| As one reads Babbitt, one is continually aware of Sinclair Lewis' fierce anger with America's mediocrity, a mediocrity usually expressed by a multitude of cliches. Lewis thinks that too many Americans often say the things that they are expected to say, that they act exactly as they are expected to act, and that they are extremely conventional as far as individuality and originality are concerned. It is as though the Americans whom he describes were living in a very expensive, pleasantly colored, standardly designed, cliched 1920s Dark Age. |
| Ironically, the facts of Lewis' early life are also cliched; they follow a trite pattern, one that Lewis himself would probably have agreed is seemingly almost required for a creative talent. |
| Born in the small, provincial town of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, in 1855, Harry Sinclair Lewis grew up in a sternly disciplined home. A strong sense of responsibility and seriousness were early instilled by Lewis' doctor-father. When Lewis' two older brothers grew up, they followed their father's choice of profession and became respectable doctors. But Lewis did not fit this pattern; instead, Lewis followed another pattern. From the first, he was a precocious child, a creative child. He was an unhandsome young boyred-headed, unathletic, shy, and self-conscious; he was lonely and spent much of his time reading. When he was about eleven, however, he began writing and never stopped. |
| During the summers of his last years of high school, Lewis worked alternately on two newspapers and began to publish poetry. At Yale, Lewis continued to write, but other than some of the English faculty who encouraged him in his literary pursuits, he had few friends. After his freshman year, Lewis temporarily abandoned his studies and went to England on a cattle boat. It was an unhappy experience, but on |
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