Well, I think it was when I read "Main Street." And I come from a small town in Indiana, and so I -- it kind of -- it was a liberating experience because...

"Main Street" came out in 1920. It was a sensation. And it was a novel about a village called Gopher Prairie in the state of Minnesota.

I'm from Crawfordsville Indiana, which is a much larger town. But still, it had some of the aspects of a small town, the provincialism and the conformity.

He was born in 1885 and died in 1951.

And he was married twice, to -- once to a New York woman named Grace and the second time to a famous columnist named Dorothy Thompson.

He had two -- two boys, one by his first wife, died in World War II, and the second one became an actor, and he died young of a form of cancer.

He wrote 22 novels. He was very prolific.

He was an exceedingly successful writer. In the '20s, he was a best-seller, and even in his lowest period, in the '30s, he would sell 50,000 copies....

I would say he was a man with a fierce sense of injustice and a sense of -- of -- of what was wrong with America and a desire to change it, to reform...

Oh, he was -- he had no fixed address, you might say. That's exaggerating, but he -- he moved around a lot from -- from boyhood, and then New York for...

Well, that's in the southwest part of the state. It's in sort of the flat part of the state. It's wheat country, or used to be wheat country. I think...

He lived there really just his first 17 years, and then he -- he went away to prep school to prepare for college and -- at Oberlin Prep, and then he...

Well, he was a typical country doctor. He was a very meticulous man and a very punctual man that people said they could set their watches by every day...

His birth mother died when he was 6. I think that was a kind of a traumatic event in his life. And he didn't remember her very well, and -- but I think...

Well, it was a sensation. It was compared to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in the way it -- it provoked a nationwide controversy. It was -- it was a little slower...

Was Gopher Prairie Sauk Centre, his home town?

You say he was 35 in 1920, when this book was published?

And he wrote it right downtown here, near the Mayflower Hotel.

Why was he here?

... the character in the book... (CROSSTALK)

On the back of your book, Studs Terkel, the Chicagoan, has a note. He says, "As a sequel to his magisterial biography of Theodore Dreiser, Richard Lingeman...

When did Theodore Dreiser live and write?

There's a moment in your book where Dreiser and Lewis have a falling out. Over what?

But then at a literary dinner for a Russian writer, they came in and -- Lewis came in. He was a bit four sheets to the wind. And he -- he got up, and...

Yeah.

Yes.

Well, I'd say he was an alcoholic. He -- you know, it got very bad, where he was -- he would go on binges, wherever he would go, drinking for weeks...

That was about 10 years.

He was named Wells after H.G. Wells.

Yes. He was -- Wells -- H.G. Wells was one of the big influences on his early writing career. And he finally did meet him in the '20s, and they became...

And he married her in '29, and they divorced in '40 -- about 11 years.

Yes, they had Michael.

Well, no. He -- he did have trouble with drinking, and he -- it was sad because he felt it was his heredity. And he told his daughter that having two...

Right.

Yeah.

Well, it was -- he was one of Lewis' idols, and when Lewis first moved to Greenwich Village around 1910, he became a member of the Socialist Party,...

Well, let's see. He started in '04, I believe, in the -- he ran through -- the last time was '28.

Yeah. Yeah. And he -- I guess in 1912, he got about a million votes. And he was quite a powerful speaker and a power figure in American politics and...

Well, he -- you can -- there was some sense of revenge in it, perhaps, but I think it was a high-minded sense, in that "Main Street" was chosen by the...

Of Columbia.

Right. Yeah, who administer the Pulitzer Trust. And -- and they overturned it and awarded it to Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence." So Lewis felt...

Well, he was a regular contributor in the '20s, and he was a friend of the editor, Oswald Garrison Villard . And I think the politics of "The Nation"...

Well, my relationship is that I've worked there about 20 years, and -- and I was executive editor there. Now I'm a senior editor there. And so I've...

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. That...

No, I wrote a couple of others, one on World War II, the home front during World War II, and one called "Small Town America."

Well, I think it was -- again, it was.. you’re talking about when I first read that I -- I think it was actually when I was away at college, and going...

In Philadelphia.

Well, he went there -- Oberlin at that time was a very religious place, and it was -- they were trying to, you know, turn out missionaries. And he went...

And he would -- he -- when his father told him one of the local boys in Sauk Centre was taking up cigarettes and drinking whiskey, and he said, "Well,...

Well, that was written after "Main Street," in 1921. He had wanted -- it came from, basically, two ideas, I think, or his two obsessions. One was with...

And -- and so with Babbitt, he originally called Pumfrey and he decided that wasn't right. It was just too English and too effete. And he thought of...

Now, the -- Cincinnati plays a part in this, doesn't it?

"Main Street" in 1920, "Babbitt" in 1922. What was the political impact of "Babbitt"? Any?

On page 212, you have a couple of quotes here from Gracie to a friend, Stella Wood . And you quote the letters from Gracie to Stella Wood all through...

The reason I mention it, because I want to read a little bit what you write relating to what you just said about "Babbitt." "Gracie expressed Hal's...

... "who had raised the popular objection" -- quote -- this is what Gracie wrote -- "Hal is not a medicine man. He has no remedies to offer. Who would...

"Main Street" 1920, "Babbitt" 1922, based -- "Main Street" on Sauk Centre, Minnesota, called Gopher Prairie. The town of Zenith for "Babbitt" -- that's...

And then Martin Arrowsmith -- or "Arrowsmith," the book, was centered in what location?

And that's kind of where in the United States?

And that was 1925. And then in 1927, "Elmer Gantry." And that was located where?

And Elmer Gantry was what? What would he -- what'd he do?

Who is William -- the Reverend William -- is it Stidger?

You quote Stidger's daughter, Betty . Is she still alive?

Stidger's grandson?

Did you talk to him?

I just want to read what his -- Stidger's daughter, Betty, said about Sinclair Lewis.

"Betty later recalled the famous house guest" -- and Sinclair Lewis was a house guest at Stidger's home?

"He was very considerate, but not too conscientious," she writes. "He had the florist deliver huge baskets of flowers to his charming hostess, my mother,...

... "would just eat at the Athletic Club that night. He slept till noon, used innumerable bath towels, wiped his razor blade on Mother's linen face...

But Lewis was -- wanted a -- had a more radical criticism of the church, and so he -- he based the character on a lot of ministers, actually, and --...

Yes. That's -- he dropped out of Yale in his junior year, with a friend, a fellow poet and radical named Uptigraf . And Sinclair, with the money he...

Marcella Powers was Lewis' last love. She was -- when they met, she was 18 and he was 53, I believe. She was an actress, an aspiring actress, and apprentice...

Well, it -- she -- it lasted through about 1947, and then she married. She -- I think she was very fond of him, but she -- she said "I love Red, but...

And it seemed to be. He refers in his letter to "Junior," and -- "our little junior, which we could have had." But I can't find any other confirmation...

Yes.

Yeah, that was...

Very cruel portrait. Yeah, he had -- well, you know, he was tall and he was red-haired and -- but his complexion is -- he had skin problems. He had...

Yeah, that's what people said, yeah, who knew him, that he felt that.

I think -- he could be very charming and -- and entertaining and -- and interesting. You know, he would -- he was good on politics. When he was married...

And he died in '51 in Rome.

He's buried in Sauk Centre, next to his mother and father.

Oh, yeah. Several times, to visit.

I do. I haven't been there recently, but I've gone back for my high school reunions. And my parents are no longer alive, so I don't have as much reason...

Well, I haven't decided yet on a subject, but I hope -- some kind of biography, perhaps, though they take a long time. And I'm looking into my -- some...

Well, that started in 1993 and took about seven or eight years. It takes a long time for these biographies, but I was working at "The Nation" part-time...

Thank you. I enjoyed it.