Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street

In the 1920s, Sinclair Lewis unleashed a fusillade of sensational novels. With unerring eye and omnivorous ear, he mocked such sacrosanct institutions as the small town (Main Street), business (Babbitt), and religion (Elmer Gantry). Despite their sub... Read more

In the 1920s, Sinclair Lewis unleashed a fusillade of sensational novels. With unerring eye and omnivorous ear, he mocked such sacrosanct institutions as the small town (Main Street), business (Babbitt), and religion (Elmer Gantry). Despite their subversiveness, his novels were all bestsellers.In 1930, he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. For all his use of humor and satire, "Red" Lewis's novels probed serious themes -- feminism (The Job, Main Street, Ann Vickers), science verses commercialism (Arrowsmith), racial prejudice (Kingsblood Royal), and native fascism (It Can't Happen Here).Bringing to light new correspondence, diaries, and criticism, Richard Lingeman, the much-praised biographer of Theodore Dreiser, paints a sympathetic portrait of an American writer who was, on the inside, the loneliest of men and, on the outside, as gregarious as his creation George F. Babbitt. Lingeman writes with understanding and insight about Lewis's losing struggle with alcoholism and his marriages to the socially ambitious Grace Hegger and the super-careerwoman Dorothy Thompson. Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main S Less