Sinclair Lewis Remembered

49. Morris Fishbein

49 / Morris Fishbein As early as 1925, as Fishbein recalled, Lewis seemed liable to become a victim of his own success. Source: Morris Fishbein, Morris Fishbein, M.D.: An Autobiography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), 105–6. Having finished Arrowsmith, Lewis was considering doing a novel about a university president in which De Kruif was to participate with him. Lewis came to see me and at that time we visited Karl Harriman of Redbook.23 Harriman offered Lewis a tremendous advance for a novel. Lewis was planning a trip to Canada with his brother Claude. While on the trip he conceived a less-­ than-­ good book called Mantrap [1926], which Harriman refused but which was then purchased by Collier’s for double what Harriman had offered. This made an indifferent movie.24 Lewis had also more or less promised a book to Ray Long of Hearst. At the time he was extremely busy helping Harcourt in every way to push Arrowsmith. He did not want it reviewed as a scientific book but primarily as a novel. I understand that a lump sum was given to De Kruif for his participation in Arrowsmith, in addition to having all his expenditures paid while abroad. However , by January 1925, De Kruif and Lewis discontinued their friendship. Lewis had not heard from him for four months. As far as I know, he and De Kruif never spoke to each other again. Harrison Smith also quotes a letter from Harcourt to Lewis telling him about reviews of Arrowsmith. Harcourt says “Fishbein and Keith Preston of Chicago have come up to scratch.” Many people are convinced that Arrowsmith is the acme of all of Lewis’s writing , although quite certainly Main Street and Babbitt had far more social influence and Dodsworth was perhaps more entertaining. The movie rights for all of these stories and their subsequent reprints must have given Lewis a great fortune. Probably Lewis will be remembered also for his extraordinary attachment to hard liquor. He was a hearty drinker. I have seen him tip up a pint of Scotch and 134 / Sinclair Lewis Remembered drink it down in a continuous swallow. Then he would stand and talk almost like one inspired until suddenly he would collapse and go to sleep. I am sorry to say that the nature of the times conduced to encouraging this habit. He could hardly attend any kind of meeting or party without someone searching at once for a supply adequate to his needs. One night we had a men’s party at our house, attended by Lewis, Bart Cormack, Henry Justin Smith, Keith Preston, Ben Hecht, James Weber Linn of the University of Chicago,25 and myself as host. (On later visits he used to have dinner with us and other friends.) Once he left a dinner to visit our children in their bedrooms. I found him after a long absence from the dining room telling them little stories. On this occasion the conversation was profuse and sometimes highly controversial. Lewis, then somewhat maudlin, said: “I’m just an acolyte at the altar of literature”; a pause ensued; then Bart Cormack said, “Don’t you mean an alcoholite?” ...