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."

*

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.

October 22, 1926: "The Sun Also Rises" Is Published

October 22, 1926: The Sun Also Rises, written by Ernest Hemingway, is published by Charles Scribner's Sons. Although Hemingway had previously been a journalist, and had published short stories, this was his 1st novel, and it set the tone for a writing style that would change literature.

The novel is a roman à clef: The characters are based on real people in Hemingway's social circle, and the action is based on real events, particularly Hemingway's life in Paris in the 1920s, and a trip to Spain in 1925 for the "running of the bulls" festival in Pamplona and fishing in the Pyrenees.

Hemingway, then 27 years old, presented his notion that what was already being called the "Lost Generation," considered to have been decadent, dissolute, and irretrievably damaged by their experiences in World War I, which had ended just 8 years earlier, was, instead, resilient and strong. Hemingway investigated the themes of love and death, the revivifying power of nature, and the concept of masculinity.

However, in his treatment of women, art imitated life: The character of Lady Brett Ashley is promiscuous and untrustworthy. Hemingway married 4 times, and it's been suggested that he mistreated all 4 wives, but got a great novel out of each: The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms (a version of his experience in World War I, published in 1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (a version of his experience in the Spanish Civil War, published in 1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (based on stories he heard from fishermen in Cuba, published in 1952).

Along with The Great Gatsby, by his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, The Sun Also Rises is 1 of 3 definitive novels of the "Roaring Twenties" and the "Lost Generation." But it has not really stood the test of time: Not only does Lady Brett look bad in an era of feminism, but the character of Robert Cohn is treated badly, leading to the charge the Hemingway was anti-Semitic; and bullfighting, which Hemingway celebrated in this book and in several short stories, has come to be seen by the wider world as barbaric.

Hemingway himself, though an incredibly talented writer, was a barbaric man, who never met a human being, man or woman, that he didn't want to hit; never met a woman that he didn't want to have sex with; and never met an animal he didn't want to shoot. On July 2, 1961, he shot and killed the most dangerous animal he ever faced: Himself. He was his own worst enemy, and he was just short of turning 63.

*

October 22, 1926 was a Friday. This was also the day that Harry Greb, a former Light Heavyweight Champion of the World, died. I have a separate entry for that event.

The baseball season had just ended, with the St. Louis Cardinals beating the Yankees in the World Series. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't yet been founded. And the NHL season wouldn't begin until November 16. So there were no scores on this historic day.

April 10, 1925: "The Great Gatsby" Is Published

April 10, 1925: The Great Gatsby is published by Charles Scribner's Sons. It sold well in its initial printing, but it was after the 1940 death of its author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, that it achieved legendary status.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He became known as one of the "Lost Generation" writers, disillusioned by their experiences in World War I, and willing to critique American society where mainstream writers went out of their way to praise it.

Although he wrote many short stories, including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 1922, he only published 5 novels. This Side of Paradise was published in 1920, and was a runaway success. The Beautiful and the Damned came in 1922, and was considerably less successful. In 1922, he published a collection of short stories, titled Tales of the Jazz Age. The 1920s have been called "The Jazz Age" ever since.

The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, and did well at the time, but not well enough that people then would have considered it an all-time classic.

Fitzgerald stuck to writing short stories for a while, then went back to novels with Tender Is the Night in 1934. It didn't sell well. He moved west, thinking writing screenplays would make him a lot of money. He was right. But he had begun working on another novel, The Last Tycoon. It was unfinished on December 21, 1940, when he died of a heart attack in Los Angeles. He was 44 years old. Edmund Wilson, a writer and literary critic who was a close friend, finished it and published it.

As with many creative people, death was a great career move for Fitzgerald. He could no longer disappoint people with weak new product, and what little he left behind left people wondering what more he could have done. His books became popular among U.S. soldiers in World War II. By the 1950s, the nostalgia wave for the "Roaring Twenties" was underway, and Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre, the archetypal "flapper," became icons.

The other 4 novels are afterthoughts: It is The Great Gatsby that everyone remembers. It takes place in the Summer of 1922, in four places:

* New York City, during the Roaring Twenties, a time of parties fueled by alcohol even though Prohibition is in effect, alcohol supplied by organized crime.

* East Egg, a glamorous stand-in for Great Neck, in Nassau County, on Long Island.

* West Egg, a less-wealthy stand-in for Little Neck, over the City Line in Queens, separated from East Egg/Great Neck by Little Neck Bay, known for the clams that wash up on its shore. Across the bay, narrator Nick Carraway can see the mansion of the titular Jay Gatsby, and both can see a green light on a dock, which seems to represent hope.

* And a place about halfway between Midtown Manhattan and East Egg, which Carraway calls "a valley of ashes," which has been alleged to be present-day Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, home of baseball's New York Mets and site of the 1939-40 and 1964-65 New York World's Fairs.

Spoiler Alert for a novel published nearly a century ago: Gatsby is murdered, although not by any of his organized crime contacts. In fact, it turned out to be a mistake: Although it was revenge for a death caused by Gatsby's distinctive yellow convertible car, he wasn't the driver.

Gatsby was what would later be called an "anti-hero." Not knowing that Gatsby would soon be killed, Fitzgerald had Carraway tell Gatsby, "They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." But, on another occasion, Fitzgerald wrote, "Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy."

And people tend to not get it. Just as people read On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and wrongly guessed that the 1950s were a time of "kicks," people read The Great Gatsby, and love the old-time party aspect of it, without realizing what Fitzgerald, and his counterpart Carraway, realized: It was all fake, a cover-up for their generation being "lost." A remake might be set in the late 1970s, with disco and cocaine masking the anxieties of the recent Vietnam War taking the place of the jazz and booze unsuccessfully used to forget about "The Great War."

The Great Gatsby was made into a Broadway play and then a silent film, in 1926, which Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald hated, and left halfway through. It was filmed again in 1949, with Alan Ladd as Gatsby; staged for NBC television in 1955, with Robert Montgomery; staged for CBS-TV in 1958, with Robert Ryan; filmed in 1974, with Robert Redford; staged for cable TV network A&E in 2000, with Toby Stephens; and filmed in 2013, with Leonardo DiCaprio.

*

April 10, 1925 was a Friday. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The Stanley Cup had been awarded on March 30, as the Pacific Coast Hockey Association's Victoria Cougars beating the NHL's Montreal Canadiens. This remains the last time the Stanley Cup has been won by a team from outside the NHL.

And the baseball season wouldn't start for another 4 days. So there were no scores on this historic day.