October 23, 1920: Sinclair Lewis Publishes "Main Street"

October 23, 1920: Sinclair Lewis publishes Main Street. It is his 7th novel, but his 1st to really gain the attention of the American public.

Lewis was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, a small town about 100 miles northwest of Minneapolis, nearly halfway between there and Fargo, North Dakota. He graduated from Yale University, sold short stories to magazines, and published his 1st novel in 1914: Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man. He was already 32 years old when America entered World War I in 1917, and was not drafted, and did not serve.

He spent most of 1916, 1917, 1918 and 1919, and early 1920, working as an editor and writing Main Street. At the start of the novel, Carol Milford is in college, and dreams of becoming a town planner. But this is 1910, and women aren't allowed to do that. She becomes a librarian in St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, where she meets a doctor, Will Kennicott. He takes her back to his hometown, Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, a thinly-disguised version of Lewis' Sauk Centre, whose population has never exceeded 5,000.

Carol finds the town small and ugly, and the people small-minded. She tries to change things, but is thwarted at every turn. When America enters World War I, she leaves Will, moves to Washington, and becomes a clerk in a wartime government agency. Within 2 years, the war is over, and she has to go back to Gopher Prairie.

Her last words to the reader: "I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith."

In its 1st 6 months, through April 1921, a person of Red Scare, and the transition of the Presidency from the paralyzed activist Woodrow Wilson to Warren Harding and his "Return to Normalcy," Main Street sold over 180,000 copies. (For comparison's sake, Our Mr. Wrenn sold only 9,000.) It turned out to be the best-selling work of fiction in America in 1921. By the time the decade ended, and Lewis had written other classics, it had sold over 2 million copies.

Main Street would be followed in 1922 by Babbitt, decrying conformity in American life; in 1925 by Arrowsmith, about the culture of science; in 1927 by Elmer Gantry, poking organized religion and the frauds who give it a bad name; in 1929 by Dodsworth, comparing the mores of America and Europe; and in 1935 by It Can't Happen Here, a warning against fascism. In 1930, he became the 1st American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Journalist H.L. Mencken wrote of Lewis, "If there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds." I have been unable to establish whether Mencken wrote this before or after Lewis dedicated Elmer Gantry to him.

Oddly, while films have been made of Lewis' works, most are not up to the same level. But in 1960, Elmer Gantry was made into a film, and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Burt Lancaster won Best Actor for the title role.

He married twice. He was married to Grace Livingston Hegger, an editor at Vogue magazine, from 1914 to 1925. In 1917, they had a son, Wells Lewis, named for Lewis' friend, author H.G. Wells. He was married to journalist Dorothy Thompson from 1928 to 1942.

In 1930, when he was 45 and she was 43, they had a son, Michael Lewis. She had written a book denouncing Communism, The New Russia in 1928; and another denouncing Fascism, I Saw Hitler! in 1932, 3 years before her husband's novel on the subject. In 1939, Time magazine put Thompson on its cover, saying, "She and Eleanor Roosevelt are undoubtedly the most influential women in the U.S."

Lewis died on January 10, 1951, in Rome, from the effects of alcoholism. He was a little short of his 66th birthday. He was predeceased by his son Wells Lewis, who was killed in action in World War II, on October 29, 1944. Dorothy Thompson died in 1961, at 67. Michael Lewis became an actor, but died in 1975, only 44 years old. Michael had 3 children, so Sinclair Lewis' bloodline continues. Grace Hegger lived until 1981, at 94.

In spite of being lampooned as Gopher Prairie in Main Street, Sauk Centre embraces its best-known native son. His boyhood home is maintained as a historic site, and a sign on the actual street with the name reads, "ORIGINAL MAIN STREET."

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October 23, 1920 was a Saturday. Vern Stephens, a shortstop who hit 247 career home runs (a huge number for that position in that era) and played in 8 All-Star Games, was born on this day.

Baseball season was over. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The NHL season didn't begin for another 2 months. It was the 1st season of the American Professional Football Association, the league that became the NFL in 1922, but all of its games were played on Sunday, the next day.

There were, however, college football games, including these:

* Ohio State beat Wisconsin, 13-7 at Ohio Field in Columbus. Ohio State went on to win the Big Ten Conference title.

* Oklahoma beat Washington University of St. Louis, 24-14 at Boyd Field in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma went on to win the title of the Missouri Valley Conference, a forerunner of the Big Eight/Big Twelve.

* The University of California beat the University of Utah, 63-0 at California Field in Berkeley. Under head coach Andy Smith, Cal's "Wonder Team" won the title of the Pacific Coast Conference, a forerunner of the Pacific-Twelves, won the 1921 Rose Bowl over previously unbeaten Ohio State, and started a 50-game unbeaten streak: Won 46, tied 4, lost exactly none. They were retroactively named National Champions for 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1923.

* Virginia Military Institute (VMI) beat the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), 27-7 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. Both teams came into this game undefeated, but only VMI stayed that way, and remained so throughout the season. This may have been the 1st big win by a Southern college football team away to a Northern one.

* At the other end of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh defended the honor of the North, beating Georgia Tech, 10-3 at Forbes Field.

* In between, Penn State beat Lebanon Valley College, 109-7 at Beaver Field in State College.

* Georgia beat Oglethorpe University, 27-3 at Ponce de Leon Park in Atlanta. Georgia finished the season 8-0-1, and won the title in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, a precursor of the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conferences (the SEC and the ACC).

* Notre Dame beat Valparaiso, 28-3 at Carter Field in South Bend, Indiana. Knute Rockne's team was led by George Gipp, and some sources recognize Notre Dame, not Cal, as the 1920 National Champions.

* Harvard beat Centre College, 31-14 at Harvard Stadium in Boston. A year later, though, Centre would beat Harvard in one of the greatest upsets in college football history. Harvard finished the season undefeated, although there was a tie against Princeton. Another Boston-area team, Boston College, finished the season undefeated and untied, but did not play on this day.

* Yale beat West Virginia, 24-0 at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut.

* Army beat Tufts, 28-6 on The Plain at West Point, New York.

* Among New York City teams, NYU lost to Hamilton College, 14-13 in Clinton, Oneida County, New York. Fordham lost to Georgetown, 40-16 at Fordham Field in The Bronx.

* In New Jersey, Princeton beat Navy, 14-0 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton. And Rutgers lost to Virginia, 7-0 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick.

Also, in England's Football League, Arsenal and Derby County played to a 1-1 draw at The Baseball Ground in Derby. Unlike New York's Polo Grounds, where polo had only been played at the original stadium of that name, baseball had been played at The Baseball Ground, as Derbyshire was one of the few areas of England where the sport caught on. But it didn't last, and, by 1920, to look at the Ground, you'd never know that any sport other than soccer had ever been played there.