After reading a book, it's often interesting to learn about
the author's life. Reading Main Street,
by Sinclair Lewis, I was thinking that Lewis was amazingly brilliant, so it was
a fitting surprise to learn he had won a Nobel Prize for his writing. And look
what I found today: Click
here to read Lewis' autobiographical message on accepting the Nobel
Oh, dear! The World Wide Web trapped me in the early 20th
century for a while, and it will take a bit of extricating before I can
continue with the summary of our meeting. I thought I'd quickly verify that
alcoholism killed Lewis, so I googled...and turned up a fascinating review of a
biography of Lewis. The review is from The New Yorker (magazine) in 2002 and was
beautifully written by none other than John Updike. The article caught me when
it said, "Lewis typed with his two forefingers, which as he aged became so
sensitive from hard use that he taped them. He produced the lesser novel The Prodigal Parents (1938) by writing
from five in the morning until seven at night for two months. He composed two
hundred and twenty-one thousand words of Main
Street in fourteen weeks..." Updike
compares 2 long biographies of Lewis and goes into some detail about Lewis'
apparently colorful personality and other aspects of his life. If you are
curious about Lewis the man, you will enjoy this article and maybe even the
biographies! Click here
to read Updike's review
At our meeting, Patty gave us some history about Sinclair
Lewis and then launched a question and answer discussion that covered many
salient aspects of the book. Patty summarized parts of the book before asking
questions about them, which helped us to navigate this long book for our
discussion. I will mention just a few insights from among 9 pages of notes that
I took.
Dennis noticed a theme in the book: inertia! This was
evident in Carol's ambitions and the results of those ambitions. Marla brought
in the idea that Carol's multitude of ideas for change reflected the character's
dissatisfaction with her life. Her efforts had little result, partly because of
her own immature way of approaching people. On a later topic, Carol's
relationship with Eric, Patty noted that Carol didn't understand that you can't
change people quickly. This applies also to Carol's interactions with the town's
leaders in trying to make changes. Lewis brought out the inertia of most of the
conservative leaders, using sometimes rather funny satire to show how they
dodged Carol's suggestions about changes. The mixture of excuses for staying with
the status quo included the reality of warring factions sharing limited funds -
a situation all too common in our world today.
As our conversation jumped around and back and forth a bit,
I will list here some of the thoughts we had about Kennicott. When Patty asked
about the episode when Carol tried to interest Kennicott in poetry, Jan said
that Kennicott idolized Carol and tried to please her. Marsha said he was a
father figure for Carol. Carla said Kennicott tried to be supportive but didn't
"get" Carol. This was where we talked about Eric, and Pam said that Eric was
the only one who really understood Carol. Janice said Kennicott seemed jealous
of Eric. Pam later suggested that Carol returned from Washington DC because she
realized that Kennicott was as good a husband as she was likely to find and
that their relationship was probably as good as it gets.
The end of the book was acceptable to us as readers, just as
it seemed to be acceptable to Carol. On Carol's return from Washington DC, upon
learning that Kennicott intended to continue respecting Carol's having a
separate room, Carla figured that Carol realized that her life on Main Street was
the best of her choices. Our Carol G. said that Kennicott meant home and
children to the Carol in the story. Carla said that in the end, Kennicott's role as the
practical part of the parental partnership was acceptable to Carol (or maybe
necessary?). Marla said that Kennicott would stay in control of his and Carol's
lives and wouldn't change much. At the end of the book, Pam, and most of us,
saw Carol as capitulating. Then Patty reminded us that there had been a hint in
the book that Carol's life as a Mom would include planning her children's
education, with all the grandiose hopes a mother can have for her children.
We then had a lively conversation about our experiences with
small towns. Some funny anecdotes were mentioned, but you had to be there to
hear those. A lot of us had grown up or lived in small towns. I wonder whether
our children's book clubs reading Main
Street when they are our ages will have many personal anecdotes about life
on Main Street.
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