Sinclair Lewis' prescient novel re. U.S. politics

I remember hearing about Sinclair Lewis when I was quite young. I heard about his connection with Sauk Centre MN. What I heard was not entirely breathless praise. To the extent I heard pooh-poohing, it seemed vague and scattershot. Turns out, this was probably a reflection of Lewis' writing genius. He saw the world around him through his own distinctive lens. He never got on a bandwagon through expedience. He sought truth wherever it might lie.
Today, Americans do not like being told they elected a truly dangerous president. Yet can we really deny the foundation of such a thought? Of course we can't, nobody can. We have fallen for the human tendency of finding appeal in a blowhard populist who seems to just want to blow up convention. Remind you of a Sinclair Lewis book? The parallels ought to scream at you. It was 1935 with the Great Depression raging when Lewis put out "It Can't Happen Here."
Of course it can happen here - that's the whole point. While Germany was careening toward its fascist disaster, we had to wonder if similar potential existed within the American psyche. It's something we don't want to be told. A tried and true writer will penetrate the conventional notions and reveal the truth about our nature, as if peeling a banana. Lewis did this with his classic dystopian novel "It Can't Happen Here."
The book has found quite renewed popularity as reflected on Amazon.com. The Trump-like character in the book is Berzelius Windrip. Lewis wrote the book with the ominous backdrop of Hitler's rise to power in Europe. Fears grew that a like phenomenon could happen in the U.S., with the catalyst personality perhaps being Huey Long (the Louisiana senator) or Charles Coughlin (a radio priest).
We have always considered "Main Street" to be Lewis' signature work. Given what all is happening in America now, we could see "Main Street" displaced by "It Can't Happen Here." Within a week of the 2016 election, "It Can't Happen Here" was sold out on Amazon.com. Is there any doubt that Lewis should be totally lionized within literature, when you consider the timelessness and staying power of his work?
"It Can't Happen Here" is surely a dark story. It's one that many Americans of today would find inconvenient or offensive, given its suggested parallels. I say the book by itself should put Lewis in the pantheon of greatest authors.
I read "Main Street" in high school but I don't remember much about it. It would be good to re-read it. I heard Chris Matthews of MSNBC use the term "Babbitry" one day - I assume this is derived from Lewis' "Babbitt" novel. I'm not sure of the precise meaning. Google would help me within seconds of course. For pundits to today use the word "Babbitry" is another testament to Lewis' staying power.
I remember hearing that Lewis was physically unattractive. A perfect personal attack toward someone who you don't like for other reasons. We don't judge people by "unattractiveness" anymore. And besides, I've seen photos of Lewis and consider him to be quite ordinary looking. He's not obese.
Lewis was certainly not a glad-hander with the influential people and institutions around him. He could be quite the deconstructionist or cynic. Lewis delivered his Nobel Lecture in December of 1930, titled "the American Fear of Literature." He was critical of American letters, asserting that readers and even writers tended to be "afraid of literature which is not a glorification of everything American."
Lewis was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. You can see how his general attitudes, not averse at all to skepticism, might engender some resentment. To where we had to criticize his physical appearance? Such is human nature.
The Sauk Centre community of today has appeared to sucker for some of the less-than-flattering views of the author. We read that Sauk Centre has lost some of its excitement of being associated with the author. Perhaps a majority of the town voted for Donald Trump. Maybe that's it. Ignorance is bliss, eh?
I remember hearing when I was young that Lewis suggested kind of a backward air for places like Sauk Centre. I'm sure there were daunting challenges for living in small town America in the 1920s. But was Lewis seeking to diss such places? Or, were readers already disposed to thinking this was Lewis' intent, reflecting kind of a small town or "middle America" defensiveness which was once quite common.
I heard that Lewis would approve of Sauk Centre and like places today. But did he ever really seek to diminish that environment? If there was any doubt about his true attitudes, this should answer the question: Lewis had his ashes buried in Sauk Centre.
I wish to emphasize here that the old divide between "backwater America" and the metropolitan centers has been eliminated by our strides in tech and communications. Remember the "Trautman" character in "First Blood" talking about "Jerkwater USA" in that barroom chat with the sheriff? The movie scene is dated in two ways. We don't think about so-called "Jerkwater America" anymore, and people don't just sit around bars ordering alcohol-laced drinks from scantily-clad "barmaids." DWIs have taken care of that. (The sheriff ordered "wild turkey," remember?)
Is the U.S. careening toward the kind of crisis as portrayed in "It Can't Happen Here," a crisis in which so many people wondered "Why didn't we try to do more to stop this?" Don't you find yourself asking that question more and more now?
Let's laud Sinclair Lewis as one of the shining lights of literature all-time, whether the community of Sauk Centre agrees with this or not. Maybe Sauk Centre really is a backwater place, not the Sauk Centre of the 1920s but the Sauk Centre of today. Sauk Centre was a prime rival of the Morris Tigers when I was in high school. I never did like that town.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com