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Sinclair Lewis has returned from England and, after a brief but vivid stay in Manhattan, has made his way to Sauk Centre, Minn., his native village. Like most satirists, Lewis is, himself, highly sensitive to satire; like many sensitive people he covers his feelings with a manner which now appears to be gayety, now nervous irritability, now downright rudeness. Since his year in England, he may have changed in appearance. I daresay his manners, from all accounts, are the same. The last time I saw him he was slight, wiry, acutely nervous, with a thin, tightly-featured, reddish face and wispish red hair. He takes delight in annoying people, both as individuals and en masse, and then, like a naive and naughty child, is surprised when they make some attempt at punishment.
The Sinclair Lewis of Main Street and Babbitt is the whole Sinclair Lewis. He knows only one side of the U. S. Although he attended Yale College, and might there have absorbed some of the quieter moods of the East, he was too busy wearing red shirts and puttering with the ideas of Upton Sinclair to take much notice of saner undergraduates.
One of our finest novelists, I believe, he was trained in the newspaper school, and as a reader in a publishing house. From this, he turned to short story writing with success. He is a brilliant humorous reporter. He is more than that, he understands the psychology of the times.
Having accomplished this in Main Street, having laid low U. S. business men in Babbitt, he now approaches the medical profession, collaborating with a doctor in the writing of Doctor Arrowsmith, now appearing as a serial in The Designer. This novel, in its full length, reaches 200,000 words.* When publication is completed, there will probably be little left of the medical sciences.
After a brief stay in the Middle West which he loves so well, Lewis will go to the Red River District in Saskatchewan, with a Canadian government "Treaty Party," to pay a visit of friendly greeting to the Indians. Possibly he will find some hope for America among its aborigines. Wherever he may be, he will find plenty to criticize and much to talk about. He is probably the most restive of novelists. I have often wondered when he 'did his thinking, because, obviously, he must think a great deal. Perhaps it is entirely instinctive. At any rate, we should be very proud of him.
J.F.
*The average-length novel has about 160,000 words.