Sinclair Lewis (redirected from (Harry) Sinclair Lewis)

Lewis, Sinclair 

Born Feb. 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minn.; died Jan. 10, 1951, in Rome. American writer. Son of a doctor.

Lewis’ first novels were not particularly successful. Main Street (1920), which showed the stagnation and conservatism of a backwater town, brought him wide recognition in the USA and Europe. George Babbitt, the hero of his next novel (Babbitt, 1922), was the classic personification of the average small businessman. In Arromsmith (1925, with P. de KruiO a talented doctor and researcher is pitted against moneygrubbers in science and medicine. Yet Lewis was inconsistent in criticizing the “dollar civilization”—for example, in Dodsworth (1929).

Lewis’ satire acquired a political orientation in the 1930’s and 1940’s. In his Utopian, lampooning novel It Can’t Happen Here (1935), Lewis foresaw certain aspects of the coming political reaction in the USA. However, his condemnation of fascism was tinged with fear of the danger “on the left” (the novel Prodigal Parents, 1938). Lewis experienced an upsurge in output during World War II, producing the screenplay for Storm in the West (1943, with D. Schary) and the novel Gideon Planish (1943). Apart from his sharply critical works, Lewis wrote a number of weak and saccharine novels (God-seeker, 1949, World so Wide, 1951). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930.

WORKS

Man From Main Street: A Sinclair Lewis Reader. New York, 1953.
In Russian translation:
Sobr. soch., vols. 1-9. Moscow, 1965.

REFERENCES

Mendel’son, M. “Sinkler L’iuis.” In his book Sovremennyi amerikanskii roman. Moscow, 1964.
Gilenson, B. Amerika Sinklera L’iuisa. Moscow, 1972.
Sinkler L’iuis: Biobibliograficheskii ukazate’. Moscow, 1959.
Schorer, M. Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. New York, 1961.
Dooley, J. D. The Art of Sinclair Lewis. Lincoln, Neb., 1967. (Bibliography, pp. 269-77).

B. A. GILENSON