Sinclair Lewis Remembered

85. Malcolm Cowley

85 / Malcolm Cowley Malcolm Cowley (1898–1989), novelist, poet, critic, and journalist, spent three years in Paris after the First World War. There he met Lewis one evening at the Café Dome just when the sales of Main Street passed two hundred thousand. Or as Cowley later remarked, “In the year 1921, if you visited the parlor of almost any boarding house, you would see a copy of Main Street standing between the Bible and Ben Hur.”8 Later, Cowley worked in New York as an editor at the New Repub­ lic and an editorial consultant for Viking Press. Source: Malcolm Cowley, The Dream of the Golden Mountains (New York: Viking , 1980), 296–97. I learned that the most argued-­ about of the fall [1935] books was ­ Sinclair Lewis ’s It Can’t Happen Here—not much of a novel, I thought on reading it, but a vigorous antifascist tract. Many of the left-­ wing writers were delighted with its success and hoped that its author, the Nobel prizeman, would become their champion . Somebody in the League of Ameri­ can Writers conceived the notion of holding a semiprivate dinner with Red Lewis and his wife, Dorothy Thompson, as guests of honor. I wasn’t enthusiastic about the proposal, knowing Red as I did, but still (with Henry Hart, who was in publishing, and the poet Genevieve Taggard )9 I signed the letter of invitation. [. . .] The dinner in the big room above John’s Restaurant10 was a disaster, even though half a dozen speakers abounded in praise for Lewis and his novel. Lewis kept glancing around suspiciously; his face was like a rubber mask drawn tight over a skull. Had he been drinking again?Clearly he did not propose to be inveigled into joining the League. Dorothy Thompson, seldom a quiet woman, this time had few opinions to express. Finally Lewis burst out with a speech. I forget his words, but I was sitting near the poet Horace Gregory,11 who quotes him as saying: “Boys, I love you all, and a writer loves to have his latest book praised. But let me tell you, it isn’t a very good book—I’ve done better books—and further- Part 12. Grub Street / 231 more I don’t believe any of you have read the book; if you had, you would have seen I was telling you all to go to hell. Now, boys, join arms; let all of us stand up and sing, ‘Stand Up, Stand Up, for Jesus.’” The boys and girls stood up embarrassedly . Horace and I made our way to the door without saying good night to the guests of honor. ...