. It was a happy blending of the mechanical and vitalistic elements in Man.
An interesting chapter of “Free Air” was laid in Gopher Frairie, the scene of “Main Street” (1920). When Boltwoods arrived at the place late one evening, the rudeness, the dirtiness, the unwelcoming attitude and the uninspiring aspect of it all struck them profoundly.
“In the house Claire was conscious of the ugliness of the poison green walls and brass cuspidors and insurance calendars and bare floor of the office; conscious of the interesting fact that all air had been replaced by the essence of cigar smoke and cooking cabbage; of the stares of the travelling men lounged in bored lives; and the lack of welcome on the part of the night clerk, an oldish bleached man with whiskers instead of collar”. (14) But in the morning, the sun shining bright, everybody pleasant, the question of unimportance would be reduced to mere human interest.
Then the morning’s bright sun would make everything appear good, including the morning’s coffee. Their troublesome inquisitiveness, starting from no social stratum, gave rise to a touch of humor. Looking to the depth, everything could not be satirized, but it required only to be understood.
The Middle West appeared raw and hideous to a cultured Easterner. But one should look at its problems and its potential greatness. Subduing Nature was a primary work. The assimilation of foreigners would be its next issue. These two problems were to be solved first. Last of all, there cropped the problem of culture. Lewis made this his apologia for the new region. The reason for Lewis’ early novels ending happily, is not the readers’ expectation of a serialized novel. It is conditioned by his own congeniality.
The opportunism of Sinclair Lewis was under discussion by various critics. Stewart Sherman in 1922 said, “It was the study of the needs of self and the age”. But Mark Schorer thought that Lewis never understood himself at all. But the truth is that was the endeavour of Lewis to understand the age. Mark Twain thought it was a difficult thing for a novelist to do because of the vastness of his country and a generalization of his nation would amount to an act of oversimplification of facts.
Lewis tried to look outward, instead of inward, in analyzing the behaviour of his own countrymen in a confusing transitional period. The hopes and frustrations of women, white-collar workers, engineers and garage mechanics of his time were all considered. It was his attempts to understand the experiences of an ordinary middle class individual. He was immune to the feelings of a sensitive soul, fleeing from the common herd, taking refuge in an ivory tower of a bohemian recluse. The problem was how to eke out one’s life in this business world. It is curious that in spite of his intensely documentary precise analysis, he should remain detached from the ranks of social, political and cultural analysis like Veblen, Mumford, Riesman and Galbrain.
As a novelist, Lewis thought that it was his one means to an end. He even entertained a fantastic concept of the Great American novel, one that would express the spirit for which his country stood. He wanted his “Babbitt” to serve this purpose of presenting the average efficient American. But in Lewis, there was evidence of this spirit in his first novel. But the fact was, he was as yet undetached. Though Lewis could present a full picture of his point of view, as effectively as Galsworthy did in his “Man of Property” and “Strife”, it lacked a settled viewpoint. His mind was in a state of flux, lacking in well-needed maturity. His mind was geared up to the future of his society. Lewis’ critical bent would fall short of his scope, as not to view the myth of “an unbounded prospect for an American individual”. To become the President of the country or at least rise to the top of the business world would prove evidence of a robust optimism.
The contemporaries who tried to paint their country in the rosiest terms had been criticized by scholars like William Couch. He proved conclusively that Lewis was a conscious revealer of truth in the form which he chose.
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