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An assessment of the American Nobel Laureate whose work uncovered America for readers the world over. ... Read more

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The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Sinclair Lewis is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Sinclair Lewis then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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Volume from set of Sinclair Lewis' works published by Collier in matched bindings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Eternally Wonderful
Anyone who's resided in a small town or its modern incarnation, suburbia, will recognize the American Homeland in these pages, despite it taking place almost a hundred years ago. Gopher Prairie is a small town full of small minds, small ideas and small ambitions. Carol Blodget, a vivacious young woman who works in a St. Paul library for the love of books and dreams big dreams, falls in love and marries Dr. Will Kennicott, and follows him to his beloved home town.

Carol's is a familiar life story: woman leaves big city to follow man she loves to a place she is in no way suited to, and ends up feeling trapped among people she despises. She tries to change the town, she tries to change herself, and when all else fails she tries to have an affair. When none of these tactics produce the desired results, Carol finally leaves Gopher Prairie, small child in tow. Unlike most women--and only because Will Kennicott is an exceedingly kind, loving man who doesn't go ballistic over her leaving--Carol eventually returns, but not until she's learned more about the world and herself, enabling her to live in Gopher Prairie impervious to the tyranny of Main Street.

The picture Lewis portrays of Midwesterners isn't pretty--in fact, it's downright misanthropic. These are myopic people who walk through their lives half asleep, frightened of anything new, whether it's a triviality like a brightly colored dress, or "communism" in the form of a workers' union. The writing is rich and detailed: each character springs from the page to life, with personalities revealed by the tiniest of mannerisms. The way they talk to one another, the jokes they tell, the things they consider important (primarily money and appearances) come through in each sentence and paragraph. The style is smooth and natural, never calling attention to itself, never detracting from the story.

As you've probably figured out by now, Main Street is a genuine classic in the sense that its themes are eternal. Not only does it offer a historical perspective on America, but its concerns still resonate today. Though some of the issues may have changed, the people of Gopher Prairie are scarily familiar.

I don't know if Lewis meant to convey city living as far superior to small towns--he may have chosen the latter as a locale in order to illuminate America's most extreme conservatism--but that's definitely something I got out of Main Street, possibly because of my own experiences. By now I've spent more of my life in cities than in small towns, for which I am extraordinarily grateful. Every time I lived anywhere other than in a city I hungered to be back in one. Even now, in a city with pockets of suburban-ish streets, one of which I live on, I long for the gridlock of New York, the freedom of big-city anonymity, where ideas and culture swarm everywhere--on the bus and in the street.

Sinclair Lewis was the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1930, and Main Street was the book that first won him critical recognition. Long live the American novelist!


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Product Description
This collection contains the early works of Sinclair Lewis, including 'Main Street' and his acclaimed critique of materialism, 'Babbitt.'

Contents:

Our Mr. Wrenn
The Trail of the Hawk
The Innocents
The Job
Free Air
Main Street
Babbitt

Includes an active table of contents. ... Read more

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A brand-new collection of Sinclair Lewis's prolific body of short fiction, focusing on the author's primary concerns: the issue of class, work and money in America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A How-To Theater Novel For Dummies
Have you read any of the "how to" series called " xxxx for Dummies?" Franchising for Dummies. Computers for Dummies. Spread Sheets for Dummies. This sort of title exists by the hundreds.

Some of Sinclair Lewis's novels have a distinct "how to" flavor. THE JOB (1917) has lots of tips for young women who want to succeed in business.MANTRAP (1926) is full of hands-on details about canoeing, portaging and trekking around Canada north of the 53rd parallel.WORK OF ART (1934) might be subtitled "Hotel Management for Dummies." Even IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE (1935) lays out the "how to" mechanics of a Fascist takeover of these United States. Sinclair Lewis had in one way or another immersed himself in these topics for a time, usually not many months before he wrote about them. Prior to BETHEL MERRIDAY he had written plays, acted in plays and would also direct them.

Not all of Lewis's novels by any means are of this "how to" ilk. But 1940's BETHEL MERRIDAY most certainly is. It might be styled "All About the Stage for Dummies." The heroine, Bethel Merriday, was born June 1, 1916. On her sixth birthday her mother caught her imitating the slouching, slow walk of an old woman and rebuked her for generally showing off, speaking up in Church and in this case for "copying" people. Bethel said, "Oh! I'm not copying her. I'm trying to be her. I can be a lot of different people." Her mother's comment: "It all sounds like maybe you're going to be an actress." (Ch. 1)

At home in Sladesbury, Connecticut, Bethel learned something of acting from motion pictures. Without ever having seen professional actors in the flesh, she grew ever more sure that she would be an actress and she shared this vision with her skeptical young friends. And she would bea professional stage actress, not an amateur. "I'm not going to play at playing. No! It isn't good enough!" (Ch. 1) Finally, in the summer of 1931 a touring troupe came to Sladesbury. 15-year old Bethel rapturously took in their performances, waited for actors and actresses at the stage door and even followed them to a drugstore where they had a bite. She drank in their shop talk. She spoke to a young actress. An older actor told Bethel that if she wanted to become an actress, she must train, play parts at every opportunity and get lucky (Ch. 1)

Bethel went on to act in college and to be noticed in her senior year somewhat negatively by two professional directors. Her father paid for her to apprentice in summer stock on the Connecticut shore in the summer of 1938. In the autumn of that year connections which she made in summer stock helped her quickly but very luckily become part of a brand new touring troupe which would do ROMEO AND JULIET in modern dress. Bethel understudied Juliet and played her once, when the $1,000/week English actress took to drink. Other speaking parts were small. But Bethel was interested in all aspects of theater: musicians, lighting and especially scenery design. She worked very hard and she learned quickly that on stage you "Never do anything unless you understand why." (Ch. 11)

Almost inevitably, the road show lost money and failed. This left 23 year old Bethel with time to choose among several men who offered her marriage, including her next door neighbor from home and two actors who had played Romeo and Mercutio on the road. She chose the talented"Mercutio" and they were married Saturday January 21, in Pike City, Kansas, population 7,000, end of the line for the theater tour. A few months later the newlyweds were acting together in New York for another company whose director had seen Bethel overact Nora in Ibsen's DOLL HOUSE in college only seven months earlier.

If you like novels about the theater, BETHEL MERRIDAY will call to mind Herman Wouk's 1955 MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR, without the latter's Angst. BETHEL MERRIDAY lacks the profundity of Goethe's 1796 WILHELM MEISTER. But all three books were written by men who knew and loved theater and spoke with authority. Sinclair Lewis's theater novel woos the senses with cramped dressing rooms and the smell of grease paint, the look and feel of increasingly shabby costumes as the tour grows old and conveys a sense of what makes actors and actresses do what they do, usually for very little money. And the stage has its personnnel dimension, too. Young Bethel is even pressed by an embarrassed producer to tell an aging ham that he must go.

Sinclair Lewis portrays theater as a partnership between actors and audience and argues that being a good audience is a skill to be learned. Language once used for religion is now applied to show business:to actors on stage "each with his prides and secrets and sins," (Ch. 12), to the audience as heathens to be "advanced toward salvation," to faith in the power of staged illusions to change the world, to devout study of a role, to that limbo where all young actors and bull fighters float, and finally to "the solid American Protestant belief in the glory and efficacy of human will power. If anyone wanted enough to do anything, he would unquestionably do it..." (Ch. 18). The faces of most Americans today have been "ironed out by spiritual massage" (Ch. 33). Not so the face of a great actor.

People who love theater will recognize one of their own in Sinclair Lewis.

-OOO- ... Read more

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MARTIN ARROWSMITH SINCLAIR LEWIS JONATHAN CAPE LTD THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE LONDON FIRST PUBLISHED MARCH MCMXXV REPRINTED APRIL MCMXXV REPRINTED MARCH MCMXXVJ MADE 6f PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER TANNER LTD FROME AND LONDON 5 To Dr. Paul H. DeKruif I am indebted not only for most of the bacteriological and medical material in this tale but equally for his help in the planning of the fable itself for his realization of the characters as living people, for his philosophy as a scientist. With this acknowledgment I want to record our months of com panionship while working on the book, in the United States, in the West Indies, in Panama, in London and Fontainebleau. I wish I could reproduce our talks along the way, and the laboratory afternoons, the restaurants at night, and the deck at dawn as we steamed into tropic ports. SINCLAIR LEWIS MARTIN ARROWSMITH CHAPTER i THE driver of the wagon swaying through forest and swamp of the Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen. Her mother they had buried near the Monongahela - the girl herself had heaped with torn sods the grave beside the river of the beauti ful name. Her father lay shrinking with fever on the floor of the wagon-box, and about him played her brothers and sisters, dirty brats, tattered brats, hilarious brats. She halted at the fork in the grassy road, and the sick man quavered, Emmy, ye better turn down towards Cincinnati. If we could find your Uncle Ed, I guess hed take us in. Nobody aint going to take us in she said. Were going on jus long as we can. Going West Theys a whole lot of new things I aim to be seeing She cooked the supper, she put the children to bed, and sat by the fire, alone. That was the great-grandmother of Martin Arrowsmith. s Cross-legged in the examining-chair in Doc Vickersons office, a boy was reading Grays Anatomy. His name was Martin Arrow smith, of Elk Mills, in the state of Winnemac. There was a suspicion in Elk Mills now, in 1897, a dowdy red brick village, smelling of apples that this brown-leather adjust able seat which Doc Vickerson used for minor operations, for the infrequent pulling of teeth and for highly frequent naps, had begun life as a barbers chair. There was also a belief that its pro prietor must once have been called Doctor Vickerson, but for years he had been only The Doc, and he was scurfier and much less adjustable than the chair. Martin was the son of J. J. Arrowsmith, who conducted the New York Clothing Bazaar. By sheer brass and obstinacy he had, at 7 8 MARTIN ARROWSMITH fourteen, become the unofficial, also decidedly unpaid, assistant to the Doc, and while the Doc was on a country call he took charge - though what there was to take charge of, no one could ever make out. He was a slender boy, not very tall his hair and restless eyes were black, his skin unusually white, and the contrast gave him an air of passionate variability. The squareness of his head and a reasonable breadth of shoulders saved him from any appearance of effeminacy or of that querulous timidity which artistic young gentlemen call Sensitiveness. When he lifted his head to listen, his right eyebrow, slightly higher than the left, rose and quivered in his characteristic expression of energy, of inde pendence, and a hint that he could fight, a look of impertinent inquiry which had been known to annoy his teachers and the Sunday-school superintendent. Martin was, like most inhabitants of Elk Mills before the Slavo-Italian immigration, a Typical Pure-bred Anglo-Saxon American, which means that he was a union of German, French, Scotch, Irish, perhaps a little Spanish, conceivably a little of the strains lumped together as Jewish, and a great deal of English, which is itself a combination of Primitive Britain, Celt, Phoenician, Roman, German, Dane, and Swede. It is not certain that, in attaching himself to Doc Vickerson, Martin was entirely and edifyingly controlled by a desire to be come a Great Healer... ... Read more

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Babbitt
Free Air
The Innocents
The Job
Main Street
Our Mr. Wrenn
The Trail of the Hawk ... Read more

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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "Sinclair Lewis," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have Sinclair Lewis in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with Sinclair Lewis when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name Sinclair Lewis, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection contains the early works of Sinclair Lewis, including 'Main Street' and his acclaimed critique of materialism, 'Babbitt.'

Contents:

Our Mr. Wrenn
The Trail of the Hawk
The Innocents
The Job
Free Air
Main Street
Babbitt

Includes an active table of contents. ... Read more