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16 / W. D. Inglis The New Thought that Lewis advocates in this interview with the physician W. D. Inglis (b. 1874), a graduate of Washington and Jefferson College, is an early twentieth-­ century metaphysical movement, frequently aligned with first-­ wave feminism since many of its proponents were women. New Thought also privileged the printed word, and its secular dimension was responsible for the publication of many self-­ help books during the early twentieth century. Lewis later satirized New Thought in Elmer Gantry. As in this interview, he also satirized the boosterism of “the average man” in the “Solid Ameri­ can Citizen” or “Regular Guy” in Babbitt. Source: W. D. Inglis, “Where Lies the Hope of the Average Man?” Lexington (Kentucky) Herald, May 12, 1915, 13. “Are you satisfied with your job?” “Yes—er—n-­ n”— “Well, ARE you satisfied with it?Of course not! No man worth a bean is ever satisfied with his job, Then what are you going to do about it?” This was an interview, all right, but somehow it had got started backward. What business had ­ Sinclair Lewis to shoot questions at me like that? I came not to talk about myself but to ask questions about “Our Mr. Wrenn,” the mousey little clerk who kept on struggling and kicking till he got a better job and won the right girl. “I’m not Willie Wrenn,” I began (not forgetting business of scowl, also us­ ing deepest throaty growl). “Never you mind”— “But you are a little Wrenn, just the same,” Mr. Lewis interrupted me. “So am I. So is every fellow who isn’t at the top of the heap. Good Lord! There are thousands of us right here in this city and tens of millions of us throughout the country. We’ve got to climb up and get what’s ours. We’ve got to fight. We can’t quit. Remember that young lawyer who left the “Big City” and went back to his Blue Grass farm ‘because three men owned New York and all the rest were their dodgasted clerks’?”50 Part 3. Bohemia / 51 “Well, he quit cold; that’s all. Maybe he was lucky to have a soft place to crawl off to. But you and I and a few million more of us haven’t any place at all to crawl off to. We’ve got to stay. No use for us to plod along like dummies. We must fight and fight intelligently or we’ll be knocked down and run over and wiped off the map.” The interview was all knocked into a cocked hat now. It was hardly worth­ finishing. You see, here was the author of a novel that the critics called “charming ,” “spontaneous,” “original,” “amusing,” and all that sort of thing, and of course I expected to find a highbrow person with an “outlook” and “views” and learned admonitions; instead of which I had discovered a tall, wiry, red headed young fellow who frowned and walloped the desk—plain business desk—with his freckled right fist as he scolded and encouraged in the same breath. He seemed to be looking right into the eyes of thousands of plodders and urging them to do their level best. “You know how you hate advice,” Mr. Lewis went on. “You hate it, I hate it, we all hate it—and yet I often feel as if I’d like to get together a few thousand young fellows and girls and tell them that if they don’t get better jobs and draw down more pay it’s all their own fault. The man behind the counter and the girl behind the typewriter needn’t take root and stick there if they really want to get out and grow up. How can they do it?By taking a dose of practical New Thought every day. Wait! This isn’t preaching. You wouldn’t call ‘Johnny’ McGraw51 a preacher, would you, when he’s showing a young player how to improve his batting average? He has been through it all himself, hasn’t he? He’s practical, isn’t he? So am I. I speak from experience. “There is no question, of course, that our present sys­ tem of doing business has a tendency to hold down the majority for the benefit of the few. But that has been the tendency of all systems since mankind was born. America is the land of opportunity . A man or woman has more chance...

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