Mauve Moments with Orlando Plumbe

Sinclair Lewis

A revival for Sinlcair Lewis.  WSJ.com - Readback.

If George F. Babbitt were alive today, he would be shocked to see how much America has changed since his era. But he would also be pleased to see how much it's the same.

As a lark this winter, I read Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry and Dodsworth. Of the three, only Dodsworth seemed dated, and with a few small changes Arrowsmith and Gantry seemed as though they would probably feel contemporary.  I particulalrly recommend Elmer Gantry for those who find certain evangelicals trying at times.

What  I did not pick up when I read Main Street and Babbitt twenty five years ago in high school, is what a wry sense of humor Sinclair Lewis had, at least during the 1920’s. Young  readers are wrongly told to read his books as ponderous indictments of

America

in the 1920’s. But Lewis is far more forgiving of his characters'  foibles, and the books are far more fun than most have been lead to believe.

One Can Only Hope

Link: Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate.

Lost writings of Sophocles, Hesiod, and Euripides have been recovered in just the past few days and more is on the way. “Astounding”...

Can you imagine? i always wondered what happened to Antigone in the end.

Book Review--The Fine Art of Burning Bridges

As a John O'Hara enthusiast, I ignored the tepid reviews and gave Geoffrey Wolfe's, The Fine Art of Burning Bridges, A Life of John O'Hara a read. It neither succeeds as a straight up biography nor as a literary criticism.  Although Wolfe claims he has no desire to put O'Hara on the couch, this is exactly what he does and then jumps on the couch with him thus larding his book with incessant insights into Wolfe's own feelings about various subjects.  A good literary biography can help a reader understand and enjoy a reader's favorite fiction by helping fill out the readers view of the writer, explore biases and understand the writers time and place. Unfortunately, as with many literary biographies these days, Wolfe considers these tasks too modest and wants to resolve some greater  mystery of the writer's personality. The result is a book that is more  about projection of the biographers world view than interesting information about the subject author.  Skip this book and just read O'Hara instead.  His fiction offers both better depth psychology and better style than Wolfe can muster.

Why Read John O'Hara?

Rehabilitating John O’Hara’s reputation as an author may seem like a fool's errand. Although his often disagreeable personality and raucous personal habits may have bedeviled those who had to endure him during his lifetime, they do not diminish from his tremendous literary achievement. Following F. Scott Fitzgerald's chronicles of the jazz age and before John Cheever's distillation of post World War II sits O'Hara trying to capture in minute and faithful detail a generation raised in affluence and struggling through the Great Depression. A decade that most Americans just assume forget, life during the thirties is highly susceptible to thought cliché instead of careful assessment. But O'Hara examined those times without blinking. Read his early short novels such as Appointment in Samara or Butterfield Eight or his attempt at an American War and Peace set in the first half of the Twentieth Century, From the Terrace. The prose and plot snap ahead at a lively clip and the sociological detail is marvelous. O'Hara is disfavored, in part, because of his seemingly snobbish tendencies. But his inclination toward the snobbish in his personal life does not reflect the aims of his fiction and is a profound misreading of O'Hara. He was an outsider with his nose pressed up against the window. While this may make episodes of his personal life seem pathetic at points, his close in view and the sharp pain he felt quickened his powers of observation.