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Murder by Research. Lewis' characters have as little inwardness as a fudge sundae. All the psychological conflicts have happened on minus Page One. How Gideon Planish gets as far as he does is a commentary on U.S. middle-class culture, but how Colonel Marduc managed to amass his pre-eminence only Lewis knows. In place of people, Lewis offers types, murderous research in the field of philanthropy, and a lambasting wit.
Lewis has attempted to bring together two diverse kinds of speech: realistic (the reproduction of natural conversation) and satiric (the reductio ad absurdum of natural conversation). Changing keys back & forth, some of the speech sounds wrong; most of it sounds more than right, being both natural and quintessentially comic. If Lewis is not the complete master of such language modulation, he has at least suggested the difficulties and rewards.
Says Lewis of his latest work: "This man Lewis is certainly going downhill fast. In each of his early books—Babbitt, Main Street, Elmer Gantry—there were one or two characters you could like. But in Gideon Planish everybody's a scoundrel."