thaumaturge apologized and left thenstage.nHe was a welter of contradictions, ancaustic sentimentalist. “J-Ie mocked thencruder manifestations of Yankee Imperialismnbecause he was, at heart, a fanaticnAmerican,” the novelist wrote ofnhimself. He kidded George Babbitt fornhis indifference to Europe and turnednaround and joined the America FirstnCommittee. When The Nation askednLewis, a La Follette man, to return tonGopher Prairie and cover the 1924 election,nhe submitted a piece in which thenCoolidge supporter, Doc Kennicott, getsnoff all the best lines.nHe was a devotee of Henry DavidnThoreau, although Lewis’s Walden includedna mansion and servants. Lhsnmost poignant characters, whether SamnDodsworth or George Babbitt or FrednCornplow of The Prodigal Parents, longnto ignore the crowd and follow the innernlight. “Why is it that nobody ever doesndo any of the things that he’s free tondo?” is the Thoreauvian question thatnrecurs in almost every Lewis novel. Babbittnwould flower if he just had the confidencento be his hick self.nMuch as his friend H. L. Menckenncommitted public suicide with his anti-nNew Deal polemics, so did SinclairnLewis slit his throat in 1938 with thenpublication of The Prodigal Parents.nThis unjustly obscure novel—in somenways a rewrite of ‘Babbitt—features anwholly sympathetic upstate New Yorknauto dealer named Fred Cornplow, selfdeclarednpresident of the “Mind YournOwn Business Association.” Fred’s childrennare spoiled lotus-eating Reds: whennnot cadging money from Pop, Fred’s sonndrones at the dinner table: “Dad, didnyou realize that in the past year. . . thenLIBERAL ARTSnLOOTERngrowth in production in heavy industrynin the Ural section of Russia has beenntwo hundred and seventeen percent?”nSlowly it dawns on Fred that his familynis not atypical: America is being remade,nand the Cornplows—the smallnindependent businessmen, backbones ofnthe quondam republic—are an endangerednspecies. The Communists willnbury him, the brain trusters jeer at him,na New York City psychiatrist wants tonput him away (only a crazy man, thenshrink reasons, could enjoy a middleclassnlife in dowdy Sachem Falls, NewnYork). The country has passed to thenlikes of Fred’s son, who dad thinksnwould “make a first-rate coat holder fornsome posthole digger on a WPA projectnthat ain’t started yet.”nThe Prodigal Parents contains morenlaughs per page than any of Lewis’snpost-Babbitt novels, but the author wasnroasted for its homely slant. Lewis hadntipped his hand; the heretic had been anMain Streeter all along. He infuriatednreviewers with passages such as this:n”From Fred Cornplow’s family, betweennB. G. 1937 and A. D. 1937, there came,ndespite an occasional aristocratic Byronnor an infrequent proletarian John Bunyan,nnearly all the medical researchers,nthe discoverers of better varieties ofnwheat, the poets, the builders, thensingers, the captains of great ships.nSometimes his name has been pronouncednBabbitt; sometimes it has beenncalled Ben Franklin . . . He is the eternalnbourgeois, the bourjoyce, the burgher,nthe Middle Glass, whom the Bolsheviksnhate and imitate, whom the English lovenand deprecate, and who is most of thenpopulation worth considering in Francenand Germany and these United States.”n(These independent freeholders—farm-n”While going to work May 1 in downtown Los Angeles, I was approached by a mannin his 50’s. He was wearing a new suit with the tags still on it. The suit was at leastnfive sizes too big. The sleeves on the jacket were rolled up along with the legs on thenpants; a piece of rope held up the pants. He had on a new pair of Reebok shoes thatndidn’t match.n”He asked me for some change to Ijuy some food. I asked him, ‘Did you spend alln’Our money on your new suit and shoes?’ With a smile he said, ‘No, I’m a looter, andnI got this new suit and shoes looting.’n”I then asked, ‘What do you think of the Rodney King situation?’ He looked atnme questioningly and said, ‘I don’t follow sports anymore.'”n32/CHRONICLESners, shopkeepers, printers—are the bulwarknof Vermont’s resistance to a fascistntakeover in Lewis’s crude cautionarynnovel It Can’t Happen Here.)nAfter The Prodigal Parents, it wasnopen season on Sinclair Lewis. Lhs lastnnovels, with the exception of Cass Timberlane,nwere anemic. Like Mencken,nhe was dismissed as a young radicalngrown crusty and conservative. MainnStreet and Babbitt, once wrongly praisednas exposes of the barrenness of MiddlenAmerica, were now condemned (bynMark Schorer) for “sugar-coating [the]nloneliness, monotony, and boorishness”nof small towns. The village atheist wasndiscovered kneeling in the church, andnfor this sin of Main Street devotion henhas never been forgiven.nTo the end, Lewis stayed true to hisntime and his locality. He insisted, despitenthe naysaying of the folks who runnthings in this country, on the romancenof the “Average Citizens of the UnitednStates.” Llis crime, it seems, was that henliked them. Lie thought them funnynand tragic and worthy of a lifetime’snwork.nIn a preface to the ludicrous racennovel Kingsblood Royal (1947), henwrote: “The Knights of the Crusade nonmore sang poetry about themselves thanndoes my hero, the young banker ofnGrand Republic, Minnesota. It is onlyncenturies later that the epic poet comesnalong and finds them elevated and givennto speaking in blank verse . . . Somenfuture Mr. Homer or Milton (born innNorth Dakota) . . . will make ringingnheroic couplets out of him. The ringnand the heroism are there all right, and Inhope they are implicit in my own sardonicncataloguing.”nLewis was not the sophisticate mockingnthe bumpkins. (Compare his affectionatentreatment of his fire-and-brimstonenscoundrel Elmer Gantry withnMencken’s vicious requiem for WilliamnJennings Bryan.) Lewis loved the Bryansnand the Babbitts, the Gantrys and thenKennicotts. He died alone in Italy inn1951, but the long arm of the smallntown reached out and brought him backnto Sauk Centre, where he belonged.nThe funeral took place on a blusterynday, and Sinclair Lewis’s ashes were scattered,naccidentally, all over his nativenground. The prodigal son was home atnlast.n—from a letter to the L. A. Times by Herb Sanders of Van Nuys, California. Novelist Bill Kauffman writes fromnBatavia, New York.nnn