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SINCLAIR LEWIS
OUR MR. WRENN: THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN (1914) Two Reviews by Patrick Killough (May 5, 2005) A. Review for http://www.barnesandnoble.com Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here is how your review will appear on the title page: Patrick Killough (patrick@thekilloughs.com), is a student of Lewis's America, May 5, 2005, He rates this book THREE STARS * * * TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Is happiness more than finding a good playmate? Sinclair Lewis's first (1914) novel, OUR MR. WRENN: THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN, has a title that says it all. The do-no-harm hero WIlliam Wrenn bumbles along before us from 1910, when he is 34, to 1913. He begins and ends in New York with a few weeks interlude of 'romantic adventure' in England. He is a man without a history or known family background. In The Souvenir and Art Novelty Company he is the ever reassuring 'Our Mr. Wrenn,' whose kindly signature on letters to customers (especially in the South) firms up the market for the firm's silly trifles. Wrenn is 'Mousey' to his artistic, mothering, condescending lady friend Istra Nash who teaches him to 'play' with her in England and later says a vaguely sentimental goodbye to him in New York. But Our Mr. Wrenn can roar if he has to, thrust into becoming for the first time the occasionally ferocious alternate personality 'Bill Wrenn' during a fist fight with a bully while working on a cattle boat to England. All his life Wrenn has frequented the Nickelorion Moving Picture Show and dreamed of foreign travel, to places the more exotic the better. But once abroad, a man with forty looming in his future, he finds that adventuring and 'playing' do not prevent a crushing loneliness and are no substitutes for having pals, chums and abiding friends, no matter how ordinary they are. He therefore returns to 'The Job' in New York and falls back into unimaginative contentment, soon wooing and marrying the kind hearted, non-artistic lingerie sales girl who lives in his boarding house, Miss Nelly Croubel. -OOO- Also recommended: Sinclair Lewis, FREE AIR, ARROWSMITH. Martin Light, THE QUIXOTIC VISION OF SINCLAIR LEWIS. TPK Black Mountain, NC 05/05/2005 B. Review for http://www.amazon.com Review Title: A good, dull friend, not a playmate, cures loneliness Patrick Killough rates the novel THREE STARS * * * For whatever reason you choose to read the novels of Sinclair Lewis and no matter what you are looking for (e.g.his attack on Rotary Clubs, amusing lists of place names, 20th century American colloquialisms), etc., there are certain people or things which will pop up at you again and again. There is a quixotic young man or woman (or both) yearning to chuck job, neighborhood, small town or boredom for travel and adventure in at least relatively exotic places, yearning hotly for nothing more than "somewhere else." There is personal loneliness and the hero's growing sense that being lonely is the greatest problem of his life. Experiments are made to counteract loneliness: plunging feverishly into work, seeking unattainable women friends, settling for conventional but reliable male friends, or such blind alleys as drink and dissipation. Can narrowly focused work alone make a man happy? Must a man have more interests than his work, no matter how distracting those "temptations" are: e.g. golf, a wife, going to operas, children, travel? Can anyone possibly "have it all?" If not, is it desirable to strike a balance between work and play? Lewis's first novel, the 1914 OUR MR. WRENN: THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN probes such questions. William Wrenn, age 34 in 1910, is a bachelor who frequents motion picture halls and saves his pennies for travel to fabulous India or Java. He has worked for some years in a New York jobbing house buying and selling knickknacks. One fine day, he gets a modest legacy which permits him to quit "the job," give notice to the landlady of his boarding house and ship out on a cattle boat for Liverpool. During a few weeks in London and tramping about the English countryside "Our Mr. Wrenn" continues evolving into his latent personality "Bill Wrenn," a bully boy tough guy who had proven himself with his fists on the cattle boat. In London Wrenn meets the gorgeous red headed art student Istra Nash who teaches him to "play" with her and be on the lookout with her for rare "interesting persons. But Istra treats him in a motherly albeit palsy way and usually calls him "Mousey," a name he only slow outgrows thanks to the all too often listless "Bill Wrenn" within him. Istra's key question to him is, "Who do you play with --know?" In Wrenn's case, at least, "playing" or dalliance is not a permanent solution to loneliness. He had tried a he man version of playing earlier with a comrade on the cattle boat. But playmates and hiking parnters of either sex are footloose and do not want permanence or commitment. Nor is Wrenn much tempted by alcohol or sex. Our Mr. Wrenn decides that for him happiness will somehow have to be built on "The Job" back in New York, on any humdrum unimaginative friends he will be lucky to meet and on not much else. Back in New York, Our Mr. Wrenn hurls himself into work with his new found Bill Wrenn drive and hustle and begins to rise within the company. He marries Nelly Croubel, a lingerie saleswoman who offers not much as an imaginative, creative playmate, but is kind and loving. His striving, his quest all fall into place for William/Bill during an ordinary walk with his ordinary girl (Ch. XVI): "Then, in a millionth of a second, he who had been a wanderer in the lonely grey regions of a detached man's heart knew the pity of love, all its emotion, and the infinite care for the beloved that makes a man of a rusty sales-clerk." -OOO- TPK Black Mountain, NC 05/05/2005 |