Sinclair Lewis, Max Besont, and Henry James

Sinclair Lewis, Max Besont, and Henry James by Martin Buceo, Colorado State University During his 1908 summer in Iowa as a coltish reporter on the Waterloo Daily Courier, Sinclair Lewis, just graduated from Yale, editoriaUy aUuded to Henry James, "whose work no man can read" (Schorer 143). Soon fired from the Courier, young Lewis free-lanced for a speU in New York and then joined a colony of "hobohemian" writers and painters in Carmel, California. One day the novice observed a famous visiting writer and man among men, Jack London, flip through the "sliding, slithering, glittering" pages of The Wings of the Dove, slam it down, and ask: "Do any of you know what aU this junk is about?" (Maule and Cane 89). Whatever lip-service Lewis may have paid later to James, the future Nobelist from Minnesota was incapable, much like the roughhewn London, of giving to James's complex artistry the assiduity bestowed on it by, say, Edith Wharton, whose fiction Lewis adored. Rather, Uke another of his literary heroes, H. G. WeUs, Lewis often ridiculed James, seeing the Master as a society-etcher, a mirage-maker. Jamesian London, for example, is unreal, the Main Streeter hyperbolizes, because it is inhabited by viscountesses, maiden aunts, and second cousins of Cambridge dons instead of by cigar salesmen, mail carriers, and SociaUst journalists (Lewis 63). Thus most book-page readers of American newspapers subscribing to the Publishers Newspaper Syndicate out of New York in 1914 probably failed to detect in reviewer Max Besont's purple eulogy of Notes of a Son and Brother the tongue in the cheek, the chortle behind the hand. Editor of that short-lived, book-boosting syndicate was Sinclair Lewis. "Max Besont" was one of his many pseudonyms. The Monarch's Boyhood1 A Rime Review of Henry James' Memoirs He that wrote "The Golden Bowl," He that sketched "The Awkward Age,' The Henry James Review 13 (1992): 90-91 © 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Lewis, Besont, and James 91 And its pettiness and rage— Here's his lips and heart and soul! Here's the royal memories Of his Highness, Henry James; Here the tranced beholder sees MeUow days and magic names— Hears young Henry's father muse, Sees young WiUiam James' plays; Loves the pleasant old-time use Of the shady Concord days. He that loves the world of books, He that worships Henry James, Quivers as he softly looks At the coming monarch's games. Max Besont NOTE "Reprinted with permission, the CoUection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. List of WorL· Cited Lewis, Sinclair. "Can an Artist Live in America?" Nation 121 (9 December 1925): 63. Maule, Harry E. and MelviUe H. Cane, ed. The Man From Main Street. New York: Random House, 1953. Schorer, Mark. Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. New York: McGraw-HiU, 1961. ...