Sinclair Lewis: The 1920s and the Shaping of American Identity

SINCLAIR LEWIS: THE 1920s AND THE SHAPING OF AMERICAN IDENTITY argues the importance of words, ideas, and values in sculpting twentieth-century identity. Literary scholars should, given the perspective of historians, allot more weight to Lewis’s contribution to the formation of middle-class ideology. Lewis (1885-1951) was a phenomenon in the 1920s. Novelist and critic E.M. Forster in 1922 caught the draw: ＂I persist in exclaiming, for what Mr. Lewis has done for myself and thousands of others, is to lodge a piece of a continent in our imaginations.＂ Lewis had just published BABBITT, two years after stunning the nation with MAIN STREET. Three more powerful novels followed: ARROWSMITH, ELMER GANTRY, and DODSWORTH. Here, Agran encourages literary scholars and all students of American culture to recognize that Lewis’s reception in the twenties was formidable because of his sensitivity to the nation’s history, its promise, and at points its troubling trajectory.

Edward Gale Agran is professor emeritus of History at Wilmington College. He holds a PhD in American History from the University of Wisconsin. Agran is the author of ＂TOO GOOD A TOWN＂ WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE, COMMUNITY, AND THE EMERGING RHETORIC OF MIDDLE AMERICA and HERBERT HOOVER AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICA: AN AMERICAN PROMISE. He resides in Iowa City, Iowa.