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Just Another Essay



Discovering the American Lewis

Essay Posted July 22, 2008 by James E. Nelson

On our recent trip to Bemidji, MN, we passed through Sauk Center. I had been through Sauk Center twice in my trucking days and discovered that it was the birthplace of the author Sinclair Lewis. The truck stop advertised a Lewis museum in town and I thought it would be interesting to check it out.

I must confess that prior to our visit to the museum I didn’t know much about Sinclair Lewis, and some of things I “knew” were incorrect. (For instance, I was thinking of Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle.) My guess is that a few of my readers may be as ignorant of Sinclair Lewis as I, so allow me a brief history.

Lewis is America’s first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and one of only eight Americans to have won the Nobel in the history of the prize. (There were some others who lived in the United States when they wrote their Nobel winning novels.)

Lewis won the Nobel for his first major novel, Main Street. He went on to write a cycle of five novels that are evidently considered defining classics of American literature. Lewis’s big five are Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth. Two were very controversial at the time of writing (Main Street, and Elmer Gantry). Not too long after he won the Nobel Prize he moved to Italy where he lived the remainder of his life. He was cremated and his remains eventually came back to Sauk Center, where they are buried.

Only eight American Nobel winners ...

That surprised me and I was curious. When I got home, I researched the remaining winners: Sinclair Lewis (1930), Eugene O’Neill (1936), Pearl S. Buck (1938), T. S. Elliott (1948), William Faulkner (1949), Ernest Hemingway (1954), John Steinbeck (1962), and Toni Morrison (1993)

The “maybe America can claim them” winners are people who were born elsewhere but did most of their writing in the U.S.: Saul Bellow (1976 Canada / U.S.), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978 Poland / U.S.), Czeslaw Milosz (Poland / U.S. / Lithuania), and Joseph Brodsky (USSR / U.S.). And it is arguable that Elliott was an “American writer” when he won the prize because he had been a British citizen and resident since 1927.

I was shocked at how unfamiliar I was with these writers. I suspect I’ve seen a Eugene O’Neill play, although I don’t know. The situation is similar with William Faulkner. I’m pretty sure I had to read one or two of his short stories somewhere along the line, but after studying their titles and descriptions, none of them sound familiar. I have read some T. S. Elliott poetry, but that was on my own. In High School the only Nobel winners I read were Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. (I’ve also read—and like very much—Toni Morrison, but my formal education had been finished for a while when she came onto the scene.)

I don’t know if this doesn’t matter or if it’s a travesty. How important is it that students are introduced to the great literature of their culture? I suspect it matters a great deal. But I’m not an expert in the field so anything I had to say about that would merely be speculation.

There’s another interesting question that the above list poses. What is the connection between the Nobel Literature prize and great literature? Are the above authors representative of America’s great literary tradition, or do they simply reflect the mood of that particular year? I suspect that this is not an either/or question. Even literary critics fall sway to the strange popularities to which we humans always seem to fall prey. But that being said, I suspect, while not exhaustive, this list of authors cannot be ignored when we think about great American literature.

When I got home I checked out Main Street from the library. I’ll say more about the book in a later essay. In the context of this essay, what I find striking is its substance. The last couple ofyears I’ve set out to read good fiction. I realized that over the last many years I had read almost exclusively non-fiction (predominantly theology and current events) and it seemed important to broaden my horizons.

I have read some very light weight material on purpose (It’s good for airplanes and waiting rooms, for instance.), but I have also specifically set out to read what is generally considered great fiction. After a couple of years of reading “great fiction,” what is remarkable about it is how unremarkable it has all been. Even though I’ve read a number literary novels in the past few years, I haven’t found anything substantial enough to comment about in an essay. Main Street, on the other hand, has substance, and there’s more I will eventually say about it.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not one of these people that opines that there’s no good books being written today. I learned my lesson on that front when my elders opined that there’s no good music being written today. The fact is that the vast majority of music, literature, and art in every generation is quite bad. Great art is very difficult and great artists are few and far between. I have no doubt that if I were trying to read the great American novel back in the 1930s I would have had the same problem then as I have today. But great art (whether literature, music, or the visual arts) stands the test of time. Most of it gets thrown out with the trash; some of it is deemed worthy of saving.

To return to high school for just a moment. I do remember that we read quite a bit trash. It was contemporary “literature” that the instructor enjoyed. I also suspect it was “literature” that he thought he could get us to read in contrast to the more substantial literature that was available that we would have been bored with. I wouldn’t want to teach a high school literature class—that’s about the toughest crowd I can imagine for that endeavor—so I don’t want to be overly hard on my high school.

But in contrast to all of that, I’ve found a new potential source for substantial literature. I’m looking forward to learning something about America’s literary past, as represented by the Nobel Literature Prize that I knew nothing about previously.