Arrowsmith (1926)

This is the story of Martin Arrowsmith, who seems ordinary enough but is, in fact, that rare breed of man who thinks for himself and pursues his goals without regard for the people who want him to give up.

You could say the same about Sinclair Lewis, the author of Arrowsmith.  Nothing is holy: he tears apart countless traditions and habits that we take for granted.  With just a sentence or two he shows us the hypocrisy, inanity or even the evil in our many institutions and ways of life.

In Arrowsmith, Lewis is focused on the medical profession and science as a profession during the early 1900’s.  But much of the book feels applicable even now.  We see the flaws in a medical school that churns out doctors trained to treat illnesses without thinking about underlying causes and keyed to avoid prevention because it will take away business.  We see, as in his other books, the backwardness and suffocation of a small town for a free thinker.  We see how a scientist is compromised by working for a company that's only out to make money.  And we see that science can’t be run by committee and isn’t at the whim of “the good of society.”  Lewis shows us that science may be the most individualistic pursuit there is, and men who are willing to give it everything they have are the true heroes.

The Age of Innocence (1921)

This is a story about love and duty, about the choices we make and the way we let others make choices for us, about the life we have and the life we could have, if only we’d reach out and take it.  It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and well worth a read.

Newland Archer is a young man in the prime of his life.  He’s a member of the upper echelon of New York society and he’s about to be married to May, the most beautiful and sought-after girl of the season.  On the same night that their betrothal is announced, he meets her cousin, Ellen Olenska.  And so it begins.

The Archers and all the other families in New York society live by strict codes.  Nothing is said outright, but they all understand each other: everything they say has a hidden meaning and everyone follows their codes so religiously that the hidden meanings are clear.  But some things can never even be hinted at – anything too unpleasant must be put aside.  As the narrator describes early in the book during a conversation between Archer and his mother: “it was against all the rules of their code that the mother and son should ever allude to what was uppermost in their thoughts.”  Archer’s betrothed, May, follows these codes completely – she is the “perfect” woman.  But he begins to see that there may not be anything else at all underneath her perfect exterior.

Archer feels different from his fellow men, and he wants to push back against these strict rules of behavior.  As his relationship with Ellen develops, he feels both more desirous of breaking free and more hemmed in and unable to escape than ever before.  His life is inevitable and he feels unable to act according to his own free will.  His feeble attempts continue to fall short.

Archer and Ellen meet in society and catch spare moments alone in hallways or Opera boxes.  They fall in love in an innocent way and neither sees it happening.  But to the reader it feels so real.  In one scene, when they are seeing each other after a separation, Archer is struck anew by everything that Ellen is.  He says to her “Each time you happen to me all over again.”  This is what love feels like.  To capture that in a novel is what makes reading such a pleasure.  And this novel is a pleasure, indeed.

His Family (1918)

Roger Gale is a widower with three adult daughters and he has suddenly realized he doesn’t know them.  That is where the action begins in His Family, the 1918 winner of the Pulitzer Prize.  This realization would doubtless concern him no matter what, but he is especially dismayed because he had promised his wife when she died that he would keep an eye on the girls and report back to her when they met again in the afterlife.  He has since suffered a crisis of faith and withdrawn from his family.  But now he means to get to know them once again.

Each daughter represents a possible path for a woman to follow, and tracing the drawbacks and benefits of each path is a major theme in the book.  One daughter, Laura, is a socialite, a party girl with no plans to have children and with no social consciousness.  Another, Edith, is a mother of five who is so wrapped up in her own children that she cannot think or speak of anything else.  The third, Deborah, is a social reformer and suffragist who is terrified to marry and have children because she fears she will never be able to go on with her work, which is the most important thing to her.  Roger Gale is most often perplexed by each daughter, and even more so by the interactions between them.  The narrator clearly favors Deborah, the social reformer, from the start and Roger gets there eventually too. She is, obviously, the best of his daughters.

The woman question was on the top of the nation’s mind in 1918, so it’s no surprise that this book was awarded the Pulitzer.  But there is more to it than that.  A deeper and more enduring theme is mortality and how we find immortality in the lives of our family.  Before she died, Roger’s wife told him, “You will live on in our children’s lives.”  Throughout the book he realizes the truth of that statement, as he gets to know his daughters and finds himself in each of them.  He feels the roots of his family before him and seeks comfort in the fact that he, too, will be a figure in the distance to the coming generations. 

Finally, Roger often contemplates the youth of mankind – he feels as a child still, and he sees everyone else in the same way.  All his life he has felt that he is just beginning, and now he is already nearing the end.  As he walks through a birch grove on his farm one evening, he comes to an understanding of it all.  “It seemed to Roger that all his days he had been only entering life, as some rich bewildering thicket like this copse of birches here, never getting very deep, never seeing very clearly, never understanding all.  And so it had been with his children, and so it was with these children of Edith’s, and so it would be with those many others – always groping, blundering, starting – children, only children all.”

The book also deals with the growth of New York City; immigration and poverty; and World War I.  Roger Gale came to New York when horses and carriages traveled its roads, and now he has to face the crush of modern life with its fast cars, tall buildings and bright lights.  Little did Roger know that the chaos of urban life was only just beginning.  One facet of this new city life that Roger struggles so much with is the influx of immigrants and the rise of tenements.  As he gets to know Deborah he sees her work with the children of these tenements and he gains a new understanding of the deprivation they face.  When World War I breaks out, he is faced with suffering on an even grander scale.  Roger comes to a new understanding of humankind and he learns to make sacrifices to help those beyond his own family. 

These political themes play an important role in the book, but it’s true strength is in dealing with the personal.  As Roger Gale comes to know his daughters, we come to know more about life.  Can we ask anything more from a novel?