I bought this book for two dollars along with a large bag of other unused titles that a university library was discarding. These Signet Classics paperbacks would normally only sell for five dollars new, anyway. They seem like throw-aways to most people, but they’re much more likely to have something significant inside them than most other books. Signets have a great feel to them. They’ve got those thick, slightly recycled looking pages — whole wheat pages, if you will — with faded type and an ancient, musty library scent to them (even when they’re new). The covers always have some cozy old painting – Grandma Moses, Winslow Homer, or, in this book’s case, Edward Hopper. These are some of the covers I’ve learned to look for: they usually belong to fairly good books and at least you don’t have the indignity of having some sensational, overly blurbed cover on them.
Sinclair Lewis is one of the most forgotten novelists of the last century. Following the success of Main Street and Babbitt, Lewis was at one time voted America’s favorite writer. Both works’ titles had coined new terms (or at least added a derogatory quaintness to “Main Street”) and featured enormously popular satires on American go-get-em attitudes, good-old-boy-isms, and Chamber of Commerce buffoonery (which was a more meaningful subject to criticize in the Twenties than now). In 1925 Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (which he refused); later, in 1930, he accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature. Somewhere along the way, though, and perhaps owing to the lack of overall vision in his books, he lost his fame.
On the level of each individual paragraph, Lewis is a wonderful writer. He collected and organized literally thousands of observations during his research for his novels and short stories like drawers full of old library catalog cards. But his stories tended to be tied up too quickly by the end of the novel, as though available pages had run out and the book had better finish its business. There’s also never a very fulfilling exploration of a character’s personality. Lewis wrote from the mind of an utter loner who couldn’t speak more frankly about loneliness.
Perhaps Lewis’ loss of fame is all for the better: I’d rather keep an author like him to myself. When a writer is forgotten, it’s easier not to criticize them for their shortcomings — of which Lewis had many — and be better able to enjoy their works for what they are, like a flawed but good friend.