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23 NOVELS OF SINCLAIR LEWIS
SESSION #1 WEDNESDAY OCT 5, 2005 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW NOVELS 1 - 4 (1) 1912 HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE. (2) 1914 OUR MR. WRENN. (3) 1915 THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK. (4) 1917 THE JOB. ____________________________________ I. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW II. NOVELS 1 - 4: A. STORY OUTLINE. B. READINGS. C. BIOGRAPHIC. D. IMPACT. E. METHODS. A. PLOTS. READINGS. (1) 1912 HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE. (published under the pseudonym Tom Graham) --The Story. 16 year-old Gerald ("Hike") Griffin and his lovable overweight sidekick Torrington ("Poodle") Darby, help an inventor Martin Priest land a million dollar contract with the U.S. Army Signal Corps to purchase his amazing tetrahedral flying machine. With the help of army Lieutenant Jack Adeler they contend with evil Captain Willoughby Welch. There is much background history from the earliest days of heavier-than air aviation. And in the process the two boys "had made the greatest flight in the history of aviation. Prophetically (cf. Billy Mitchell) Hike foresaw the day when his plane, "Hike's Hustle," would fight a battleship. Gerald Griffin's earliest nickname was Jerry. Westerners, at least in those days, called a long football run a "hike." Once the crowd roared as Griffin ran a long one, "Hike, Jerry, hike! Griffin, hike, hike" And he was Hike Griffin ever after EXCERPTS: This simple novel or boy's tale is not worth a lot of our time. Three excerpts are now read aloud. The first two illustrate rather quirky uses of LANGUAGE. The third excerpt is about PACIFISM and may be one of very few such passages in all of Lewis. (1) p. 115. A thuggish captor says to the kidnapped, bound Hike, "'Now I guess you'll run tetrahedrals (aeroplanes) -- not, young smart Aleck,' snarled the taller man." (COMMENT: it is only in the past ten years that I have heard many people use "NOT" in that ironic, emphatic way.] (2) 220 and 221. LANGUAGE. "Sport one's oak," = "Do not disturb." Oxford College talk Boys break in on Poodle uninvited in a remote location where he was trying to do some writing for class. Hike intervened. "...you've got no right to come in here unless he invites you -- especially if he wants to sport his oak." Leader of the intruders, Left Ear Dongan accepted Hike's thesis about privacy but thought Hike was putting on Oxonian airs with hsi phraseology: "'especially if he wants to sport his oak.' You must think you're in Oxford." http://www.bibliomania.com/2/3/255/1180/23526/1/frameset.html to sport one's oak. To be “not at home” to visitors. At the Universities the “chambers” have two doors, the usual room-door and another made of oak, outside it; when the oak is shut or “sported” it indicates either that the occupant of the room is out, or that he does not wish to be disturbed by visitors (3) PACIFISM: After using his aeroplane in Mexico to help the Mexican army put down brigands in a bloody fracas: "For the first time, Hike really understood that war is a horrible thing, to be prevented as far as possible. ... was was a crime, which the army ought to prevent, instead of trying to bring it on." "he hoped hat every new thing he did, every fine bridge or aeroplane that he built, wold be one step toward making a more civilized world, which would not want war; which would prefer happiness and peace ... to fighting like clay-grimed savages." COMMENT: HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE is the sort of undemanding shaggy dog tale, episode piled upon episode, that very small children demand from their parents or grandparents. Brave children do brave things: rescue people from a yacht in danger of sinking, and so forth. Pacifism also appears in Lewis's 1911-1912 short story "Captains of Peace." Air Science of Wells plus some new thought. A New Thought United Nations is organized (Schorer, 202f). =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) 1914 OUR MR. WRENN: THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN. Edition studied: 1951. New York. Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Introduction by Harrison Smith. x. 239 pp. --The Story Do-no-harm New Yorker hero WIlliam Wrenn with "his scrubby tan moustache" bumbles along from 1910, when he is 34, to 1913. He dreams of foreign travel. His third floor "abjectly respectable" room abounds with "his friends, books from wander-land" (p. 4 ). Wrenn hates his seven-year old job at the Souvenir and Art Novelty Copany and feels mistreated by his boss, Mortimer R. Guilfogle. There are limits to how far he can escape through watching travel films at the Nickelorion Moving-Picture Show on 14th Street. A small inheritance allows him to quit The Job and go abroad. He begins and ends in New York with a few weeks interlude of 'romantic adventure' on a cattle boat (where he makes a friend, Morton and finding within his meek exterior the macho persona of Bill Wrenn whips a bully in a fist fight). He then spends weeks in England (where he meets the elegant art student Istra Nash). Back in New York, William Wrenn makes new friends and moves to a friendlier boarding house where he meets department store saleswoman Nelly Croubel. He throws himself back into The Job at The Souvenir and Art Novelty Company, transcending his pre-adventure persona of the company's 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. He rises quickly to make enough money to marry Nelly. At story's end, stay-at-home Nelly is responding to William's intellectual guidance by reading Kipling's KIM and finding it hard. -=-=-=-=- Other characters worth noting include Wrenn's ultra-fat Southern Landlady Mrs Zapp with plump grown daughter Theresa Zapp and 8-year old daughter Godiva ("Goaty") Zapp with adenoids. EXCERPTS: (1) Language: another example of "not" at the end of a sentence. p. 40. "Classy bunch of cattlemen we've got to go with. Not! ....." (2) Friendship (esp. man and man) (56) Morton to Wrenn: "'You're too level-headed to like to bum around like a fool hobo. You'd darn soon get tired of it.'" (Wrenn to Morton) "'What if I did? Morty, look here. I've been learning something on this trip. I've always wanted to just do one thing -- see foreign places. ... But there's something that's a whole lot more important. Somehow, I ain't ever had many friends. Some ways you're about the best friend I've ever hand -- you ain't no highbrow or too lowbrow. And this friendship business -- it means such an awful lot. ... a joyous adventure. That's what being friends is. ... this friendship business (57) is just like those old crusaders -- you know -- they'd start out on a fine morning -- you know; armor shining, all that stuff. It wouldn't make any dif. what they met as long as they was fighting together. ... ready for anything, long 's they just stuck together. That's the way this friendship business is, I b'lieve. ... Chance to tell folks what you think and really get som fun out of seeing places together. And I ain't ever done it much. ... I've always been kind of alone -- not knowing many folks. You know how it is in a New York rooming-house. So now --- Aw, don't slip on me, Morty. Honestly, I don't care what kind of work we do as long as we can stick together. ...'" (3) Playing and Playmates. (Especially man and woman). (80) (To Wrenn) "'My name is Istra Nash (85) (To Wrenn) "You live alone in New York, do you?'" (86) ";Y - yes.' "'Who do you play with -- know?'" ... "'What do you -- oh, you know -- people in New York who don't go to parties or read much -- what do they do for amusement? I'm so interested in types.'" (Wrenn) "'Oh, I don't know -- just talk about -- oh, cards and jobs and folks and things and -- oh, you know; go to moving pictures and vaudeville and go to Coney Island and -- oh, sleep.'" (96) (Istra to Wrenn) "'Oh, my dear child ... You've got to learn to play. You don't know how to play. Come, I shall teach you. ... Come.'" (125 (Mrs. Stettinius, the poet-lady to Wrenn) " ... romantic love is passe, that we have entered the era of glorious companionship that regards varietism as exactly as romantic as monogamy.'" (129) (Istra to Wrenn) "'And when you get back to America you won't be any the worse for playing around with poor Istra because she told you about different things from what you've played with, about rearing children as individuals and painting in tempera and all those things? ... we have had an adventure ...'" (210) Wrenn was ashamed "for making the discovery that two women may be different and yet equally likeable." (225) (Astra to Wrenn) "' No, no, no, no, dear! You go and forget me and enjoy yourself and be good to your pink-face -- Nelly, isn't it? She seems to be terribly nice, and I know you two will hve a good time. You mus forget me. I'm just a teacher of playing games who hasn't been successful at any game whatever. Not that it matters. I don't care. I don't, really. JNow, good night.'" (234) (Wrenn to Nelly) "'I want you to know I'm going to give all of me to you now if I can get you to want me. And I am glad I knew Istra -- she learnt me a lot about books nd all, so I have more to me, or maybe will have, for you. It's -- Nelly -- promise you'll be -- my friend -- promise --'". http://sheetmusicwarehouse.co.uk/details.php?ref=2623 Title: Any Little Girl, that's a nice Little Girl is the Right Little Girl for Me Author: W&M: T J Gray, F Fischer Category: 20th Century Songs Description: ©.1910, Good. On Fred Fisher (Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin' town, etc.) http://www.mp3.com/fred-fisher/artists/275005/biography.html OUR MR WRENN sketches several themes that will appear again in HSL's novels: --Loneliness: to be avoided any way one can. --The importance of a man's having at least one man friend. --The Job and the extent to which its ordinary satisfactions are enough. --Women: how is a man to relate to them? Can he have more than one Glorious Playmate? Can he bring two Playmates together face to face and expect them to like one another? -==-===-=-=-=-=-=-==----=-=-=-=-=-=-= (3) 1915 THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK: A COMEDY OF THE SERIOUSNESS OF LIFE. --The Story This is about the boyhood, youth, and later career in early aviation and automobile manufacturing of Norwegian American Carl Ericson, born1885. When he was eight years old in Joralemon, Minnesota, Carl ran off on impulse into a cold night with Gertrude ('Gertie') Cowles, three years his senior. Again and again he will run off somewhere new. Occasionally he will long for a return to Joralemon and Gertie. Carl's life moves through three "adventures": simply being young, then living a life of adventuring and daring for adventure's sake and finally seeking heterosexual love as a personal life unifier. During the second set of adventures, involving trips to California and Panama and acquiring the nickname "Hawk" as welll as a reputation as a champion airplane barnstormer and racer, Hawk's life briefly crossed the artist Istra Nash whom we met in OUR MR. WRENN. EXCERPTS: (1) [To live means to reach far from where one is. Happiness is always ELSEWHERE.] (50) Free thinking ice fisherman Bone Stillman to young Carl: "'Life is just a little old checker game played by the alfalfa contingent at the country store unless you've got an ambition that's too big to ever quite lasso it. You want to know that there's something ahead that's bigger and more beautiful than anything you've ever seen, and never stop till -- well till you can't follw the road any more. And anything or anybody that doesn't pack any surprises -- get that? -- surprises for you, is dead, and you want to slough it like a snake does its skin. You want to keep on remembering that Chicago's beyond Joralemon, and Paris beyond Chicago, and beyond Paris -- well, maybe there's some big peak of the Himalayas.'" ... "Carl saw a world of unuttered freedom and beauty forthshadowed in Bone's cloudy speech." (2) [The search for a lady friend playmate -- thrust of the third episode of the novel] Later, he met Ruth Winslow and rejoiced to have discovered a playmate (270). Yet he sensed that no upper class girl "would ever run away and play with him" (277). Perhaps he could play "married" (298). By 1912 he had a good engineering career in automobiles. Carl Ericson looked for a girl that would turn his life into a story about him and her (317). A relationship might eventually end, but surely he and a woman of the moment might remain playmates for a while more (322). Playmates could quarrel (331). People recognize a couple as playmates (334) (3) [What is playing like? What are its elements?] Playing is other than The Job. Playing is something other than routine. An important part of playing is simply running away from where one is and going somewhere else. It is a factor to bear in mind when considering whether and whom to marry. If we marry, can we be vagabonds (361) ? Can poor people afford to roam? Who would wsh and cook? If playmates are separated for a time, one misses the playing with the other (365). "He knew that both Ruth and he had the instability as well as the initiative of the vagabond" (366). "Carl knew that life's real adventure is not adventuring, but finding the playmate with whom to quest life's meaning" (379). As Carl settled down into his marriage "he was ready for anything but content with anything" (385). Carl and Ruth had found their vocation to keep clear of vocations" (405). (405) "Ruth and he had to be up and away, immediately; go any place, do anything, so long as they followed new trails, and followed them together. He knew positively ... that he could not be happy without her as comrade in the freedom he craved. ... They were not just a man and a woman. They were a man and a woman who had promised to find new horizons for each other. ... He had no clear nor ringing message, but he did have, just then, an overpowering conviction that Ruth and he -- not every one, but Ruth and he, at least -- had a vocation in keeping clear of vocations, and that they must fulfil it." ... Carl made his peace "with a vexed girl who was also a human being, with a digestive system and prejudices. ... Carl knew that human girl as the symbol of man's yearning for union with the divine; he desire happiness for her with a devotion great as the passion in Galahad's heart when all night he knelt before the high altar." =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= (4) 1917 THE JOB: AN AMERICAN NOVEL. --The Story THE JOB spans ten years 1905 - 1915. Heroine is Miss Una Golden. At tale's beginning she is 24 and living in Panama, Pennsylvania. The rest of the story is about Una's determination both to find romantic love with a good man and to make a man's career for herself in business. Walter Babson is an early swain. She marries, unwisely another suitor, rough and ready wax salesman, the widowerd Edward Schwirtz. She interacts with impressive women in business, such as Esther Lawrence, Mamie Magen and free-lance realtor Beatrice Joline. Finally, Una studies a new, innovative chain of hotels, does field research and then convinces the chain's partners to put her, at age 34, in charge of the departments for catering, service, decoration and related services. At $4,000/year! EXCERPTS: (1) (Why Jews were revolutionizing NY business) "Mamie Magen gave her (Una) the opportunity to spend ... two weeks installing a modern filing system at Herzfeld and Cohn's. "So Una had a glimpse of the almost beautiful thing business can be. "Herfeld and Cohn were Jews, old, whiter bearded orthodox Jews; their unpoetic business was the jobbing of iron beds and Una was typical of that New York which the Jews were conquering, in having nebulousprejudices against the race; in calling them 'mean' and 'grasping' and 'un-American," and wanting to see them shut out of offices and hotels. "Yet, with their merry eyes ... their sincere belief that, as the bosses, they were not omniscient rulers, but merely elder fellow-workers -- with these un-American, eccentric, patriarchal ways, Herzfeld and Cohn had made their office a joyous adventure." (221f) C. BIOGRAPHY of Sinclair Lewis bearing esp. on years the first four novels were being written. 1885 Harry Sinclair Lewis born Sauk Centre 1890-1902 Attends local public schools. 1902-03 Oberlin Academy as prep for Yale where he graduated in June 1908. 1904 and 1906 Cattleboat trips to England. Janitor at Upton SInclair's communal living at Helicon Hall, New Jersey. 1908-09 HSL wanders USA as journalist and free-lance writer 1910 - 1915 Employed by various New York city publishers as MS reader, editor, advertising manager, book reviewer. 1911 vacation in Provincetown, MA, to write two books. Once proposed marriage to Frances Perkins at the top of his lungs. Dated Edna Ferber (Schorer, 193f) 1914 Marries GRACE LIVINGSTON HEGGER in NY. They live on Long Island. Short story writing around this time. (Schorer, 203) D. SOURCES FOR First Four Novels (1) 1911 HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE. Written in 3 weeks, summer of 1911, published mid-August 1912. Conventional boys adventure story in manner of TOM SWIFT. The boy Stephen Vincent Benet endorsed it enthusiastically. (Schorer 203f). The book draws on recollections of time spent around Carmel and Benicia, California, the latter which he visited with friend William Benet, where the latter's father Colonel James Walker Benet commanded a small army presidio. The learned colonel made a huge positive impact on HSL from 1909 onwards. HSL derived much of his knowledge of early aircraft (e.g. the tetrahedral aeroplane derived from experiements by Alexander Graham Bell and others with motorized kites) from reading. As with so many topics, he made copious notes and carried them, newspaper articles and the like in a large trunk. Two months paid vacation in Provincetown, Mass. studying aviation and working on his boy's book and a novel (OUR MR. WRENN). (2) 1914 OUR MR. WRENN The novel is dedicated to Grace Livingstone Hegger, HSL's soon to be wife. The novel was written during Lewis's second working stint in New York. He commuted by train from Long Island. To successful offices of George H. Doran & Company. Eight hours/day. Editor and Advertising Manager. Lunched with friends and authors. Evenings and weekends wrote fiction. Summer of 1912 went to Provincetown, MA and finished first draft. 9/12/1912 met elegant Grace Hegger (Schorer 205). She read MS of OUR MR. WRENN and suggested dressmaker details. (Schorer 208f) Grace "rose to the role of 'Glorious Playfellow' and played with him." (schorer 209). Paralleled H.G. Wells's 1909 HISTORY OF MR. POLLY. (3) 1915 THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK: A COMEDY OF THE SERIOUSNESS OF LIFE. This novel is enormously autobiographic, involving his notebooks from various years and places and his courtship and marriage with Grace Hegger. To go into details would be distracting from a survey course. See Schorer, esp. 221 - 227. E. Public Impact of the First Four Novels --HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE (Schorer, 18). $200 (two months salary from firm of Frederick A. Stokes & Co.)plus 3 percent royalty. --OUR MR. WRENN. Well received. "The basic conflict of the book is between the appeal, the impossible temptations of the exotic (Europe, Istra Nash, vagabondage) and the real satisfactions of the ordinary (America, Nelly Croubel, the job.)" (Schorer 212) This is clearly the world before WW I. Schorer thinks the HSL NEVER stopped using that world as his reference point. Critics saw his great methodological innovation in "shifting bck and forth from romance to reality until they are interwoven." (Schorer 213) Themes: a man needs at least one good male friend. Following Wells (POLLY) it is possible to kick over the traces and run away successfully. Females are prima facie there to be "playmates." Over there is good. Beginning of HSL's peculiar NARRATIVE TONE: patronizing. Items used from HSL's recent past --working way to England on cattle boats --disappointing tramps in countryside --grubby life in boarding houses of lower Manhattan --poverty --feelings about loneliness, Bohemia, friendlessness (Schorer, 210). --Number of copies printed. Income for Lewis. --OUR MR. WRENN. Harper published 3,000 copies (Schorer, 215). (3) 1915 THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK: A COMEDY OF THE SERIOUSNESS OF LIFE. Well received. Generally thought an advance on OUR MR. WRENN. More than one source saw in THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK a promise of "the great American novel." He was now a serious realist novelist of American manners" (Schorer 225). But it did not sell well. 6,500 copies printed. Reward for more than a year's work was little. --Made into Movies. NONE. --Prizes. NONE. F. Methods of Sinclair Lewis: research writing =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Mary Killough on THE JOB 11/22/05 A. THE STORY ----summary by MARY [From: Nan Bauer Maglin "Women in Three Sinclair Lewis Novels" , from Sinclair lewis, Ed. Harold Bloom, 1987] While MS is about marriage and motherhood, The Job (1917) is about women workers. Ann Vickers(1933) depicts both a career women and the political woman in the suffrage movement. (p.103). All have the dilemma or work vs. marriage. Neither The job nor AV is as high a literary quality as MS, but all present acute historical insight into what life was like for women. The Job takes place from 1906-1915. Mass media at that time (Ladies Home Journal, etc.) conveyed the message that it was alright to work but the ultimate goal was marriage. Jobs should duplicate work in the home. Work should be undertaken out of necessity. Until her father dies, Una Golden, the central character in The Job lives the life of a typical midwestern, middle-class, turn of the century woman. She has always stayed home to help her mother, but when her father dies she must support her mother. She had two choices: teaching or office work- factory work would be beneath her social position. [pp. 3, 41-2] She goes to secretarial school and then goes from job to job, making very slow progress upward. [She meets various people along the way who both terrify her and inspire her, p. 72 (Wally Babson), 110 (Mr. Troy Wilkens, p. 181 Mamie Magen, p. 207 her future husband Eddie Schwirtz] [She characterizes her fellow office workers, the Olivetti girls- pa. 108- who end up sobbing, and later wonders if she will turn into women such as the older ones who are stuck in offices, pp. 233-34] It is difficult for working women to find a mate because there is a stigma attached to working. Una decided never to marry but then changes her mind because of the numbing office work. She makes a huge mistake by marrying a smooth-talking salesman, Mr. Schwirtz. [p. 244] She finally leaves him after 2 joyless years.[p. 301] [She describes the Zodiac Bldg. as a microcosm of offices all over, p. 285] By the end of the book Una finally becomes a succesful real estate sales person and manages five other women and becomes a partner in a hotel business. [Una's view of better hotel service, p.321] [In a final Deus ex machina in the last few pages, the first man she really had any interest in, Walter Babson, turns up again and it looks like they will make there future together, both with jobs, and hoping to have children. ======== Introduction to the Bison Book Edition by Maureen Honey, assoc. prof. of English at U Nebraska-Lincoln. The Job can be considered the first of a trilogy by Lewis about women's emancipation in the first two decades of the 20th C. Lewis himself divorced his first wife during this period and in 1928 married the journalist Dorothy Thompson, a "New Woman" figure he wrote about. The Job is a Horatio Alger type story in feminine terms. It exposes the darker side of American life and is a rebellion against Victorian prudery (similarities to E. Wharton, Henry James, Th. Dreiser and W.D. Howells). It is a realistic picture of how people really behaved. It exposes the exploitation of workers and the misery of ordinary people like his heroine. It does have an upbeat ending. It reflects some of the reformist thoughts before WWI. Much of this changed with WWI and the Depression. It is daring enough to mention alcoholism, venereal disease, divorce, adoption by a single women and women who drink and smoke. Still, Una remains a proper Victorian lady. It tackles anti-Semitism and supports union organizations. It spans the years 1905015 (with precise dates, salaries, etc. given as Una progresses- sometimes it seems more like a sociological study. ) The world is controlled by male chauvinists, yet women can transform themselves with much effort. Una is inspired by various women she meets along the way, Mamie Magen, a Jewish socialist, Esther Lawrence, a stenographer and feminist critic of the treatment of women and finally Beatrice Joline, who inspires her to sell real estate. It ends with the fantasy of being able to combine love, marriage, a job and children. ========= Lewis' style is matter of fact, highly descriptive- he captures authentic speech, sounds, smells, colors; often he gives long lists of things to be observed in an office or city; the characters are often described as a "type"; of which there could be thousands. A recurring theme seems to be escaping from a small town to savor NY City. ----interspersed QUOTATIONS p. 41, 45, 56, 73,110, 182, 207, 234, 239, 245, 285, 299 [from my original notes]; from second reading: p.3, 41-42, 46, 72, 110, 181, 196, 207, 233-4, 244, 285, 301, 317, 321. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 09/25/2005 work in progress |