Statement • Problems or Suggestions? My first—and last—sight of Sinclair Lewis was in Union Square. [38], Since the 2010s there has been renewed interest in Lewis' work, in particular his 1935 dystopian satire It Can't Happen Here. 2 Ways to Vote him Up! [33] It is based on the Sweet Trials in Detroit in which an African-American doctor was denied the chance to purchase a house in a "white" section of the city. From Gannett’s windows you could see down to the grubby commerce that surrounded the square. Sinclair Lewis Importance in the 1920s: The post-World War I America was becoming an economic power. If you’re not from here, you might not know why he is so important to central Minnesotans, especially Sauk Centre residents! Where can I find the films made from Lewis's novels? Compared to...Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Faulkner...Lewis lacked style. Later in his life, Lewis hired Barnaby Conrad as his personal assistant and helped him to write The Innocent Villa. - Sinclair Lewis. © 2012 Illinois State University Sinclair Lewis – Elmer Gantry (1927) He was Elinor Wylie's first literary contact, and he encouraged her during the beginning of her career. ", Hutchisson, James M. "All of Us Americans at 46: The Making of Sinclair Lewis', Love, Glen A. 58. Many critics, including Heywood Broun, praised Lewis for his ability to … His most well-known novels are Main Street (1920) and Babbit (1922). [30], In the 1940s, Lewis and rabbi-turned-popular author Lewis Browne frequently appeared on the lecture platform together,[31] touring the United States and debating before audiences of as many as 3,000 people, addressing such questions as "Has the Modern Woman Made Good? 1919: "Adventures in Autobumming: Gasoline Gypsies". Novelist, short story writer, playwright (Famous from Arrowsmith and Elmer Gantry) Votes Ranking Boost Ranking; Sinclair Lewis ranks , and ranks among all celebrities on the Top Celebrity Crushes list. The following year, Edwin Lewis married Isabel Warner, whose company young Lewis apparently enjoyed. Main Street is the epitome of the "Revolt from the Village" novel and the logical conclusion to a literary trend started by such writers as Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson. Jump over the site's left-side navigation bar. His father was a country doctor. He portrayed them as leading essentially pointless lives in spite of great wealth and advantages. Lewis also helped other young American authors. Kingsblood Royal (1947), a novel about a man who discovers a black ancestor and endures attacks by his former friends and colleagues, exposed racism in middle class America to a white audience that had turned a blind eye to it. [12] His biographer Mark Schorer wrote that the phenomenal success of Main Street "was the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history". From Gannett’s windows you could see down to the grubby commerce that surrounded the square. Lewis used vivid detail to create scenes of the American middle class. "Little Bear Bongo" (1930) is a tale about a bear cub who wants to escape the circus in search of a better life in the real world, first published in Cosmopolitan magazine. Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. [10] They had a son, Michael Lewis (1930-1975), who became a stage actor. He entered Yale in 1903, but did not receive his bachelor's degree until 1908, having taken time off to work at Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's cooperative-living colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and to travel to Panama. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds. [28], In the autumn of 1940, Lewis visited his old acquaintance, William Ellery Leonard, in Madison, Wisconsin. Disney used the story (now titled "Bongo") as part of its feature Fun and Fancy Free. ", Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life, Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, The Man Who Knew Coolidge: Being the Soul of Lowell Schmaltz, Constructive and Nordic Citizen, "A Good Journalist Understands That Fascism Can Happen Anywhere, Anytime: On the 1930s Antifascist Writing of Dorothy Thompson", "Nobel Lecture: The American Fear of Literature", "Lewis Is Slapped by Dreiser in Club; Principals in 'He Who Gets Slapped, "Lewis Calls Witness to Challenge Dreiser; Gets Mrs. de Kruif's Denial That Rival Author Was Asked First to Write 'Arrowsmith, "Boast of Publicity Defied by Dreiser; Novelist Rebuked by Court as He Passes Lie in Connection With Slapping of Lewis", "Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, October 7, 1940 :: St. "I, who have heaved a good many bricks myself, would be … Some family papers are housed at St. In the wake of World War I, amidst the culture of the Jazz Age and the Great Depression, Lewis revealed to Americans their lives at a time when they were ready to listen. He never said anything important.” – Sinclair Lewis. [9] On May 14, 1928, he married Dorothy Thompson, a political newspaper columnist. ", Tanner, Stephen L. "Sinclair Lewis and Fascism. His social satire was critical of American life and certain types of Americans and institutions which he felt harmed Americans and prevented the country from living up to its democratic ideals. "It Can't Happen Here, or Has It? For under the slang, the noise, and the welter of blurred images, Lewis’s subject is essentially social intercourse. Even so, Light presents Samuel Dodsworth as Lewis’s most important protagonist since he is the one who comes the closest to resolving the romantic tension Light identifies. Lewis's earliest published creative work—romantic poetry and short sketches—appeared in the Yale Courant and the Yale Literary Magazine, of which he became an editor. His final novel World So Wide (1951) was published posthumously. 57. "Sinclair Lewis, the Voice of Satire, and Mary Austin's Revolt from the Village. : Its History, Culture, and Politics. The son of a country doctor, from a family of three boys, he grew up introverted and intelligent in this town with a population of 2,800, most of which was Swedish and Norwegian. The Life of Sinclair Lewis Born in 1886, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Henry Sinclair Lewis became the first American novelist to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. (2012), Richard Lingeman, Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street, Chamberlain, John (October 7, 1943) "Books of the Times". When asked why he was willing to accept the Nobel Prize, but not the Pulitzer, he said it was (His rejection letter is below.) Scroll down and check out his short and medium hairstyles. Feb. 7 marks the 130th birthday of Sinclair Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. He also earned money by selling plots to Jack London, including one for the latter's unfinished novel The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. Lewis's first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, a Tom Swift-style potboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham. Sinclair Lewis was an important writer in the 1920s because he was one of the best-selling authors of the period. "[28] Lewis checked out after ten days, lacking any "fundamental understanding of his problem," as one of his physicians wrote to a colleague. "The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it." In 1914 Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger (1887–1981), an editor at Vogue magazine. Be the first to answer! Why did Sinclair Lewis win the Nobel Prize? Serving as a U.S. Army lieutenant during World War II, Wells Lewis was killed in action on October 29 amid Allied efforts to rescue the "Lost Battalion" in France. "Americanisms in the Novels of Sinclair Lewis. Those who actually read the rest of the story obviously found out that Donald Trump is not Lewis’ fictional dystopian American president. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, which Lewis declined,[17] still upset that Main Street had not won the prize. The pair were described as "the Gallagher and Shean of the lecture circuit" by Lewis biographer Richard Lingeman.[32]. Sinclair Lewis (full name – Harry Sinclair Lewis) was born February 7, 1885 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the most Scandinavian part of America (at that time). The genus of Lewis’s ascent can be located in the year 1916 when he and his wife, Grace, came to stay in Sauk Centre with Dr. Lewis and his wife, Sinclair’s stepmother. Review of, David J. Eisenman, "Rereading Arrowsmith in the COVID-19 Pandemic. America First! Then he got up from his chair, walked around the desk and faced the rest of us. Asked by Wiki User. The book was adapted for the Broadway stage in 1934 by Sidney Howard, who also wrote the screenplay for the 1936 film version directed by William Wyler, which was a great success at the time. Free Air, another refurbished serial story, was published in 1919. His doctors gave him a blunt assessment that he needed to decide "whether he was going to live without alcohol or die by it, one or the other. Not to be confused with his contemporary, Kauffman, Bill. Their marriage had virtually ended by 1937, and they divorced in 1942. Cloud State University – Sinclair Lewis Letters to Marcella Powers", "Amazon's best-seller list takes a dystopian turn in Trump era", https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2017.1304760, "The Short Stories of Sinclair Lewis (1904–1949)", NBC Biographies in Sound #43 They Knew Sinclair Lewis, "Sinclair Lewis: The Man From Main Street", The Short Stories of Sinclair Lewis (1904–1949), The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sinclair_Lewis&oldid=1022616715, 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, Nobelprize template using Wikidata property P8024, Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers, Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Grace Livingston Hegger (1914–1925) (divorced). The story was set in the fictional Midwestern town of Zenith, Winnemac, a setting to which Lewis returned in future novels, including Gideon Planish and Dodsworth. In the aftermath of the 2016 United States Presidential Election, It Can't Happen Here surged to the top of Amazon's list of best-selling books.[39]. After graduation Lewis moved from job to job and from place to place in an effort to make ends meet, writing fiction for publication and to chase away boredom. The resulting screenplay was Storm In the West, "a traditional American western"[34] — except for the fact that it was also an allegory of World War II, with primary villain Hygatt (Hitler) and his henchmen Gribbles (Goebbels) and Gerrett (Goering) plotting to take over the Franson Ranch, the Poling Ranch, and so on. World War II sidetracked those plans until 1947. During the late 1920s and 1930s, Lewis wrote many short stories for a variety of magazines and publications. for a long time. He confronted the roles of women, race, and other powerless people in the society. While at Oberlin, he developed a religious enthusiasm that waxed and waned for much of his remaining teenage years. Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist and a short story writer. Benito … ", Winans, Edward R. Monarch Notes: Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, Witschi, Nicolas. In its first six months, Main Street sold 180,000 copies,[14] and within a few years, sales were estimated at two million. In 1946, he rented Thorvale Farm on Oblong Road. Were the characters in Lewis's novels based on real people? These words developed their own cultural meanings. Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the home town of Sinclair Lewis and the fictional setting for his novel Main Street, a portrait of provincial life in the Midwest. An inner void opened up … 'Bill made me sound very important , and the woman was very impressed.' At the age of 13, he unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish–American War. Sinclair Lewis (full name – Harry Sinclair Lewis) was born February 7, 1885 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the most Scandinavian part of America (at that time). [3] In late 1902, Lewis left home for a year at Oberlin Academy (the then-preparatory department of Oberlin College) to qualify for acceptance at Yale University. Lewis followed up this first great success with Babbitt (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture and boosterism. Lewis immediately became enthralled with the university and the city and offered to remain and teach a course in creative writing in the upcoming semester. Lewis graduated from Yale University (1907) and was for a time a reporter 1. In 1930 Sinclair Lewis was the first American to win a Nobel Prize for literature. He reported that Lewis had a heart attack and that his doctors advised him to stop drinking if he wanted to live. Sinclair Lewis Biographical T o recount my life for the Nobel Foundation, I would like to present it as possessing some romantic quality, some unique character, like Kipling‘s early adventures in India, or Bernard Shaw‘s leadership in the criticism of British arts and economics. In 1930 Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first writer from the United States to receive the award, after he had been nominated by Henrik Schück, member of the Swedish Academy.
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