It is “Murphy Brown” not “Herzog” that registers, if only for the span of a network season. Of course, much of this has to do with the irrelevance of the novel in an audio-visual age. In the half century since Sinclair Lewis (one wants to put quotes about his name, too) what writer has come up with a character or phrase like Babbitt or Elmer Gantry that stands for an easily recognized type? There is “Walter Mitty” and Heller’s “Catch-22” and that’s that. People still say, in quotes as it were, “It can’t happen here,” meaning fascism, which probably will hence, the ironic or minatory spin the phrase now gets. In the end, Lewis was not to be talked of at all, but his characters-as types-would soldier on in fact, more of his inventions have gone into the language than those of any other writer since Dickens. But the great ironist in the sky had other plans for him. “I expect to be the most talked-of writer,” Lewis boasted before he was. For the most part, that’s where they stay.” I’ve been reading the biographies.” Elsewhere, the Associated Press (July 18) tells us, “About forty copies of Lewis’s books are on the shelves of the town library. Although Sauk Centre holds an annual Sinclair Lewis Day, the guide to his home recently admitted, “I’ve never read Main Street…. The books are little read today, and he’s seldom discussed in his native land outside his home town, Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Sinclair Lewis seems to have dropped out of what remains of world literature. The first four references are part of the language the next two are known to many, while the last name has a certain Trivial Pursuit resonance yet how many know it is the name of the writer who wrote Elmer Gantry, played in the movie by Kirk Douglas-or was it Burt Lancaster?
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