Sinclair Lewis - Annotated by Richard Lingeman (Paperback)

About the Book

Written at the height of his power in the 1920s, the three novels in this volume continue the rigorous unmasking of American middle-class life begun by Lewis in "Main Street" and "Babbit."

Book Synopsis

In this definitive biography of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis, Richard Lingeman presents an empathetic, absorbing, and balanced portrait of an eccentric alcoholic-workaholic whose novels and stories exploded shibboleths with a volatile mixture of caricature and realism. Drawing on newly uncovered correspondence, diaries, and criticism, Lingeman gives new life to this prairie Mercutio out of Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

Review Quotes

"Lingeman's Sinclair Lewis is a model of its kind: vivid, but never overdrawn, written in a lean, wry prose that stays grounded in the documentary evidence." Wall Street Journal

"Readable, sensitive to nuance. . . . A warm tribute to the quarrelsome, interesting iconoclast." New York Review of Books

"The most important reevaluation of Lewis in more than a generation." Los Angeles Times

About the Author

Richard Lingeman is the author of Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey and Small Town America: A Narrative History, 1620-the Present. A senior editor of The Nation, he lives in New York City.