cover image SINCLAIR LEWIS: Rebel from Main Street

SINCLAIR LEWIS: Rebel from Main Street

Richard R. Lingeman, . . Random, $35 (688pp) ISBN 978-0-679-43823-6

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) lived in an era of American literary giants: there was Dreiser (whose life Lingeman has also written), James, Wharton and Hemingway, just to name a few. But Lewis himself is remembered as an author of middling distinction who achieved celebrity with pointed satires of American mores, particularly in Main Street, Babbitt and Elmer Gantry. Lingeman's absorbing biography, however, makes critics's offhand treatment of Lewis seem misplaced. A brash Midwesterner with a mile-wide goofball streak, Lewis turns out to have lived loudly, expansively and generously—far from the dour personality one might expect of a satirist. Possessed of limitless energy and generally pragmatic about hackwork, he poured forth reams of print all his life. His quest for a true American realism was earnest though not always successful. At his best, as in Main Street, he provided razor-sharp criticism of a nation greatly in need of self-caricature. He turned down a Pulitzer Prize and accepted a Nobel. He exasperated his two wives, explored radical politics without committing himself and was felled by alcoholism; Lewis's story in these respects shares much with that of other writers. Lingeman, a senior editor at the Nation, succeeds in capturing the giddy, forward progression of Lewis's life, full of obsessions and accidents; it's only at the end that one realizes that one has finished a tragedy. Although relatively few readers may set out to read a life of Sinclair Lewis, this well-crafted biography holds many rewards for those who find it. Agent, Virginia Barber.(On-sale: Jan. 15)

Forecast:Thanks to the reputation Lingeman established with his acclaimed life of Dreiser, this will receive widespread review attention, which may draw more than the usual number of readers for a literary bio.