Rating: 
Summary: a brilliant, though one-sided, view
Review: "Elmer Gantry" is certainly one of Sinclair Lewis's best works (although I found it a notch below "Main Street"). In it he examines the rise of a young man in the world of religion. We are introduced to him as an easy-going, not too deep, likeable (but not loveable) guy. He has an incidental opportunity to give testimony at a classmate's street preaching. He loves the thrill of speaking in front of an audience and his appetite is whet. We follow the lives of two men actually, the other being another classmate named Frank Shallard. Elmer Gantry is a man who uses religion to advance his career. He focusses on sin because it is what he knows best. Frank Shallard is a deeper thinker who struggles to reconcile his doubts with his faith. The author uses the compaison of these two ministers to great effect. We eaily come to view Elmer Gantry as a hypocrite because he practices what he preaches against. Conversely, he preaches love but (except for a brief, real love affair) he seems only to love himself. He is able to shed most of his sins but he still readily gives in to lust and avarice. The reader sees all of his successes in his ministry as calculated moves designed to help his own self-promotion. If, on the way up, it is necessary to knock others down, then so be it. Frank Shallard rises to no great heights but he is fairly well situated with a well-to-do congregation and could easily coast on his moderate skills as a minister. His search for the truth, however, leads him to reject most, if not all, of his faith. As we are witnessing the escallation of Rev. Gantry's career, we catch, out of the corner of our eye, the decline of Rev. Shallard's career. The author's implication seems to be that sincere soul-searching has no place in the world of big-time religion. Certainly there is ample opportunity for the reader to reflect on numerous similarities in today's society. However, despite the author's repeated examination of the Christian faith, he misses many a point. First of all, he, as do many people today, overlook the fact that Chritians acknowledge their sinfullness not as something that is discarded with a loud AMEN! but as something that is confronted on a daily basis. When a Christian falls, he/she gets up and resumes the struggle. Rev. Gantry is rather singular in his calculated and unreppentant sinful nature. His only remorse is in getting caught. Rev. Shallard seemed to miss this point as well. Secondly, the parishioners of Rev. Gantry are portrayed either as self-centered businessmen or not portrayed at all. They seem an amorphous mass blindly following while shouting "Hallelujah!" While many people attend church for lesser reasons, presumeably many others are made better having heard the proper Christian message. Sinclair Lewis has written an excellent novel that rightfully examines how even the unsacred can succeed in the most sacred of professions. Those who scoff at Chritianity will love this book. However, the examination of these two men and the many theological discussions in the book will give everyone something to enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: PARABLE FOR CORRUPTION
Review: ...EXCERPTED FROM "GOD'S COUNTRY" BY STEVEN TRAVERS Sinclair Lewis exposed the corruption of Christian ministers in "Elmer Gantry". This work was centered on a flawed evangelical in the Midwest who believes in God but still uses His name to better himself. It might as well be a parable for the corruption of the Vatican until the post-Reformation period, when Catholicism finally recognized its many mistakes and began to make changes. STEVEN TRAVERS
AUTHOR OF "BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN"
...
Rating:
Summary: PARABLE FOR CORRUPTION
Review: ...EXCERPTED FROM "GOD'S COUNTRY" BY STEVEN TRAVERS Sinclair Lewis exposed the corruption of Christian ministers in "Elmer Gantry". This work was centered on a flawed evangelical in the Midwest who believes in God but still uses His name to better himself. It might as well be a parable for the corruption of the Vatican until the post-Reformation period, when Catholicism finally recognized its many mistakes and began to make changes. STEVEN TRAVERS
AUTHOR OF "BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN"
...
Rating: 
Summary: Ageless portrayal of the rise of a hypocrite
Review: A lot of Sinclair Lewis can be read as social history in our days at the turn of the 21st century. Social mores and the whole tenor of society have changed dramatically since the days of his major works. But ELMER GANTRY still reads like a story of our times. Though it covers a period roughly stretching from 1902 to 1926, and America has been transformed since then, the basic idea of the novel---how a man, selfish, ignorant, bullying, and posing as a 'regular guy', can fool most of the people most of the time---is still very much relevant to us. Business was the heart of America in Lewis' day, and it still is. But a career model drawn from that sphere could be used in many other walks of life. ELMER GANTRY is about a man who uses religion and a Protestant church to rise socially, to get and abuse power for his own ends. From Elmer's evangelical college days with his drinking, womanizing, total lack of ability or interest in studies, and his lying and maneuvering to get what he wants, to the stunning but realistic conclusion to the book, Lewis paints a vibrant portrait of an unprincipled climber ; a man who will change any opinion, betray anybody, and do anything to get ahead. If we consider the sagas of TV evangelists in our days, the difference between their revealed hypocrisies and those written by Lewis is startlingly small. The sole difference was that in the 1920s, there was no television for Elmer Gantry to exploit. Certain sections of the book read better than others--it is not of uniform quality---and sometimes you wonder why Lewis inserted a chapter here or there. I think particularly of the two chapters on the fate of Frank Shallard, Gantry's alter-ego. They seemed to be an afterthought, and the point was brutally taken, but for what purpose other than shock ? On the other hand, Lewis' use of the colloquial language of the times and inclusion of thousands of minor details of life in that era reveal a whole world which might, in the absence of ELMER GANTRY, have disappeared from our consciousness. On the whole, this is a powerful novel about an unscrupulous, offensive scoundrel which still resonates well in our day. The Gantrys of this world are endless. Unfortunately.
Rating: 
Summary: A shallow treatment of religion
Review: Closer to two-and-a-half stars. Sinclair Lewis is a solid American writer, but I would not consider him one of the "greats." While his novels were considered shocking at the time they were published (his best work appeared in the 1920s), they are nonetheless fairly conventional in style and theme. His subject matter tends to be very specialized; rather than address a wide range of human emotion, he usually focuses on one theme in particular (here, the hypocrisy of religion), which he constantly and unflaggingly rams home. Sometimes, this strategy works. ("Babbitt" was an excellent study of intellectual vacuity.) It does not work for "Elmer Gantry". Lewis does succeed in painting a vivid portrait of a loathsome brute-Gantry is among the most unredeemingly hypocritical and disgusting leading characters in American literature. But that's about all the novel accomplishes. Lewis approaches his subject matter with a clear agenda in mind: he is not so much interested in honestly exploring the inherent contradictions of Christianity as he is in deriding it entirely, indiscriminately ridiculing its leaders and followers alike. There is not a hint of objectivity; there is not one religious figure (minister or layperson) that Lewis does not lambast as a hypocrite or ignoramus. The highly-artificial plot is structured to maximize the author's opportunity to poke fun at or condemn organized religion (fundamentalists, Catholics and Jews are painted in equally ugly strokes). The only vaguely sympathetic character in the novel, Frank Shallard, is a born-again atheist. Lewis would have done well to make him the lead character, as he is the only three-dimensional character in a cast of grotesque stick figures. The novel improves vastly in the final 50 pages; but it's too little, too late. In the final analysis, "Elmer Gantry" is a mildly entertaining screed about the pretentions of Christian evangelism; it is certainly not a profound novel as the cover suggests.
Rating:
Summary: Talented scoundrel takes to the pulpit
Review: Elmer Gantry begins this novel as a boozing, womanizing, college football player. Despite having a great speaking voice and dominating personality he has no interest in persuing a career as a minister. Peer pressure leads him to try, and he soon finds himself attending divinity school and headed to life as a man of the cloth. Elmer's character can be summed up by once incident. After getting a doubt-ridden professor fired, someone leaves 30 dimes wrapped in a religious tract in Elmer's dorm room. He delightedly mines the tract for sermon ideas, and uses the 30 dimes to buy naughty postcards. Besides following the rise, fall, and rise of hard working, talented, and utterly unprincipled Elmer, Sinclair Lewis's novel shows us the state of evangelical religion in the first decades of the 20th Century. We see back-country Baptist churches, traveling revival shows, "New Age" cults, and middle-of-the road Methodist congregations at work. It's funny, and hair-raising, stuff. There's also a nice twist ending that puts it in the category of an Awful Warning novel.
Rating:
Summary: Not Really a Hypocrite
Review: Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis is the story of a small town Kansas boy who is, by all accounts, nothing better than a drunk misogynist. The novel starts with Elmer attending Terwillinger College in his home state of Kansas. It is at Terwillinger that Elmer gets a taste of what will drive him the rest of his life: fame. Elmer Gantry is supposed to be a story about hypocrisy and the fundamentalist movement that swept America in the early 20th century. I don't really think hypocrite is the right way to describe Elmer. A hypocrite is someone who knowingly professes something to be true without any intention of ever following his own recomendations. I believe Elmer has every intention of following to the last everything that he preaches. He just doesn't, not because he doesn't want to, but because he just can't. Elmer's main weakness is women. He is able to give up drinking and smoking after his troubles with them in college and as a salesman; but, he just can't help himself when it comes to an attractive woman. The more interesting part of this novel is Lewis's depiction of the fundamentalist movement of the early 20th century. The traveling revivals that went from town to town are an uniquely American phenomenon that acted much like a shake down racket. These troupes would come into town, harangue the local clergy for not being boisterous in their saving of souls, put on a marvelous show of faith under a tent or at the local theater, and leave with a very full collection plate. This was the early form of the televangelist. I rate Elmer Gantry only three stars because I think that Lewis could have done so much more with this material than what he did. Sinclair Lewis is my favorite writer of the 20th century. I have come to expect a little more from him.
Rating:
Summary: Elmer Gantry: Regal Men Try
Review: Elmer Gantry was drunk. The opening line captures much about the title character, whose vices inebriate him, desensitize him, fulfill him - temporarily. Sinclair Lewis hits us full between the eyes with his vision of religious hypocrites. The book was written in 1927 but could easily serve as a parody of today's televangelist scandels. Substitute Jim and Tammy Faye for Elmer Gantry and his histrionic priestess, Sharon Falconer. Jessica Hahn plays a much better Lulu Baines, than did Shirley Jones in her Academy-Award winning effort. I had great fun with the book, considering whether the self-absorbed Elmer actually suffered from narcissistic personality disorder and if, as many Sinclair Lewis pundits suggest, Elmer and company paint a true picture of religion in America during the 1920s. But one quirk that has driven me to distraction is the number of anagrams possible from the names of various characters. Just as a slight re-arrangement of circumstance might reveal the character's unflattering aspects, so might a slight re-arrangement of letters in their names reveal clues about their true character. Elmer Gantry makes: regal men try and large men try. Henry Shallard, the book's failed, if honest reverend: shall herd nary. The Jekyl/Hyde, virgin/whore aspects of Sharon Falconer might be underscored by these possible rearrangements of the letters of her stage name: She for no carnal, She for carnal on. Sharon Falconer's real name Katie Jonas: a joke at sin. Lulu Baines, who provides recurring trouble for Elmer: bane is Lulu. The location of the pier where sister Sharon planned to lure her mass of followers, Clontar, becomes: clan rot. Just for good measure...Sinclair Lewis can become: I sin, lie, scrawl. And bizarre twist that the author Lewis, a native of Sauk Center, Minnesota, might have enjoyed, the word "anagram" becomes: a rag man. "Rag Man" is the title of a 2001 mystery novel about what happens, as one reviewer put it, "when good Minnesotans go bad." (Please note, I am not a conspiracy theorist.)
Rating:
Summary: A challenge to examine one's self
Review: For Christians -- Read this book. It will force you to examine who you are and the faith you adhere to. Being a Christian myself, it has encouraged me to focus more being what we should be. Despite the fact that this book is terribly shocking, it is real. I've heard of many ministers, locally and nationally, who are creeps and sleep around on their spouses. Elmer isn't as far off as we want him to be. For cynical non-Christians -- Sinclair Lewis tells a tale that will, unfortunately, make you even more cynical to the church. It is a great book that helps you see inside the evils that can and do happen. But don't let the book stop there. By seeing the dirt inside Elmer Gantry's ministry, examine yourselve compared to who you say you are. Elmer Gantry is a challenge to everyone to really be who they say they are.
Rating:
Summary: 1920s America: hypocracy and religion in an ugly mix
Review: Sinclair Lewis is perhaps best known for his perceptive yet restrained look at the changing American society during the 1920s with his justly famous trio 'Main Street', 'Babbitt', and 'Arrowsmith'. However in 1927 Lewis took off his gloves and decided to hit below the belt with a real bruiser of a novel, 'Elmer Gantry' - a dark and ugly look at shyster evangelists, gullible middle Americans, and the endless in-fighting between Christian sects. Is 'Elmer Gantry' a successful deviation from Lewis's previous works? Yes, very much so. 'Elmer Gantry' is about a young, fiesty man who decides on becoming a preacher because, well, he thought it would be a good way of making some easy money. He seems hardly religious, if not agnostic/atheistic. In fact most everyone in the clergy seem to have doubts about holy word. Elmer claws his way to the top, trampling what few friends he has along the way. In this world it seems that only the wicked thrive. Very depressing, yet compelling. My only complaint with 'Elmer Gantry' is that there are several slow areas. In Elmer's life he seems to wander from ministry to ministry, from scandal to scandal. Often these seem like lateral transitions and ... it makes for dull reading. But fortunately these lapses are short-lived. Bottom line: an extremely harsh, and probably overly cynical look at organised Christain followings in early 20th century America. An extremely controversial book when originally released that still unsettles believers and non-believers alike. Recommended.
| 
