As others read us: American fiction abroad; Sinclair Lewis, part one

This is the third of a series of programs untitled as others read us American fiction abroad produced and recorded by the Literary Society of the University of Massachusetts under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters on this the Third Programme in the series. The work of Sinclair Lewis will be discussed by Mr Perry Miller and Mr. Renato. Mr. Miller born in Chicago in 1905 is professor of American literature at Harvard and has been lecturer in American Studies at the University of Leiden. He's the author of such books as the New England mind. Jonathan Edwards and a forthcoming The Raven and the Whale and of numerous articles on American literature including the work of Sinclair Lewis. Mr. Poggioli born in Florence in 1007 is professor of Slavic and comparative literature at Harvard coming to this country in 1938 he had previously taught at the

universities of Florence Buno and Warsaw. He's written on modern Russian poetry and on modern European literature he's foreign editor of inventory O and international quarterly published in Milan. Moderator for this program is Mr. Leeson Varley of the University of Massachusetts English department. Mr Varley Sinclair Lewis was born February 7 1885 at Sauk son and a soldier died in January 10 1951 in Rome. The force of its European impact was shown when in 1930 Lois's author of Babel became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. His 22 novels realistic and satirical awakened America to self-scrutiny and assured Europeans that Americans were free to criticize themselves. In 1920 appeared the novel which first brought us international attention. This was Main Street the story of Carol Kennicott a criticism of the American small town collar

kind of guy sensitive an educated city girl has married a middle western doctor moved to Gopher Prairie Minnesota. It is through her eyes that we see the surface ugliness and universal similarity which is the physical expression of a philosophy of dull safety. Always there is the same number the same railroad station the same food corrosion the same creamery the same box like houses and two story shops even vie to show one who shares Carol's wish to raise Gopher Prairie from its level. Mediocrity cannot see the town as Carol must see it Carol speaks. Well there we are then VIDA. The remedy is there any criticism perhaps for the beginning of the beginning. Oh there's nothing that attacks the tribal god mediocrity that doesn't help a little and probably there's nothing that helps very much. Perhaps some day the farmers will build in on their market towns. But I'm afraid I haven't any reform program. Not anymore. The trouble is

spiritual and no league or party can enact a preference for gardens rather than dumping grounds. There's my confession. Well in other words all you want is perfection. Yes why not. How do you hate this place. How can you expect to do anything with it if you haven't any sympathy. But I have and affection or else I wouldn't fume so I'm going to go for Perry isn't just an eruption on the prairie as I thought at first but as large as New York in New York I would know more than 40 or 50 people and I know that many here. Go on say what you're thinking. We'll my dear if I did take all your notion seriously it would be pretty discouraging. Imagine how a person would feel after working hard for years and helping to build up a nice town to have you areally flit in and simply say wrong. I think that's fair. Why not. It must be just as discouraging for the Gopher Prairie art to see Venice and make comparison it would not.

I imagine gondolas are kind of nice to ride in but we've got better bathrooms. But my dear you're not the only person in this town who's done some thinking for herself although pardon my rudeness I'm afraid you think so. I admit we lack some things. Maybe our theatre isn't as good as shows in Paris. All right. I don't want to see any foreign culture suddenly forced on us whether it's street planning or table manners or crazy communistic ideas. Yes yes I know but I'd still want startling. Exotic things life is comfortable I'm clean enough here already and so secure what it needs is to be less secure more eager. The civic improvements which I'd like to think the tops just advocate are Strydenburg plays and classic dancers and I can see them so clearly. I think black bearded cynical Frenchman who would sit about and great can sing opera and tell bawdy stories and laugh at our proprieties and quote Rabelais and and not be ashamed to kiss my

hand but I'm not so sure about the rest of it. But I guess that's what you and all the other discontented young women really want some stranger kissing your hand. Oh my dear don't take that too seriously I just may end there or you just meant it. Go on be good for my soul. It's not funny. Here we are. Me trying to be good for Governor Perry so I'm Gopher Prairie trying to be good for mine. What are my other sins. There's plenty of them. Possibly someday we shall have your fat cynical Frenchman horrible sneering tobacco stained object ruining his brains and his digestion with vile liquor. But now thank Heaven for a while we'll manage to keep busy with our lawns and pavements. You see these things really are coming. The Fennec top sis is getting somewhere. And you to my great disappointment are doing less not more than the people you left that Sam Clark on the school board is working for better school ventilation

Elliston body elocution you always think so absurd has persuaded the railroad to share the expense of a parking space at the station to do away with that vacant lot. Sneer so easily. I'm sorry but I do think there's something essentially cheap in your attitude especially about religion. If you must know you are not a sound reformer at all you're an impossible ist and you give up too easily. You gave up on the new City Hall the anti fly campaign Club papers the library board the dramatic association just because we didn't graduate into Ibsen the very first thing you want perfection all at once. Do you know what the finest thing you've done is aside from bringing Hugh into the world. It was the help you gave Dr. Will during baby welfare week. You didn't demand that each baby be a philosopher an artist before you weighed him as you do with the rest of us. And now I'm afraid perhaps I'll hurt you. We're going to have a new school

building in this town in just a few years and we'll have it without one bit of help or interest from you. PROFESSOR MARK KNIGHT and some others have been digging away at the moneyed men for years. We didn't call on you because you would never stand the pound pound pounding year after year without one bit of encouragement. And we've won. I've got the promise of everybody who counts that just as soon as war conditions permit they'll vote the bombs for the school halls and we'll have a wonderful building lovely brown brick with big windows and agricultural and manual training departments. When we get it that'll be my answer to all your theories. I'm glad and I'm ashamed I haven't had any part in getting it. But please don't think I'm unsympathetic if I ask one question. Will the teachers in the hygenic new building go on informing the children that Persia is a yellow spot on the map and and Caesar the title of a book of grammatical puzzles. I don't care I won't endure it. You lie so you will not Bessie. You

tell me I ought to be satisfied with Hugh and a good home and planting service stations and a station garden. Do you think you can make me believe that a display of potatoes at the farmer's products is enough beauty and strangeness. Oh I am all right. When I die the world will be annihilated as far as I'm concerned. Oh I am oh I am not content to leave the sea in the ivory towers to others. I want them for me. Mr. Miller what would you say would be the immediate reaction in this country to the criticism implicit in the Oh well of course in the 1920s success of the link was astonishing it was stupendous and letters from lawyers to his publisher Harcourt working saying that Lewis was working up to two to shock and to make a surprise and the article rather dubious what they were going to get it but he did get it. This is Louis telling me about how they used to go down to the warehouse and see the great crates being packed up and shipped away and the lawyers would exult in of course it was a tremendous success at

first on the shock basis. Well I think there are other reasons for our talking about it but I'd like to ask Mr. project only when they're in 1920 it had anything like a similar effect in Europe. I don't think that we can speak often immediately action on broad concept Nancy's book because if I'm not mistaken Bob it was published and costly to be far means that your betters here you know they have first should be in France I don't know too much about the other countries and therefore of course the Yaksha don't want me to stand and depend on you because it sounds just right. What was the thought there that this was a representative of a small town or did they not know very well I'm sure it was if you know that kind if it is not dollars that the unit presentation office made a compound especially the Midwest that made the greedy play shown in the US is very difficult for Europeans to

understand that we live. I was going to work different reactions in different quarters of the report the German reaction I live by as I discover it to Main Street was probably much more comprehensive than the French and very likely the only times they had all this tradition of a small town or rural novel I might cons and there seemed to be a kind of piece of that. And I write my experience and then in Europe in the Jura Germany Holland of the character of Carol rather tragic and poignant character that comes out in this election that we just heard was better appreciated. That was in America I would say. I'm sure when I spotted the other European countries concern I feel that it is quite probable that your mom either understood the Norman this situation exactly because perhaps and I literally found something to combine with a certain kind of general model of national. We could

be described a similar kind of thing that fascinates me about it. The little experience I have had of seeing European reactions to Lewis. Whether or not they got the ambiguity once after maybe if they read it even if they read it after Babbitt captured sort of the Mbugua Willy Lewis's attitude toward the small town I would say that in America after the first success which was one of shock it took American readers a long time to understand that this wasn't just an angry and satirical attack on the small town that there was as in the character of Friday here in this selection we just heard it was saying something for it as well as pointing out its ugliness. So a good point I'm sure at the end nature you know that these phones not us. Yes yes. Statement like you know black and white all black and white matter where intelligent critics who understood and there's a model for the head

here. Your interest statement she's at a place where we'd like to hear that which are our lords in 1930. And which is a kind of summing up 1930 last year he got the Nobel Prize. Exact Was this because of the Nobel Prize he was returning immediately after not guys but he was more of a general statement about American intellectual being on that way than about because I believe far that seems like it will cost me you know statement I bought one of them. American life is simple and always has been misunderstood. It's well it's you know many through your station or seen in heem the satirical parts at least often it kind of go and capitalistic. One must power we're very insistent Babbit Arrowsmith and Elmer Gantry are not very meaningful. It's comical to us or the

busiest man on the scientist of the Christian faith deeply impressed our imagination and saw it. And Maher been three presentations of a society searching after itself and finding its own B. Thankfully I stressed out what that is really very fast I used to enjoy it and I cannot help feeling from the little I know Louis in the last year of his life but he must have been his heart must have been warmed by that kind of recognition. I suppose one of the many tragedies of this as I see him ultimately tragic figure was that so few people in America have that much perception. I want to address the question that interests me and we do not consider the understanding in Germany might be because through the immigration histories there are more ties between Middle Eastern Germans of Europe than there were between Midwestern Americans I mean the south of Europe.

Well that may be an element in it though my impression is that certainly by the time this was well enough recognized to win the Nobel Prize that in Sweden and Germany Andi and Holland mainstreet was recognized and the great tradition of 19th century novels as the script critical as it were Jolie quote that this was recognized as the study of a civilization was a little embarrassed recognizing himself as that although I think that was really very much his intention all along and I think it is interesting that he was really appreciated from this point of view probably earlier and more comprehensively in Europe than in America. For the general opinion in Europe still be that of a typical American but it was them to own as Sinclair Lewis says. Very well I don't know how much what he's done Hollywood has contributed in Farsi and that helps developing a lot of laughs you laugh lady.

But I was very much impressed by something that Mr. Miller just said concerning his great success or understand you know seems that all you see and get money got bad as but just begun. Yes all right I'll tell you and I have the feeling and I've been reading again study for a feast program 14 discussion and my feeling is that our situation which could be described in a certain sense. In many of its own girls who want of course to bring me ice on the scene which Yes course again Well no I do not doubt at least all the Louis the younger Louis coming of age in the early years of the century already obsession with fascination that was the thing to do it was very you know the name of oops and was just. Yes well today in the past century or from mainstream it is interesting to see in Main Street the author's own Yaz care or excite as the modern and dangerous one and she cites Ibsen along with merely questions that are strange bedfellows.

Very very. I suppose then that it's not Main Street that we turn to but rather to an opinion about it that the sun has the European attention I think we can in a way. Summon the voice of Bob it up out of the past and recall perhaps a time that we don't remember but can reconstruct. In rising to address you later on. Speech carefully talk to my vest pocket. It strikes me that each year it is a new one occasion when friends and for good together lay down the battleaxe and let the waves of good fellowship. What are some of the flowery slopes of Emily. It behooves us standing together I have a wide and shoulder to shoulder as fellow citizens of the best city in the world to consider where we are both as regards ourselves and the common weal. It is true that there are by the last census almost a score of larger cities in the United States. Gentleman it's evident to anyone with a head for a fact such zenith as the

finest example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere. Our ideal citizen. I picture him first and foremost as being busier than of Bergdahl but wasting a lot of good time and daydreaming or going to society teas or thinking about things that are none of his business but put in those zip into some store or perforation or are at night he lights up a good cigar climbs into the little boss shoots out home he goes happily to bed. His conscience clear having contributed his mite to the prosperity of the city and to his own banking and politics and religion this same citizen as a candy ass man on earth and in the yards he invariably has a measurable taste which makes him pick of the best every time and no country in the world will you find so many reproductions of the old masters as and needs United States. No country has anything like our number for the grass with not only dance records in common but

also the best operas such as Bertie rendered by the world's highest paid singers. In other countries art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics feeding on booze and spec but in America the successful writer our picture painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman. I never want I'm only too glad of the man who shows both purpose and power handling as literary wares as a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year. Mingle with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality and a show as big a house in a swallower car as any captain of industry. Finally But most important our standardized citizen even if he is a bachelor is a lover of the little one was a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization. First last and all it's on and the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed nations are

your. I have never yet toward your. As a matter of fact I don't know that I care to an awful lot. But the way I figure it out I must be a good many of our own sort of folks abroad at the same time. One thing that distinguishes us from our good brothers the hustlers over there is that they're willing to take a lot off the snobs and journalists and politicians while the modern American business man knows how to talk right up for him self knows how to make it good and plenty clear that he intends to run the works sometime I hope that folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of mothy mildewed out a day old European dogs and give proper credit to the famous Xena's spear. But please find a determination to win success that's made all the little zip city celebrated in every land and climb wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are known. Believe me the world is falling to longer these worn out companies that aren't producing anything but blacks

and scenery and blues that haven't got one bathroom 400 people. I believe however in keeping the best of lives I remind you that we have one overcard for every five and seven persons in this city when we give our Rock River practical indication of the kind of progress I'm braininess which is synonymous with the names in the way of the righteous. It is not all roses. Before I call them I must call your attention to a problem we have to face this coming year. The worst menace to some government is a lot of college work under cover along here Geoffrey who call themselves liberals and radicals are nonpartizan and intelligentsia. And God knows how many other trade names. Irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst of this whole gang. I'm ashamed to say that several of them are on the faculty of our great state university. These processor this makes to be scotched in all our milk and water a

real American businessman who is generous to a fault. One thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and journalists we're going to pay them our good money they're going to help us by selling efficiency and well-being of our national prosperity when it comes to these black my fault finding pessimistic cynical university teachers. Let me tell you that during this golden coming year it's just as much our duty to bring influence to have those causes fire as it is to some of the real estate we can not until it is done well our sons and daughters see that ideal of American manhood and culture you know a lot of cranks around join the rag about their rights and wrongs. But I've gone for a successful Don't just a regular guy who belongs to some church with Papen piety toward the loans to the boosters of the Rotarians or any one of the score organizations.

Good job only kidding laughing swanning upstanding Lenahan royal good fellas who plays hard and works hard. Whose answer to his critics as a square toll of Rogers and smart alecs to respect that he man and got out en route for of all Sammy all of us I. Well Mr. Miller under indictment my god I don't know that I do anything to have. It's really hard to hear it again without that without laughing. But it's a good example I think of the curious combination of sheer slapstick comedy or Dickensian caricature as it's in Louis along with the intensely serious moral purpose. And as again I think in America when it came out following main street the year after Wasn't it or two years after that it was again successful as a shock and it's taken us a long time to appreciate the barriers. It's really a very complex book. You already mentioned in many places it came out before Main Street and

you think that that means that Babbitt really was the focal work for Europeans understanding of lawyers. I would say so doctors have to point to even a phonetic more simply of phonetic literature. The reaction was up to a point of acceptance because. But at the same time said it was the I mean I know why out of the sincerity honesty which we can I mean it kind of like could be said he saw me and then the most to become famous and the use of it. Let is the businessman Oh you just missed my regards your most Europeans think that America have a business man as well in the South didn't like having one. That's more or less the general opinion. And if I hadn't been trying to all the fighting but I feel that history more yeah I mean

you know my medical literature only occurred very quickly after the book came out in this country. Babbitt became a stock were I mean you were referred to somebody as Babbitt you didn't have to explain what you meant any more than if you called him a jerk or something on that site it was that because that's been true in Europe I was nice all the proverbial at least it can be the name of a tie in and he looked at that publication just knocking the common language of common speech. I found in my experience in Europe that Babbitt do as you say is perfectly true and that it was widely read now and that there was an appreciation of a lot of old testament denunciation of the American empire here even in the comic parts of the book I think I'm a total mystery which Oliver Lewis came to lecture for me at the University of Leiden in 1950 and in forty nine it was a new way to Italy for his last trip and you write that all towns are now treated him as a great

master was going to the University of the townsmen this embarrassed Loyce very much and he electrified them by saying that it not out of hatred for him but out of love. Reading about the character. Would any rate appreciated the book as a denunciation of the materialism of the American businessman were completely nonplussed when he said that. But do you think therefore that mainstreet was written out of logrolling. Well I think there's a lot of love in it. I mean at this point I really love that small town life but then he would be exacerbated an infuriated by what he's thought was the stupid crassness and poverty and he has this curious hunger for your A peasant must be appreciated you know he's always bringing in the standards of Florence Rome. President measuring Gopher Prairie by Lemmy the answers I've got is rather proudly. Very well that of course may have to eat them all the same and I make many of either

kind of mixed emotions. The problem of the treatment of you are all in the same plant always not really deserved to be in this cast because it has its own importance. But really I believe there will be those with not very much interest here that there was an immense curiosity for a medic. But what is good and perhaps also what is man. And it only makes one. Even while accepting any man thought Bobby and Bobby Spitzer was if you let the complex mechanic. Perhaps. Automatic life had its own child and sanity. Yes well that's interesting that it doesn't come out all together from the European eye as a picture of barbarism as a model for not even here and I think it's very important statement

by my bit I am not going to quote it because he's wrong but he knew this is what we say about it. What do you say really moving you that none of these do you have any say shown that you never know you might be maybe the Pope. Which of course means that Bobby is not. But despite everything. Says I'm between society between your Teano way of life you know on the other hand the acceptance and your insistence he loved it because it is a point of view not when life challenges him. Yes perhaps you Sunnybrook to accept the challenge but wonder why you looks like something is almost about to be involved. Well then yes I'm goofy isn't himself capable of rebirth. He finally has the courage to stand by the sun when the sun breaks away and oh

life. Well I think that is a very interesting point must really because it's a difficult matter to explain. Actually this is an old tradition of American writing games on a more Cooper would go in the thirties to Europe and lecture Europeans on their vices and pause and come back to America in the dangerous hold popularity in America by lecturing the Americans on there already.