Bøger af Sinclair Lewis

Elmer Gantry is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 that presents aspects of the religious activity of America in fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s public toward it. The novel's protagonist, the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, is initially attracted by booze and easy money (though he eventually renounces tobacco and alcohol) and chasing women. After various forays into evangelism, he becomes a successful Methodist minister despite his hypocrisy and serial sexual indiscretions.Elmer Gantry was first published in the United States by Harcourt Trade Publishers in March 1927, dedicated by Lewis to the American journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken. The novel tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry. After college, he attends a Baptist seminary and is ordained as a Baptist minister. While managing to cover up certain sexual indiscretions, he is thrown out of the seminary before completing his BD because he is too drunk to turn up at a church where he is supposed to preach. After several years as a travelling salesman of farm equipment, he becomes manager for Sharon Falconer, an itinerant evangelist. Gantry becomes her lover, but loses both her and his position when she is killed in a fire at her new tabernacle. After this catastrophe, he briefly acts as a "New Thought" evangelist, and eventually becomes a Methodist minister. He marries well and eventually obtains a large congregation in Lewis's fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. During his career, Gantry contributes to the downfall, physical injury, and even death of key people around him, including a sincere minister, Frank Shallard, who is plagued by doubt. Especially ironic is the way he champions love, an emotion he seems incapable of, in his sermons, preaches against ambition, when he himself is so patently ambitious, and organizes crusades against (mainly sexual) immorality, when he has difficulty resisting sexual temptation himself. On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the United States. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. Evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis "Satan's cohort".However, the book was a commercial success. It was the best-selling work of fiction in America for the year 1927, according to Publishers Weekly.Mark Schorer, then of the University of California, Berkeley, notes: "The forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in Elmer Gantry are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality." Schorer also says that, while researching the book, Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that: "He took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community." The result is a novel that satirically represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s toward it.Shortly after the publication of Elmer Gantry, H. G. Wells published a widely syndicated newspaper article called "The New American People", in which he largely based his observations of American culture on Lewis' novels.Elmer Gantry appears as a minor character in two later, lesser-known Lewis novels: The Man Who Knew Coolidge and Gideon Planish. George Babbitt, the namesake of one of Lewis' best-known novels, appears in Elmer Gantry very briefly during an encounter at the Zenith Athletic Club. (wikipedia.org)

The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life is a 1915 novel by Sinclair Lewis.The story follows the life of Carl Ericson as he grows up and matures. He has to face the choice of either going to his town college, to a private school with a childhood friend, or live in the wilderness with his older friend, who had a cottage in the middle of the forest. (wikipedia.org)About the author:Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 - January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." He is best known for his novels Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).His works are known for their critical views of American capitalism and materialism in the interwar period. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds." Compared to his contemporaries, Lewis's reputation suffered a precipitous decline among literary scholars throughout the 20th century. Despite his enormous popularity during the 1920s, by the 21st century most of his works had been eclipsed in prominence by other writers with less commercial success during the same time period, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.Since the 2010s there has been renewed interest in Lewis's work, in particular his 1935 dystopian satire It Can't Happen Here. In the aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election, It Can't Happen Here surged to the top of Amazon's list of best-selling books. Scholars have found eerie parallels in his novels to the COVID-19 crisis, and to the rise of Donald Trump.He has been honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a postage stamp in the Great Americans series. (wikipedia.org)

Sinclair Lewis' satirical book Babbitt, published in 1922, is about American culture and society and criticizes the superficiality of middle-class life and the temptation to fit in. Babbitt's disagreement had a big impact on the decision to give Lewis the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930. The book has been adapted into two motion pictures: a silent version in 1924 and a talkie version in 1934. Babbitt's life is chronicled in the first seven chapters over the course of a single day. Babbitt coos over his ten-year-old daughter Tinka during breakfast, tries to talk his 22-year-old daughter Verona out of her recent socialist tendencies and exhorts his 17-year-old son Ted to work more in school. He dictates letters while at work and has conversations with his staff on real estate advertising. Babbitt hurries home and abandons all disobedience when his wife develops acute appendicitis. They reestablish their intimacy during her prolonged recovery, and Babbitt returns to his emotionless conformity. In the climactic scene, Babbitt learns that his son Ted secretly wed Eunice, his neighbor's daughter. Though he doesn't agree, he declares that he is in favor of the union and commends Ted for leading an independent life.

Sinclair Lewis published his book Ann Vickers in 1933. The story follows Ann Vickers, the protagonist, from her school days as a tomboy in the American Midwest in the late nineteenth century, through college, and into her forties. It details her early 20th-century postgraduate suffragist period. She is incarcerated because she is a suffragist, and her experiences there inspire her interest in social work and jail reform. She had her first sexual encounter while working as a social worker in a settlement home during the First World War, gets pregnant, and then has an abortion. She marries a dull man years later after becoming successful in operating a cutting-edge jail for women, more out of loneliness than love.She falls in love with a controversial judge while stuck in a somewhat loveless marriage. She has a son by the judge, defying both middle-class tradition and that of her liberal social circle in New York.

Universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church-a saver of souls who lives a life of duplicity, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence-is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no trace of itself. Elmer Gantry has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since the works of Voltaire.

First published in English in 1927, "Elmer Gantry" is Sinclair Lewis' novel which satirizes the Christian fundamentalist and evangelistic movements of the early part of the 20th century. From the 17th century onward there have been a number of efforts to reassert the influence of Christianity on social, cultural, and political life. In America, Christian Revivalism, as it is often referred to, has come in four waves, or "Great Awakenings" starting with the movement of Jonathan Edwards in the 1730s and 1740s and continuing through to the present day. With these attempts to revive the spirit of Christianity in American life have often come charlatans who seek to profit through evangelism. "Elmer Gantry" is a story of just such a charlatan. At the outset of the novel, we find a young, alcoholic, womanizing college student who abandons his ambition for a legal career to pursue a place in the ministry. After some initial failures, Gantry eventually rises to a prominent position in the Methodist church. Lewis's novel brilliantly juxtaposes the hypocritically moralizing sermons of Gantry with the character's actions, which cause the ruin of many around him. A commercial success that was viewed scornfully by the community it satirized, "Elmer Gantry" remains a captivating portrait of early 20th century America. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

‘Main Street’ is the novel accredited with launching Sinclair's trailblazing career. Unlike his contemporaries Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Sinclair chooses to focus on middle America, the rural Midwest, rather than the upper crusts of New York and Paris.We follow a young, idealistic woman as she desperately tries to implement her grand plans to change her small town for the better. The novel teems with life, offering a view in to the very soul of America, the death of its healthy curiosity, and its desire to see the bigger picture.It is an entertaining and haunting novel that is built upon characters with incredible depth. There are no over-arching protagonists; they are all painfully, beautifully human. If you loved James Dean's ‘Rebel without a Cause’, you will love this classic.Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was an American author and playwright. A Yale graduate, Lewis was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. He became renowned for his biting critiques and satire of American capitalism and materialism in the inter-war years.Additionally, he is remembered for his strong characterisations of modern working women in his novels. His most notable works include ´The Trail of the Hawk´, ´Main Street´, ´Free Air´, and ´Babbitt´.

Elmer Gantry (1927) is a satirical indictment of fundamentalist and evangelistic religion that caused a great scandal when it was first published. It was written by Nobel Prize winning American author and playwright Henry Sinclair Lewis.Regarded as a landmark in American literature, ‘Elmer Gantry’ is a piercing portrait of a smooth-talking evangelist who rises to power within his church. But Elmer Gantry is a hypocrite and a philanderer, and his self-indulgent ways threaten to destroy everything.The book was adapted into a 1960 film starring Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons.Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885 – 1951) was an American writer, playwright and social critic, who revolutionised writing in the U.S. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.Lewis is best known for his novels Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935). Several of his works have been adapted for cinema, most famously the film ‘Elmer Gantry’ (1960) starring Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons.Lewis’s novels are known for their critical views of American capitalism and materialism and their strong characterizations of modern working women.

The story is set in the small town of Gopher Prairie, a fictionalised version of Lewis' hometown. It relates the life and struggles of Carol Kennicott as she comes into conflict with the small-town mentality of the residents of Gopher Prairie.

Young college graduate Carol Kennicott moves from a big city to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, the small town from which her new husband hails. Imbued with ideals of urban improvement, she dreams of redesigning her adopted village, but her efforts are thwarted by the narrow-mindedness, pettiness and conventionality of the locals, who conspire against her and deride all her endeavours.An enormous commercial and critical success on its first publication in 1920, Main Street - regarded by many as Sinclair Lewis's best novel - delivers a scathing satire on the American dream, and is invaluable as a document of pre-Prohibition Middle America.

Many would suggest that it certainly could happen 'here, ' which is precisely the point that Sinclair Lewis was making when he wrote this book in 1935.

Published during the heyday of fascism in Europe, It Can't Happen Here is a chilling cautionary tale by one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, which is still startlingly relevant almost a century later.

Using both satire and tragedy to explore medical and scientific themes. Lewis offers sharp criticism and wicked humor in discussing drugs, public health, and immunology, and more.