Welcome to the newly redesigned Sinclair Lewis Society website. We hope that you will find the site easy to navigate. Please email Sally Parry at separry@ilstu.edu with comments and suggestions for improvement.
The Sinclair Lewis Society was created to encourage the study of, critical attention to, and general interest in the work, career, and legacy of Sinclair Lewis, the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. We seek to facilitate a broader discussion of his writing as a social critic and satirist among scholars, critics, teachers, students, and readers everywhere.
In a series of novels over three decades—Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth, It Can’t Happen Here, Kingsblood Royal among them—Lewis created and courted controversy and, more important, defined a nation for itself. And his definitions have lived on, long after his own death, in his representations of American life and American characters. As Mark Schorer concludes his mammoth biography of Lewis, “without his writing one cannot imagine modern American literature. That is because, without his writing, we can hardly imagine ourselves.”
Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter
The most recent issue of the Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter is now available. Spring 2024 (32.2) includes multiple reviews and responses to new plays based on Babbitt and Free Air, information about a restored version of the film of Arrowsmith, a tribute to Lewis by the U.S. Embassy in Rome after his death there in 1951, and a feature on poet Danny Klecko and his love for Lewis. If you’d like a sample copy, email Sally Parry at separry@ilstu.edu.
News and Events
It Can’t Happen Here Script Available
The Writers for Democratic Action have created an homage to It Can’t Happen Here, in connection with this year’s presidential election. There were nationwide readings on July 19, 2024, and will be again in late October, prior to the election. For the script (which can be performed by as few as half a dozen performers) and more information, go to https://www.writersfordemocraticaction.org/ichh
New Sinclair Lewis Film Available for Streaming
The Life and Loves of Sinclair Lewis, a terrific 80-minute dramatic historical presentation on Sinclair Lewis, is available for streaming at https://www.sinclairlewisfoundation.org/life-and-loves. The film celebrates Lewis’s life and the 100th anniversary of the publishing of his first bestseller Main Street. Also available at this site is a free, two-part streaming educational series with a downloadable discussion guide to introduce a new generation to Lewis and his writing. The film won the “Best Trailer” award for the Elmer Gantry clip at the International Stockholm Film and Television Festival.
Becoming Sinclair Lewis, a new biography
“How did a skinny, voluble, dreamy, acne-complexioned, paprika-haired, Yale-educated country doctor’s son named Harry Lewis from Sauk Centre, Minnesota, become the famous American author Sinclair Lewis?” asks Sinclair Lewis biographer Richard Lingeman in his Foreword to this fresh look at the early life and young adulthood of the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. To answer this question, Dave Simpkins, the newspaper publisher from Sauk Centre, spent ten years researching young Harry’s life, from his prairie village youth to the dawn of his world-wide literary ascendance with the publication of his breakthrough novel Main Street. The result is engaging and highly readable. Free Air Publishing, 256 pages, paperback.
Buy Becoming Sinclair Lewis by David Allen Simpkins, with Sally E. Parry and Jim Umhoefer on Amazon.