Writer Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7, 1885. Lewis was the author of “Main Street,” “Babbitt,”
“Arrowsmith,” and “Elmer Gantry,” among many other works. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1930. Lewis was one of three deceased
laureates honored with after-dinner presentations at the dinner President and
Mrs. Kennedy held for Nobel Prize winners in April 1962.
Lewis has enjoyed somewhat of a Renaissance with readers rediscovering his chilling novel “It Can’t Happen Here” about a rise of a
demagogue as president and the authoritarianism that follows. Published in 1935 during the Great Depression
and the advent of Hitler, the book provides a cautionary tale about politicians
promising seeming easy solutions during difficult times.
Lewis died in 1951.
Despite being highlighted at the Nobel dinner, no family member
represented him. Overall, forty-nine
Nobel laureates were honored at the White House. Lewis had refused
the award of a Pulitzer Prize for “Arrowsmith” in 1926. He said, “All prizes, like all titles, are
dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend
to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards: they tend to write
this, or timorously to avoid writing that, in order to tickle the prejudices of
a haphazard committee.”
Still, he did not
decline the Nobel Prize for which he was selected four years later; he was the
first American writer given the prestigious award for literature.