In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

86 / Benjamin Stolberg Benjamin Stolberg (1891–1951), a Marxist author and journalist, was particularly active in the field of Ameri­ can labor. He was an editor of Bookman, a columnist for the New York Evening Post, and contributed to the New York Times, the New York Herald-­ Tribune, the Scripps-­ Howard newspapers, and many magazines . He was also an unoffi cial advisor to Lewis on his aborted labor novel. Source: Benjamin Stolberg, “­ Sinclair Lewis,” Ameri­ can Mercury 53 (Oc­ to­ ber 1941): 450–53, 459. When Rebecca West, the well-­ known English writer, first met ­ Sinclair Lewis, she was exhausted. “His talk is wonderful,” she said, “but after five hours I ceased to look upon him as a human being. I could think of him only as a great natural force, like the aurora borealis.” Lewis takes no exercise, he plays no games, he has no hobbies. His main relaxation is his own talk. Even his silences seem like rest periods between torrential monologues. He goes on at top speed in a high, flat, midwestern voice, driven by a sort of furor satiricus. Yet his talk is curiously impersonal. It lacks all intimacy and is singularly free of private gossip or personal references. When now and then he does dwell on some personal problem, it sounds like a page from Dodsworth—for anyone to hear. Some comparative strangers have listened to what seemed very private revelations, until they realized that these revelations were not really private. They were merely stories of the tribulations and experiences of a character named ­ Sinclair Lewis in a preposterous universe. Lewis’s conversation deals chiefly with the human fauna—its amusing or amazing customs, its gregarious imitativeness, its love of gadgets, its ­ ridiculous fears and hopeless hopes and endless misunderstandings. Now and then he touches on its capacity for decency, even tragedy or heroism. But always he discusses this human fauna with the objective air of a natural scientist—in a constant stream of brilliant reporting, uproarious burlesque, superb mimicry, and shrewd, often wickedly shrewd, observation. He has a genius for making people remind one of human beings—just as monkeys do. Part 12. Grub Street / 233 His usual method is to inflate the pompous, the trivial, the false, and then let some imaginary character do the deflating for him. And his characters are so preposterously lifelike because he has the gift of picking out, and pumping dry, their stereotypes in real life. Finally it dawns on the listener that it isn’t talk at all; it’s work. Lewis’s discourses are the workouts of a great satirist. They are an expression of his perpetual obsession with the folkways of Ameri­ can life. One afternoon three of us were sitting on the porch of his Vermont farmhouse , when a stranger drove up and introduced himself as Elmer Whoozit, the local representative in the state assembly. Immediately Lewis was galvanized. “Why, hello,” he said. “You’re just the man I want to see; I’m thinking of going into politics myself. One of these days I may run against you.” “That’s fine,” grinned Mr. Whoozit. “I plan to run for the state senate this fall, and you can take my place. ­ Sinclair Lewis succeeds Elmer Whoozit! Why, that’s wonderful! Be glad to help you all I can.” The two of them promptly launched into the campaign. Under Lewis’s hypnotic guidance, Elmer spilled all the tricks of local politics—whom to see, what to promise, what to avoid. We got the lowdown on the neighboring farmers, store­ keepers, politicians. His vernacular was priceless. WiththegreatestofeaseElmerWhoozitandRedLewisgotthemselveselected. Then Lewis decided that Elmer mustn’t get stuck in the senate. He must run for governor; and Lewis would succeed him in the senate. But only on one condition : the Whoozit-­ Lewis machine must reform the state. They would clean house, introduce the most enlightened legislation, turn Vermont into a model commonwealth . For just a moment Elmer hesitated, then he agreed. And he obliged us with a detailed, and quite cynical, analy­ sis of the state machine, told us who’s who and how they got that way and how to handle them. Again Whoozit and Lewis were elected. Vermont became the most advanced state in the Union. The thing to do was to get the nation to catch up with it. And so Elmer went to the United States Senate, while Lewis followed him into the governor’s mansion. At last Elmer began teetering on the verge...

Share