Sinclair Lewis

■ The award of the Nobel Prize to Sinclair Lewis must have come as gruesome news to the pedagogues who have been laboring so shrilly of late to restore sweetness and light to the national letters. He represents everything that they fear and abominate—and yet, with the prize in his pocket, he also represents American literature to the world. The Swedes were not content to choose him above Henry Van Dyke, Owen Wister, Hamlin Garland and Robert Grant: they also had to rub it in. That is, they had to say that Babbitt was the book of his that chiefly charmed them—with Elmer Gantry a close second! Jahveh Himself added a little joke: he inspired the Stockholm brethren to announce this on the day after the ides of November, when sweetness and light got a dreadful licking from the voters. Altogether, it was a red-letter pair of days for the wicked.

H.L. MENCKEN