Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and enjoyable
Review: Okay, I haven't read Mark Schorer's earlier biography, but I have read a number of other critical works about Lewis over the years, and more than half of Lewis' twenty-odd novels.

I found this book fascinating and insightful, and I was moved by Lingeman's final argument - that the time is ripe for a rediscovery of Lewis, that the "license to consider Lewis an irrelevant hack" that Schorer's book had conferred on the academic world is expired. I think it's criminal that Lewis is hardly even read in colleges today, while Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Cather, Faulkner, Steinbeck, etc., are still read and discussed in detail. (Nothing against these great writers, all of whom I've read extensively, but Lewis was there first and made all their paths to brilliance easier.)

As long as America is still loaded with familiar George Babbitts, Elmer Gantrys, Sam Dodsworths, Carol Kennicotts, etc., Lewis will be a classic (if not THE classic) American novelist. And Lingeman's biography presents a revealing picture of the unique, angry, ultimately lonely man behind these characters.

Rating:
Summary: Believe these reviews.
Review: Or, the first few along with mine.

Mr. Lingeman has done a wonderful job.

After reading this, I checked out a few 'professional' reviews. Yuck to a bunch of them. John Updike gave it a tepid review -- what a pretentious has-been. The irony, of course, is that Updike is the NEW Sinclair Lewis. Nobody reads him anymore.

However ... Lewis WILL have a rebirth of readers and admirers. Not sure about Updike.

Main Street, Babbitt, Elmer Gantry. Compare this output to .... gosh ... I forget the names of those books. Rabbits Run??? Something like that.

Rating:
Summary: Justice
Review: Schorer's 1961 biography of Lewis, while well researched, came off as particularly mean-spirited. I could never understand why a biographer would take on the huge task of an exhaustive biography when they seem to distain it's subject so much.
Finally Mr. Lingeman has given us a more even handed look at one of America's most neglected authors. Perhaps it was the great popularity of Lewis during the 1920's that brought about a more recent reaction against him but it seems that the time is ripe for another look at this most American of American authors and the Lingeman book makes that clear. This biography is clearly as in depth as Schorer's but, fortunately, does not have some strange axe to grind. Besides, the life of Sinclair Lewis makes for some interesting reading when it is put forth honestly.