Sinclair Lewis Remembered

45. Alfred Harcourt

45 / Alfred Harcourt By all reports, Lewis’s collaboration with De Kruif on Arrowsmith went swimmingly , at least until Lewis or Harcourt or the two together decided against acknowledging De Kruif’s full role in producing it. The novel was subsequently awarded—though Lewis declined—the Pulitzer Prize. In a statement to the press, Lewis explained that the terms of the award prevented him from accepting it, though his resentment over the denial of the award to Main Street five years earlier also was a factor. Source: Alfred Harcourt, Some Experiences (Riverside, CT: privately printed, 1934), 79–81. Even while he was working on Babbitt, Lewis decided his next novel would be nonsatiric. For a long time, he had wanted to write a medical story—his father was a country doctor—but he hesitated to start, because he knew little of the field. Soon after Babbitt was published Lewis met Paul De Kruif, who had just resigned from the Rockefeller Institute. Paul and he decided to take a trip together among the islands of the Caribbean, and while there to visit tropical research stations. Before they started, Paul wanted to marry Rhea Barbarin, to whom he was engaged. He and Lewis dropped into the offi ce at 1 West 47th Street at lunch time to get some money so that Paul could take an early train for Michigan, where Rhea lived. Neither Don12 nor I was in, but my secretary gave Paul her personal check for $1,000, which he and Lewis took to the Guaranty Trust Company where Lewis had his personal account. When the check came back from the bank, it had the signatures of both Paul De Kruif and ­ Sinclair Lewis on the back. That check became my personal property. The Caribbean trip, started partly for a lark, had developed into a serious study of medical work in the tropics. After that, Lewis and Paul went to England and the Continent together, where Lewis got to know some of the great medical scientists of our time. He then settled down in England to write his book. He had many titles for it: The Barbarian; Horizon; White Tile; Civilized; Merry Death; The Savage; Test Tube; The Stumbler; MD; The Shadow of Max Gottlieb (one 124 / Sinclair Lewis Remembered of the characters); Strange Islands; and variations on the name of the central character, Martin Arrowsmith. As he got deeper into the writing, however, he was growing personally attached to his hero, and referred more and more to the manuscript as “Arrowsmith.” By the time it was nearly finished, all of us were calling it “Arrowsmith.” Lewis suggested “Dr. Martin Arrowsmith,” and when we objected to the length of that, agreed to drop the “Dr.,” but for a time held out for “Martin Arrowsmith,” for he wrote, “He is so definitely Martin, more than ‘Dr. Arrowsmith,’” but we all finally decided to follow the policy that had been so successful with Babbitt, and call the book just Arrowsmith. It was published early in 1925. This was the first novel by a popu­ lar author to take medical laboratories as a scene, and to make a research scientist the hero. Martin Arrowsmith had a consuming passion for scientific truth, and he and his wife, Leora, were warm, idealistic people in contrast to the sordidness around them. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, but Lewis refused it. He did this as a protest against the terms of the award, which required that the prize-­ winning novel should represent “the wholesome atmosphere of Ameri­ can life and the highest standard of Ameri­ can manners and manhood.” This restriction, he felt, put too much stress on purpose , and not enough on art, in fiction. ...