Selected Short Stories of Sinclair Lewis

by Sinclair Lewis, James W. Tuttleton (Introduction)

Amidst Sinclair Lewis€™s many remarkable novels are more than a hundred short stories which he wrote over forty-four years. Selected Short Stories contains those selected by Lewis himself for a 1935 edition and illustrates the wide range of his art and tales of romantic fantasy or escape, melodramas of heroic or mock-heroic adventure, boy-meets-girl stories, satires of pretension and folly, and tales of isolation and loneliness. Lewis often played variations on themes more fully developed in his novels. In his introduction, James W. Tuttleton calls Lewis €œan excellent storyteller with an enviable command of narrative€¦At his best Lewis€™s short stories, like his novels, accomplish the remarkable feat described by E.M. €˜What Mr. Lewis has done for myself and thousands of others is to lodge a piece of a continent in our imagination.€™€

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, American

450 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Novelist Harry Sinclair Lewis satirized middle-class America in his 22 works, including Babbitt (1922) and Elmer Gantry (1927) and first received a Nobel Prize for literature in 1930.

Middle-class values and materialism attach unthinking George F. Babbitt, the narrow-minded, self-satisfied main character person in the novel of Sinclair Lewis.

People awarded "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."

He knowingly, insightfully, and critically viewed capitalism and materialism between the wars. People respect his strong characterizations of modern women.

Henry Louis Mencken wrote, "[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."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclai...

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sinclair Lewis is best known today for the novels he published in the 1920s and 1930s like BABBITT, ARROWSMITH and IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, but he was also a prolific short-story writer. His complete short stories fill seven volumes, and were written at a time when magazines like REDBOOK and COSMOPOLITAN were ready and lucrative outlets for his talents. This 1935 book, with an introduction by Lewis himself, contains 13 selected stories from the 1917-34 period. Although Lewis is considered a raucous satirist, he can be gentler, as in "The Ghost Patrol," about a cop who is forcibly retired for age, but keeps patrolling by night in secret.

Other themes include the clash between Midwestern naivete and Eastern sophistication, as in "Go East Young Man." "The Cat of the Stars" is a complicated roundelay of cause-and-effect, more noteworthy for its plot mechanics than for its insights into human nature. Although these stories have not held their place in literary history like those of his contemporaries Ring Lardner, F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway, they are well worth a look for their depictions of a confident, booming America until the onslaught of the Great Depression.

I am enough of a Sinclair Lewis fan that I sought out this volume used. But other versions exist, too.

(Updated September 22, 2018)

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sinclair Lewis is like Fitzgerald but more direct and without all the falsetto sobbing in the prose. One of those authors whose writing makes you think, "That's easy. I can do that." And then, sadly, you try...

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

ENGLISH: I like a lot this collection of Sinclair Lewis's short stories. Seven of them I had read before, in a Spanish translation, and now I've read the whole collection (13 stories) in the original English.

The stories I liked most are the following: "Willow walk," a curious story about a bank theft by the cashier and the procedure the thief used to escape pursuit; "Things," about how our possessions may become the bane of our lives; and "Moths in the arc light," an original story about a man and a woman who fall in love by saluting from office windows at the opposite sides of a New York street.

ESPAÑOL: Me ha gustado mucho esta colección de cuentos de Sinclair Lewis. Hace años leí siete de ellos, traducidos al español, y ahora he leído toda la colección (13 historias) en el inglés original.

Las historias que más me gustaron son las siguientes: "La avenida de los sauces", una historia curiosa sobre el robo de un banco por un cajero y el procedimiento que usó el ladrón para escapar de la persecución; "Cosas" sobre cómo nuestras posesiones pueden convertirse en la ruina de nuestras vidas; y "Polillas a la luz de arco", una historia original sobre un hombre y una mujer que se enamoran saludándose desde las ventanas de sus oficinas en lados opuestos de una calle de Nueva York.

[Cole VanEtten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t really enjoy this book, I like reading books about history and the past but this book I didn’t enjoy. This book goes into detail on Sinclair Lewis’s life, what he was involved in, where and when he lived somewhere, and what he did in history. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about Sinclair Lewis, or any student looking to learn more about him for school.

[Darshika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading each of the stories. They were funny, unusual, quirky and most of all they surprised me. I didn't expect that. I would recommend this book for light reading with stories that will stay with you for a long time.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sinclair Lewis is perhaps best known for his many novels: including Main Street, Babbit, Arrowsmith and others. But he wrote many stories throughout his career of which he personally selected his favorites for the collection: Selected Short Stories of Sinclair Lewis. Some of these stories mirror the themes that inhabit his novels. They are all vivid with colorful and concrete detail that reminds this Midwestern boy of his roots. The stories range widely from a satiric piece about a boy movie star that reminds me of Twain's The Prince and the Pauper to romantic trysts and tales of isolation and loneliness. All the stories are fun to read and remind me of the best of Lewis.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked him. His stories are really a sign of the times, but the flow was good and it was enjoyable.

[Sonic · Rating 3 out of 5]

first few stories were a bit tedious but the rest were more what i love about sinclair lewis.