Arrowsmith

1925, 1980 Signet Classic edition
Sinclair Lewis
Arrowsmith
Bought newish for $4.95
Very worn paperback
B

Like The Age of Innocence (1920), this won the Pulitzer Prize.  I think it's a better book, although not Lewis's best.  For once, as Mark Schorer says in the Afterword, Lewis presents a hero who isn't ground down by the society around him.  The title character does what Babbitt failed to do, go off and live in the woods with a best friend (here Terry Wickett), in this case also working as a research scientist.

If I like this book less than the two earlier Lewis novels I've read, I think it's because I relate less to it.  Also, the very fact that Martin Arrowsmith is a hero makes me more critical of him.  Martin makes a flippant comment about wife-beating in the last chapter, and he is in his own way as domineering as Babbitt.  Martin's second wife, Joyce, is a society woman and we don't spend much time with her, but we do get to know his first wife. 

Leora Arrowsmith was a favorite of the early readers, but I'm not sure how I feel about her.  Her death is movingly told, but her life is questionably done.  On the one hand, she's obviously the perfect wife for Martin:  unpretentious, patient, supportive, and bluntly yet kindly honest.  On the other, she has no life of her own, as she recognizes.  Lewis compares her to a cat and a child, to show how undemanding she is, which makes me wonder how much he knows about cats or children.  She almost always goes along with Martin, who not only neglects her but nearly cheats on her a couple times.  In fact, he's off flirting/bonding with Joyce while Leora dies alone.  He's racked with guilt when he finds out, but he gets over it and goes on to marry Joyce.  It's a bit manipulative of Lewis.

I do like the sections on science and research, or at least how absorbed Martin gets in them.  (What a different novel it would be if he were a life-long bachelor, like Terry.)  Lewis makes some further jabs at "Main Street" and Zenith, as well as towns in between in size and sophistication.  I think the book may be smaller than its parts.

Incidentally, Babbitt makes a guest appearance in 1908, when he still has political ambitions.  Main Street aside, Lewis likes to do crossovers between his books, which is part of his world-building.