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FREE AIR
novel by Sinclair Lewis (1919)
Two Reviews by Patrick Killough (2005) I. For www.BARNESANDNOBLE.COM (text approximately as appears there) Patrick Killough (patrick@thekilloughs.com), is researching Lewis's satires of Rotary and other American service organizations, April 22, 2005, Snapshot: amusing foretaste of sinclair lewis's ten greatest years (1920-1930). FREE AIR (1919) puts period to Sinclair Lewis's apprentice years as a writer turning magazine stories into short novels. FREE AIR lays out themes that will recur during the 20s in books like MAIN STREET and ARROWSMITH, e.g., chivalrous plodding male meets ditzy, idealistic good-hearted girl. Their temptation to dally and to play crosses their ambition to work and achieve. Their travel ever westward by early automobiles purifies the spirit. The tale is set in early months of World War One, before America's entry. Miss CLAIR BOLTWOOD of the fashionable Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, drives a heavy Gomez-Dep roadster towards a visit with cousins in Seattle in order to relax her accompanying widowed father's overworked nervous system. For small-town Minnesota mechanic MILTON (MILT) DAGGETT who rescues Claire and the Gomez-Dep from a mudhole, it is love at first sight. It is the apostles throwing down their fishing nets to follow Jesus. It is Don Quixote setting out on his quest. Will Claire turn Milt(on) into a man of manners, persuade him to get a university degree? Or should she instead renounce the comforts of society and join Milt in a simple life in the great outdoors? Can Milt overcome his dislike of Claire's class and her friends and relatives who poke fun at his rustic behavior? Imagine Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in a light-hearted romp over wretched early 20th century roads through the glorious west. The reader will enjoy few guffaws, no tears, but a recurring rumble of chuckles. In later novels Sinclair Lewis will pile on seemingly unending descriptions of Rotarians and others in mesmerizing comic phrases. A hint of this technique occurs in FREE AIR's Chapter twenty in his four rhythmic stanzas celebrating the names of the towns of Washington State, beginning: Humptulips, Tum Tum, Moclips, Yelm/ Satsop, Bucoda, Omak, Enumclaw/... The novel FREE AIR (the title derives from a sign frequently seen at filling stations during the trek) is a hoot. Nothing heavy or demanding in it. Just great clean fun. -OOO- Also recommended: Mark Schorer, SINCLAIR LEWIS: AN AMERICAN LIFE (1961). Martin Light,THE QUIXOTIC VISION OF SINCLAIR LEWIS (1975). .Sinclair Lewis, MAIN STREET (1920) BABBITT (1922), ARROWSMITH (1925), ELMER GANTRY (1927). -OOO- TPK 04/22/2005 ===-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- II. For www.amazon.com Here is your review the way it will appear: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Summary: unpaved roads, flat tires and chasing that dream, April 22, 2005 Reviewer: T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews Sinclair Lewis's FRESH AIR, published in 1919, is sheer, chuckling delight. It offers no great insights into psyches or interpersonal relations. Read it rather as a straightforward magazine serial pot boiler romance of frontier boy and car mechanic (Milt Daggett) pursuing a sentimental girl (Claire Boltwood) worth an impressive $5,000 around 1916. The girl, a high living Brooklynite, is driving her ailing workaholic father in a heavy Gomez-Dep roadster long day after weary day across northern plains and mountains towards a vacation with cousins in Seattle. She wonders whether she can ultimately avoid marrying Jeff Saxton, a notably older beau back in sophisticated New York. Milt complicates things by falling in love with Claire after pulling her car out of a Minnesota mud hole created by a German hick to extort money from stranded motorists. Milt almost instantly decides to drive in his modest Teal "tin beetle" or "bug" with or near Claire and her father all the way to Seattle. And so it goes, with Claire wondering if she can (or should) civilize the manly Milt up to the level of suave and prosperous Jeff or whether that is too, too patronizing. Should she, alternatively, simply sweep off to Alaska with Milt -- heeding the call of the wild? Were Jane and Tarzan in the back of Sinclair Lewis's mind? For Edgar Rice Burroughs had created them only seven years earlier in 1912. No, the story takes another twist. Read the book and discover what this novel is said to be "prelude and curtain raiser" to. FRESH AIR can also be read just for its sweaty heft as a part of midwestern and western America not long before the nation declared war on the Kaiser. On the drive through Minnesota, North Dakota, etc. to Washington state, roads are rarely paved. Gravel is luxury. Dust is daily. Mud is just around the bend. Tires are thin and frequently burst or are punctured. Steep slopes demand drivers with braking and gear shifting skills. And don't forget low spots covered by running water. In every town where the Boltwoods overnight, they routinely drive their Gomez-Dep (a make apparently invented by Sinclair Lewis) into a sure-to-be-there full service garage for the night. These and other cross country garages often display a sign "Free Air," which must have been a reassuring come-on in the early days of cross-continental motoring. The author, just one year before his first masterpiece, MAIN STREET, convincingly presents his personally experienced North American driving world from an expert mechanic's point of view: an automobile-crazed country with its starters, carburetors, rumble seats, dubiously effective head lamps, oil leaks, hitchhikers, fleabag hotels, country stores, a haunted house and country people who speak German and at first seem gruff but then are seen by sophisticated Easterner Claire Boltwood to have hearts of gold. As does her new suitor, Milt Daggett. It is an all-American world where even auto mechanics are romantic and knightly. Boys and girls should read FRESH AIR a year or so before they tackle TOM SAWYER and HUCKLEBERRY FINN. One leads to the others. -OOO- Patrick Killough 04/22/2005 |