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Sinclair Lewis - Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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Sinclair Lewis / Brooke Allen
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Table of Contents FROM THE PAGES OF MAIN STREET This is Americaa town of a - photo 1

Table of Contents

FROM THE PAGES OF MAIN STREET

This is Americaa town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves. (page 2)

The days of pioneering, of lassies in sunbonnets, and bears killed with axes in piney clearings, are deader now than Camelot; and a rebellious girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American Middlewest. (page 3)

He lifted her, carried her into the house, and with her arms about his neck she forgot Main Street. (page 56)

Miss Sherwins trying to repair the holes in this barnacle-covered ship of a town by keeping busy bailing out the water. And Pollock tries to repair it by reading poetry to the crew! Me, I want to yank it up on the ways, and fire the poor bum of a shoemaker that built it so it sails crooked, and have it rebuilt right, from the keel up. (page 120)

I went to a denominational college and learned that since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it. (page 161)

We want a more conscious life. Were tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. Were tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. Were tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. Were tired of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and well produce it; trust us; were wiser than you. For ten thousand years theyve said that. We want our Utopia nowand were going to try our hands at it. (page 207)

I wonder if you can understand the fun of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness! (page 230)

Aunt Bessie was a bridge over whom the older women, bearing gifts of counsel and the ignorance of experience, poured into Carols island of reserve. (page 253)

The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman. (page 270)

When I die the world will be annihilated, as far as Im concerned. (page 281)

There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasnt a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble. (page 379)

You must live up to the popular code if you believe in it; but if you dont believe in it, then you must live up to it! (pages 380-381)

Wed get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all. (page 430)

SINCLAIR LEWIS Harry Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7 1885 in Sauk - photo 2

SINCLAIR LEWIS

Harry Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, an immigrant farming village with a population of little more than a thousand. When he was six years old, his mother died; his father, a country doctor, remarried a year later. Lewiss early experiences living in a rural midwestern town would influence much of his writing; Main Streets Gopher Prairie, for example, is modeled after Sauk Centre and features many of the community organizations in which his stepmother participated.

In 1903 Lewis moved east to attend Yale University, where he began contributing regularly to the Yale Literary Magazine. He became dissatisfied with college life, however, and dropped out in 1906 to work as a janitor in the utopian community Helicon Hall. Founded by Upton Sinclair, Helicon Hall was a mecca for progressive thinkers of the time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lewis left after two months and spent the next few years working at odd jobs before returning to Yale to graduate in 1908.

Lewis traveled around the country for two years, and then settled in New York Citys Greenwich Village, a center for avant-garde artists and writers. He worked in publishing during the day and spent his evenings writing short stories and novels. His first book, a boys adventure story titled Hike and the Aeroplane, was published in 1912.

In 1914 Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger and the couple moved to Port Washington, on Long Island. Lewis became editor and advertising manager at the George H. Doran Publishing Company. He continued to devote his evenings to writing fiction, and when the publication of a story in the Saturday Evening Post proved lucrative, Lewis quit his job to become a full-time novelist.

The 1920 publication of Main Street marked the beginning of Lewiss international acclaim as a satirical novelist. An instant best-seller, Main Street sold more than 250,000 copies by the end of its first year of publication. Lewis quickly followed this success with several other well-received novelsBabbitt (1922), about an unhappy businessman wanting more in his life; Arrowsmith (1925), about an idealistic doctor and researcher; and Elmer Gantry (1927), a send-up of an evangelical scam artist. In 1926 Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith. He declined to accept the prize, stating that his novel did not meet the wholesome standards of the committee.

Lewis married the well-known journalist Dorothy Thompson in 1928, having divorced his first wife, Grace, earlier that year. He spent the next several years writing and traveling between the United States and Europe. In 1930 he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Lewiss reputation declined in succeeding years. After the publication of The Prodigal Parents (1938), he was never able to draw the wide readership of his earlier days. His marriage to Dorothy Thompson ended in divorce in 1942, and he spent the last years of his life in Europe, alone and suffering from alcoholism and ill health. On January 10, 1951, Harry Sinclair Lewis died of a heart attack in Rome at the age of sixty-five. He is buried in Minnesota.

THE WORLD OF SINCLAIR LEWIS ANDMAIN STREET

1885	Harry Sinclair Lewis is born on February 7 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to Dr. Edwin J. Lewis and Emma Kermott Lewis.
1891	His mother dies of tuberculosis. A year later his father marries Isabel Warner.
1902	Lewis enrolls at Oberlin Academy in Ohio.
1903- 1906-	Lewis attends Yale University, where he contributes to the Yale Literary Magazine. He spends two summers working on cattle boats that sail between America and England.
1906	Lewis leaves Yale for a brief stay at Helicon Hall, a utopian community in Englewood, New Jersey, founded by the writer Upton Sinclair.
1908	He returns to Yale and graduates.
1908- 1910	Lewis travels around the United States working as a freelance newspaper reporter. In 1910 he moves to New York City, where he lands a job working in a publishing house for $15 a week.
1912	Lewiss first book, a boys adventure story entitled Hike and the Aeroplane, is published under the pseudonym Tom Graham.
1914	Lewis marries Grace Livingston Hegger, an active philanthropist and editor at Vogue, and moves to Port Washington, New York. He works as an editor and advertising manager at the George H. Doran Publishing Company, and devotes his evenings to writing novels. His first adult novel,

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