February 7: On this day in 1885, Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre,
Minnesota. The argument which Lewis enjoyed with his hometown is a celebrated
one—not least in the hometown, where Lewis's status has evolved from cuss-word
to cultural attraction. With Lewis a
Nobel-winner, Sauk Centre and its most famous son had patched things up long
before his death in 1951, of course. Still, given that his Main Street mocks such boosterism, few could have predicted the
town's annual "Sinclair Lewis Days," or that the local high school
sports teams, upon which Lewis never dreamed of playing, would be cheered on as
the "MainStreeters."
Lewis could not wait to
get away from home, but he did not leave as Joyce left Dublin, or stay as far
away as Hemingway did from Oak Park, Illinois. One return visit is amusingly
described in With Love from Gracie, a
memoir by his first wife, Grace Hegger Lewis. She was a big-city girl who had
worked at Vogue, and her new husband
had forewarned her about Doctor Lewis of Sauk Centre; still, it was a shock:
The first night home Hal closed the door of the
rear bedroom where we were to sleep. Next morning the Doctor complained that by
doing so we had shut off the current of air needed on these warm spring nights.
"Golly, I'd forgotten about that. There used to be a big green book that
Dad used as a doorstop - and here it still is!" So we stuck "Bible
Readings for the Home Circle" in the door every night thereby sacrificing
our only chance at privacy....
Lewis and his wife ended their first visit to Sauk
Centre by driving out of town in a Model T Ford, heading back to New York via
California. Lewis designed a canvas and wooden pole contraption, turning the
car into a homemade camper for the prairie nights. The canvas was assembled
"on the sewing machine of a friendly shoemaker in full sight of Main
Street," giving an additional touch to those famous, first-page sentences
in the novel: "Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford
car might stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and
Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters...."
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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