Sinclair Lewis Remembered

107. Frederick Manfred

107 / Frederick Manfred Frederick Manfred (1912–1994) was baptized Frederick Feike Feikema and early in his career published books as Feike Feikema. His most successful book, the novel Lord Grizzly, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1954. While living in Duluth and working on Kingsblood Royal early in 1946, Lewis invited his fellow Minnesotan writer to visit him. See also Nancy Bunge, “The Minnesota School: ­ Sinclair Lewis’s Influence on Frederick Manfred,” North Dakota Quarterly 70 (Winter 2003): 118–25. Source: Frederick Manfred, “­ Sinclair Lewis: A Portrait,” Ameri­ can Scholar 23, no. 2 (1954): 165, 166, 168–69, 170–71. I knocked at his door at precisely four. It was cold, and I remember that I was all bundled up in a big greatcoat and a high fur hat. The door opened and a pair of luminous gray-­ green eyes topped by thinning white hair looked up at me, looked up even though the head was tilted forward and down. Pale, almost imperceptible brows had climbed halfway up a high blond forehead. [. . .] My eyes finally fastened on his face. And the face I saw was a face to haunt one in dreams. It was a face that looked as if it were being slowly ravaged by a fire, by an emotional fire, by a fire that was already fading a little and that was leaving a slowly contracting lump of gray-­ red cinder. [. . .] As the tea was being poured by the housekeeper4 —she had taken a seat to my right for a few moments—Red took a notebook out of his pocket and waited a moment for the talk to die down, then said, “Look, I’d like to get your reaction to these titles.” He put down a nervous finger, traced the titles. “Kingson, Kingsblood , Kingsman. Which do you like best for a book that’s about a man who believes in a family legend that somewhere way back one of the ancestors descended from royalty?When all along he’s really got some Negro blood in him?” All three of us chose Kingsblood. The unanimity surprised him. He looked around at all of us, nodded, said, “Good. I’ve got the title for my new book then. And now I can relax for the rest of your stay here. Next week I can begin work.” 294 / Sinclair Lewis Remembered I had heard before about Red’s way of letting others choose his titles for him, and sitting there I had the distinct feeling that he had taken our pulse, that with his finger on the pulse he was again his father, the country bedside doctor, the father he admired to idolatry. And I also had the feeling that Red was asking us to share in the responsibility—some would say guilt—for the kind of books he wrote. [. . .] At the dinner that night he got going on the race question. He had spent some time in the South and had also hired himself a male colored cook, a cook who had excellent reading tastes. Red not only seemed to have explored the scenes of racial intolerance, but had also done a lot of reading on the subject. He probed us to see how we reacted to it all, but the only reaction he got from us was agreement . It was obvious, as we went along, that Red’s interest was more than just casual, that in fact, as his list of titles suggested, he was about to explore the race question—which he did, of course, in his next novel, Kingsblood Royal. ...