cover image Rise Sinclair Lewis,1920-1930 (CL)

Rise Sinclair Lewis,1920-1930 (CL)

James M. Hutchisson. Pennsylvania State University Press, $57 (448pp) ISBN 978-0-271-01503-3

In one extraordinary decade of literary output, Sinclair Lewis not only achieved fame and fortune but also became the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize. Novels such as Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), and Elmer Gantry (1927) redefined the character of small-town America and put ""Babbittry"" and ""main street"" into the American vernacular. Yet after 1930, Lewis's novels failed to live up to that decade of promise, and he never finished writing the labor-movement novel that he thought would be his best work. Using Lewis's many notebooks, outlines, maps and typescripts, Hutchisson thoroughly examines the making of each of the novels that brought Lewis increasing notoriety. Not only did Lewis make copious notes and write biographies of his characters, but he also immersed himself in the world of each novel, even living with various preachers and giving sermons as he worked on Elmer Gantry. Hutchisson also shows how Lewis used H.L. Mencken; his friend and first publisher Alfred Harcourt; and his two wives as readers and critics of his works. If occasionally a little on the dry side, it still does shed light on how one vein could be so completely mined and just as completely mined out. (June)