A storm center of rage and controversy through­ out his life, Sinclair Lewis once was invited by a minister in Virginia to "come down and be lynched." • A man of many paradoxes, Lewis caused a furor by refusing the Pulitzer Prize in 1926 because he did not believe in literary awards, but he accepted the Nobel Prize in 1930. He was the first American to achieve this distinction_ • Both editors of this volume were close friends of Lewis for many years. Harry E. Maule was his edi­ tor, having known him from the time Lewis left Yale. Melville H. Cane was his long-time attorney and is still executor of the Lewis estate. • They have edited this reader "with intelligence and a knowledge of the period-a kind of editing so rare in such volumes as to be a literary achievement in itself."* *Fanny Butcher-Chicago Sunday Tribune THE MAN FROM MAIN STREET was originally published by Random House, Inc. NOVELS BY SINCLAIR LEWIS 1914 Our Mr. Wrenn 1915 The Trail of the Hawk 1917 The Job 1917 The Innocents 1919 Free Air 1920 Main Street 1922 Babbitt 1925 Arrowsmith .1926 Mantrap 1927 Elmer Gantry 1928 The Man Who Knew Coolidge 1929 Dodsworth 1933 Ann Vickers 1934 Work of Art 1935 It Can't Happen Here 1938 The Prodigal Parents 1940 Bethel Merriday 1943 Gideon Planish 1945 Cass Timberlane 1947 Kingsblood Royal 1949 The God-Seeker 1951 World So Wide A Sinclair Lewis Reader The Man from Main Street Selected Essays and Other Writings: 1904-1950 Edited by Harry E. Maule and Melville H. Cane Assisted by Philip Allan Friedman [bJA GIANT CARDINAL EDITION published by 1:21POCKET BOOKS, INC. • NEW YORK THE MAN FROM MAIN STREET Random House edition published February, 1953 Giant Cardinal edition published Februa ry , 1963 1st printing .................................... December, 1962 This Giant Cardinal** edition includes every word contained in the original, higher-priced edition. It is printed from brand-new plates made from completely reset, clear, easy-to-read type. Giant Cardinal editions ore published by Pocket Books, Inc., and are printed and distributed in the U.S.A. by Affiliated Publishers, a division of Pocket Books, Inc., 630 Fifth Avenue, New York 20, N.Y. *Trademark registered in the United States and other countries. **Trademark of Pocket Books, Inc., 630 Fifth Avenue, New York 20, N.Y., in the United States and other countries. L Ccpyright, 1953, by the Estate of Sinclair Lewis, Melville H. Can e and Pincus Berner, Executors. Introductory notes copyright, 1953, by Harry E. Maule. All rights reserved. This Giant Cardinal edition is published by arrangement with Random House, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Grateful acknowledgment for permission to use published material is made to the following: Newsweek, for "Seeing Red" and "One-Man Revolution," copy­ right, 1937, by Weekly Publications, Inc. The United Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, for "The Artist, the Scientist and the Peace," which appeared in The American Scholar in 1945. The Literary Guild of America, Inc., for "A Note about Kingsblood Royal," which appeared in The Literary Guild Review, Wings. Richard R. Smith Publisher, Inc., for "A Letter on Religion," from The Meaning of Life, edited by Will Durant, copyright, 1932, by Wi11 Durant. The New Yorker, for "My First Day in New York," copyright, 1937, by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc. New Colophon, for "Breaking into Print," copyright, 1937, by Pynson Printers. The New York Sun, Inc., for "Two Yale Men in Utopia," copy­ right, 1906, by The New York Sun, Inc. Hearst Magazines, Inc., for "Is America a Paradise for Women?" published in Pictorial Review; "This Golden Half-Century, 1885- 1935," published in Good Housekeeping; and "I'm an Old News­ paperman Myself," published in Cosmopolitan. Copyright, 1929, 1935, 1947, by The Hearst Corp. The George Macy Companies, Inc., for "A Note on Book Collect­ ing," from Samples, copyright, 1935, by the Limited Editions Club, Inc.; "Introductory Remarks," from The Three Readers, copyright, v vi Acknowledgments 1943, by The Press of The Readers Club; Preface to Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, copyright, 1941, by The Heritage Press; Preface to Main Street, The Limited Editions Club edition. copy­ right, 1937, by The Limited Editions Club, Inc.; Preface to Henry Ward Beecher: An American Portrait by Paxton Hibben, The Readers Club edition, copyright, 1942, by The Readers Club. Esquire, Inc., for "The Death of Arrowsmith," published in Coro­ net; "Gentlemen, This is Revolution," and "Obscenity and Ob­ scurity," published in Esquire, copyright, 1941, 1945, by Esquire, Inc. Yale Literary Magazine, for Launcelot, "Editor's Table," "In Praise of South Middle," "Unknown Undergraduates," and "Ram­ bling Thoughts on Literature." New York Herald Tribune, for "A Pilgrim's Progress," "The American Scene in Fiction," "The Pre-War, Post-War, Post-Crash America," and "Our Friend, H. G.," copyright, 1924, 1929, 1936, 1946, by the New York Herald Tribune, Inc. Harper & Row, for "A Letter on Style," from Types and Times in the Essay, selected and arranged by Warner Taylor, copyright, 1932, by Harper & Bros. Saturday Review, for "William Lyon Phelps," and "Fools, Liars and Mr. DeVoto," copyright, 1939, 1944, by The Saturday Review Associates, Inc. The Troutbeck Press-Mr. Joel Spingam, Publisher, for Introduc­ tion to Four Days on the W ebutuck River. The New York Post, for "A Hamlet of the Plains," copyright, 1922, by The New York Post, Inc. The American Peoples Encyclopedia, for "No Flight to Olympus," copyright, 1951, by Spencer Press, Inc. Doubleday & Co., Inc., for "My Maiden Effort," copyright, 192 1, by Doubleday, Page & Co., Introduction to Selected Short Stories of Sinclair Lewis, copyright, 1935, by Sinclair Lewis; "Relation of the Novel to the Present Social Unrest: The Passing of Capitalism," published in The Bookman in 19 14; quotations from Sinclair Lewis: A Biographical Sketch by Carl Van Doren, with a Bibli- Acknowledgments vii ography by Harvey Taylor, copyright, 1933, by Doubleday, Doran · & Co., Inc. The Crowell-Collier Publishing Co., for "How I Wrote a Novel on Trains and Beside the Kitchen Sink," published in the American, copyright, 192 1, by The Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. Harcourt, Brace & Co., for "The Art of Dramatization" from Dodsworth, dramatized by Sidney Howard, copyright, 1933, 1934, by Sinclair Lewis and Sidney Howard. The New York Times, for "Novelist Bites Art," copyright, 1941, by The New York Times Co. The Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc., for "The Great Recorder" which appeared in The Book-of-the-Month Club News. The Nation, for "Minnesota, the Norse State," and "Main Street's Been Paved," copyright, 1923, 1924, by The Nation, Inc. Liveright Publishing Corp., for "Minnesota, the Norse State," from These United States edited by Ernest Groening, copyright renewed, 1950, by Ernest Groening. Current History, for "Back to Vermont," copyright, 1936, by Form Publishing Co., Inc. The Bell Syndicate, Inc., for "Americans in Italy," taken from a series of newspaper articles, copyright, 1949, by The Bell Syn­ dicate, Inc. United Feature Syndicate, for "Cheap and Contented Labor," copy­ right, 1929, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc. The Nobel Foundation, for quotations from Nobel: The Man and His Prizes, 1950. The Viking Press, Inc., for "Two Letters to Carl Van Doren," which appeared in Three Worlds by Carl Van Doren, originally published by Harper & Bros., subsequently transferred to The Viking Press, copyright, 1936, by Carl Van Doren. The editors wish to express their special appreciation to the fol­ lowing individuals: viii Acknowledgments To Mr. James T. Babb, Librarian, Yale University Library, for making available material from the Lewis Collection at the Yale Library; Mrs. Marian H. Christensen, Principal Librarian, Archives, Uni­ versity of Minnesota, for bibliographical research; Mr. Philip Allan Friedman, for aid in research; Miss Leah Gadlow, for research, invaluable suggestions, criticism and for her unflagging efforts on behalf of this book; Mr. Donald C. Gallup, Curator of the Yale Collection of Ameri­ can Literature, for making available material from the Lewis Col­ lection at the Yale Library; Mr. Joseph Henry Jackson of the San Francisco Chronicle, for research on matters pertaining to the period when Sinclair Lewis lived in San Francisco; Mrs. Matthew Josephson of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, for her cooperation and for making available the Sinclair Lewis material from the Academy's collection; Mr. George Macy, for furnishing needed bibliographical data; Mrs. Christine Pollard, for aid on bibliographical matters. CONTENTS Introduction xiii I Declarations The American Fear of Literature (Nobel Prize Address) 3 Letter to the Pulitzer Prize Committee 18 Unpublished Introduction to Babbitt 21 Seeing Red (On Communism) 29 The Artist, the Scientist and the Peace 32 A Note About Kingsblood Royal 36 A Letter on Religion 41 II S. L. Remembers Self-Portrait (Berlin, August, 1927) 45 Self-Portrait (Nobel Foundation) 51 My First Day in New York 55 Two Yale Men in Utopia 60 Breaking into Print . 70 I'm an Old Newspaperman Myself 75 Early Publishing Days 98 A Note on Book Collecting 101 The Death of Arrowsmith 104 ix X Contents III Early Writings Launcelot 111 Suckling and Lovelace 112 Editor's Table 113 In Praise of South Middle 115 Unknown Undergraduates 119 The World Police 122 IV Literary Views Pre-War, Post-War, Post-Crash America 129 Two Letters to Carl Van Doren 134 The American Scene in Fiction 142 Gentlemen, This Is Revolution 148 Fools, Liars and Mr. DeVoto 153 A Pilgrim's Progress 165 Introduction to Four Days on the Webutuck River 169 A Hamlet of the Plains 171 Introductory Remarks 175 Preface to Fathers and Sons 181 v Problems of the Craft No Flight to Olympus 187 A Letter on Style 190 My Maiden Effort 192 Rambling Thoughts on Literature as a Business 195 How I Wrote a Novel on Trains and Beside the Kitchen Sink 199 Obscenity and Obscurity 208 Introduction to Main Street 214 Introduction to Selected Short Stories 219 The Art of Dramatization 220 Novelist Bites Art 229 VI People and Events Foreword to Henry Ward Beecher: An American Portrait 235 The Great Recorder 238 One-Man Revolution 242 William Lyon Phelps 244 Our Friend, H.