1927: Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

Who?
Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) appears twice on this list, the first time in 1921 for his novel MainStreet.  Between the publication of Main Street and Elmer Gantry, Lewis published his two of his seminal works, Babbit (1922) and Arrowsmith (1925).  In 1930, Lewis became the first American author to win the Nobel Prize in literature.

So what's this book about?
Elmer Gantry is a satirical attack on religious institutions of the early 1900’s. (In the name of journalistic integrity, I should point out that I am not religious but I will try to avoid putting any such bias in this review) The eponymous Elmer Gantry is a narcissistic, drunk, violent, womanizing college student who is convinced to join the church and over the course of the next twenty years, becomes the most famous preacher in the nation.  While publicly a figure of righteousness and one of the most vocal detractors of anything sinful, Gantry’s private life and motivations are incredibly self-serving and hypocritical.  He preaches because it gives him power over people.

            Elmer Gantry is a character you love to hate.  His character exemplifies the state of religious institutions of the time.  Uncoincidentally, the Gantry, after being kicked out of the seminary, becomes a salesman.  Throughout the novel, the ability to earn money for the church (and himself) becomes first and foremost of Gantry’s concerns.  Likewise, the religious organizations (Gantry starts as a Baptist, becomes an Evangelical, and later a Methodist) feel the same way.  Throughout the story, the preachers that honestly believe and live by the bible never get to preach anywhere above small towns or poor districts in the cities.  The preachers who are a help to their community are also unable to get assigned to a large church and are frequently non-believers.

            Strangely enough, Gantry believes (or at least believes that he believes) in the bible. This is important.  One of the beliefs that Gantry and the other preachers have to affirm time and again throughout the novel is that salvation is guaranteed through faith, not good works.  Elmer Gantry does bad things all the time but has faith.  

Why was it so popular?
           From the New York Times, April 13, 1927:

            “Boston bans sale of ‘Elmer Gantry’: Will prosecute anyone who sells Lewis novel under law against ‘indecent and obscene’ books.”

            The controversy over Elmer Gantry was widespread.  Preachers routinely and vehemently denounced the book.  The then-famous evangelist Billy Sunday shouted that he “could have socked Mr. Lewis so hard there would have been nothing left for the devil to leap on.”  Sunday may have had good reason to be angry, because the similarities between the then famous preacher and Gantry were many. 

            Sunday was one of two people who were in particular lampooned in Elmer Gantry.  The other was Aimee Semple McPherson who appears in the novel as the revivalist Sharon Falconer.  Like Falconer, McPherson led a series of tent-revivals across the nation, incorporating myriad forms of entertainment into her meetings.  Like Falconer, she also claimed to be a faith-healer.  Falconer, like McPherson, built her own large church.  Whereas Falconer’s burnt down, McPherson’s still stands and is the headquarters of an eight million member international Christian denomination. 

Why haven't I heard of it?
            After the initial controversy died down, I can’t imagine that Elmer Gantry would continue to revel in mainstream appeal.  While other bestselling novels on the list (The Inside of the Cup, for example) challenge religious convention, they conclude by praising the religion and its practitioners, even if criticizing certain practices.  From what I’ve seen so far, for a book to remain popular, it has to do at least one of a few things: a) get taught in schools (e.g. The Grapes of Wrath)  b)have an author that has remained famous (e.g. Dharma Bums)   c) have a popular film adaptation (e.g. The Godfather) d) garner a cult following (The Lord of the Rings, before the movies) or e) become regarded as ‘a classic’ (e.g. Absalom, Absalom).  While Elmer Gantry had a fairly popular film adaptation in 1960, the novel is far too controversial to get taught in schools, Lewis has himself declined in popularity, and there does not seem to be a strong community centered around Lewis’s works.  However, with certain changes in popular ideology, I would not be surprised if Elmer Gantry didn’t have a bit of a revival in the coming years.  

Should I read it?

            Yes.  Whatever your opinions, politically or religiously, Elmer Gantry provides a look at corruption and mass deception that is both incredible and down-to-earth.

Also published in 1927:  
Willa Cather - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Herman Hesse - Steppenwolf
Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time (final volume)
Upton Sinclair - Oil!
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse

Sources:

Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry. 1927. New York: Dell Publishing Co. 1960.
Schorer, Mark. Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1961. Print.

1921: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Who?

            Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), better know as ‘Sinclair Lewis,’ was born in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, which would later become the basis for Main Street.  In 1903, he began attending Yale University, taking time off in 1906 to join (as a janitor) Helicon Hall, a cooperative living community created and run by The Jungle novelist, Upton Sinclair.  He graduated from Yale in 1908, and lived briefly in New York and California before settling in Washington D.C.  He occasionally sold story plots to Jack London and in 1914 he married Grace Livingston Hegger.  In 1917, Sinclair and Grace had a son named Wells, who was killed in World War Two.  In 1925, Grace and Lewis divorced.  Lewis married Dorothy Thompson in 1928, and had another son, Michael.  The two divorced in 1942.

            Between 1912 and 1920, Lewis wrote several novels, none of which were very successful.  Main Street, published in 1920, became his first huge success, followed by Babbit (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), and Elmer Gantry (1927).    In 1930, Lewis became the first American author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.  In the following years, he wrote eleven more novels, none of which “equalled the success or stature of hischeifworks of the twenties.”  After his divorce from Thompson, Lewis lived mainly in Europe.  He had an ongoing problem with alcohol which was a major contributing factor in fatal heart attack.  He died in a clinic on the outskirts of Rome.

So what's this book about?

            Main Street tells the story of Carol Milford, an intelligent and idealistic librarian from Saint Paul, Minnesota.  She falls in love with small-town doctor, Will Kennicott, and agrees to marry and moves with him to his small hometown of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.  She plans to improve the town, but finds a town ensnared in pettiness, arrogance, and conceit.  The only people she can connect with are the poor immigrants, whom the elite of Gopher Prairie are dependent on and disdainful of.     

            This novel is a scathing satire of the American small town.  In Main Street, Lewis strips away the mythology of the kind and gentle Midwesterner and shows the crooked and self-involved power struggles within the town of Gopher Prairie and all those like it.  The protagonist tries to circumvent the web of jealousy and pride that makes up the town’s mentality, but finds this to be as much a part of the town as the dilapidated buildings. 

            The portrait Lewis paints of Gopher Prairie is exhaustive: in the sense of its completeness and in the sense of its frequently overwhelming, if not superfluous, detail.  Lewis’s prose leaves much to be desired.  Mark Schorer, in his painstakingly researched, tomeful biography Sinclair Lewis, an American Life, concludes that “He was one of the worst writers in modern American Literature, but without his writing one cannot imagine modern American literature” (813).    I wouldn’t go so far as to use the superlative “worst,” but compared to the other ‘greats’ of early 20^th century American literature, Lewis is conspicuously lacking in style.  

Why was it so popular? 

           As opposed to the other novels so far reviewed, Main Street is incredibly critical of not only American mentalities but specifically rural America.  Whereas the others either  praised the rustic (e.g., The Eyes of the World, Zane Grey’s novels) or found fault in industrialization (e.g. The Inside of the Cup, The Turmoil), Lewis spends over four hundred pages pointing out the hypocrisy of middle America. 

            There are, of course, contemporary issues raised in the course of the novel.  Woman’s suffrage and the role of women in society was dealt with frequently, as was the role of immigrants and labor unions.  Consider that this was published in 1920, the year the United States ratified the 19^th amendment, guaranteeing the women’s right to vote.  This was also written and published at the height of the First Red Scare.  The federal government had been called out to violently end labor strikes.  Anti-immigrant and anti-anarchist sentiment was at a peak; the Immigration Act of 1918 gave the government the ability to deport any immigrants with anarchist connections or ideals.     

            To one extent or another, Main Street calls the American people out on all these issues. 

So why haven't I heard of it?

            It seems that some high schools do (or at least used to) have Main Street as compulsory reading.  Main Street is a slow book.  That isn’t to say the pacing drags, just that it requires a good amount of patience.  And, as I mentioned earlier, Lewis’s prose is not particularly elegant or forceful.  As a study of the small town mentality, currently as well as in the early 20^th century, Main Street is fantastic, but that may not be enough to get people to take the time and effort to read it.

Should I read it?

            Yes.  Despite my griping about the prose, the story is strong.  It presents a sometimes infuriating picture of small town politics and the social and economic challenges that grow from that, challenges that are still relevant today.

You can read Main Street on Project Gutenberg.  

Also published in 1921:    

John Galsworthy - To Let (last part of the Forsyte Saga)

George Moore - Heloise and Abelard

Sources:
     Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street. 1920. Mattituck, New York: Amereon House, 1948. Print.
     Schorer, Mark. Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. Print.