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World So Wide
After the accident killed his wife, Hayden Chart felt it was time he really learned about life. Florence was the first city to capture his desire for culture and knowledge and knowledge. He also reveled in the cold beauty of Dr. Olivia Lomond, an authority on all things Italian.
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer & playwright. In 1930, he became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous & graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit & humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful & critical views of American society & capitalist values, as well as their strong characterizations of modern working women.
His final novel World So Wide,/i> (1951) was published posthumously.
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer & playwright. In 1930, he became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous & graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit & humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful & critical views of American society & capitalist values, as well as their strong characterizations of modern working women.
His final novel World So Wide,/i> (1951) was published posthumously.
191 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
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About the author
Sinclair Lewis
515 books1,127 followersNovelist 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 28, 2015
I really wasn't expecting to love this book, or even to like it. I had dutifully read a couple Sinclair Lewis books in high school, but hadn't exactly warmed to them. His work seemed dated already, like maybe the school had bought a bunch of copies of Babbitt back when they were 25 cents and my teacher had discovered the beat-up paperbacks still lying in the supply closet and thought, "hey, I'm going to use these to torture the Juniors."
On a recent trip to the Mechanics' Library, I grabbed this book off the shelf as sort of a "let's see if I still hate Sinclair Lewis" kind of impulse; I expected to get one or two sentences in, give a satisfied yawn, and put it back. I'd love to say that there was something delightful about the opening, but there wasn't really. The book started off with the protagonist, architect Hayden Chart, losing his wife in an auto accident, and it hardly seemed like things were going to get cheery. But at the same time, there was a kind of hopeful quality to the story; I mean, it was clear that the main character was not going to lie in the hospital and brood forever. And indeed, once he decided to set out for Italy, the novel began to sparkle with satire and the promise of adventure.
So about this time in the reading, I decided I'd find my own copy, because I was enjoying some of it enough to want to underline things, and I didn't want to ruin the library copy. I guess I really didn't know much about Sinclair Lewis, aside from the fact he had once won the Nobel Prize in Literature and that my high school American Lit teacher liked his books but no one else seemed to pay him much mind; his work was not being taught by the time I went to college to study literature. So I was not surprised to find that this book (like so many other books by writers once revered but now sort of laid aside) had gone out of print. But I was a little shocked to look at the book's reviews on Goodreads and to see that it hadn't knocked most people's socks off. I mean, maybe I'm not the most discriminate reader in the world, but I was actually enjoying the novel. I saw that this was Lewis's last published work and I thought, "well, maybe the damn thing tanks about mid-way through, or maybe it was never really 'finished'." I mean, I was prepared at every stage along the way to NOT LIKE THIS BOOK. Even now, I think, "well maybe I just didn't read it right, because I seem to be one of the few people who actually liked it." Hopefully I won't be the only one. This book just sailed right along, as soon as Hayden Chart got on that boat to Italy.
Hayden's not exactly the most likable character, nor really are any of the characters likable. And perhaps that's one reason readers are put off. But I've also read plenty of satirical novels in which none of the characters were at all charming, and really, isn't that one of the pleasures of satire? Olivia, Lorenzo, Sir Henry Belfont...all of the American characters are so desperately invested in Old World culture; they are seeking validation through acquiring and utilizing knowledge of European history, art, architecture... They are what we would call "poseurs," pretenders to the thrones of the past. Sinclair Lewis's satire of Yanks abroad also celebrates the simple, gangly, homespun and open-hearted adventurousness of Americans, even while poking fun at this inexplicable desire to be validated by Europeans and, most of all, to become "expert," to endlessly explain.
The story line is not all that remarkable. But the punch and pull of the prose is uplifting, and I found myself waking each of these past few mornings wanting to read on, if only to laugh at how marvelously wretched nearly all of the characters are. I won't spoil the ending; it is perhaps not even a satisfactory ending, but that's hardly the point. The story does not live in its completion but in its telling.
On a recent trip to the Mechanics' Library, I grabbed this book off the shelf as sort of a "let's see if I still hate Sinclair Lewis" kind of impulse; I expected to get one or two sentences in, give a satisfied yawn, and put it back. I'd love to say that there was something delightful about the opening, but there wasn't really. The book started off with the protagonist, architect Hayden Chart, losing his wife in an auto accident, and it hardly seemed like things were going to get cheery. But at the same time, there was a kind of hopeful quality to the story; I mean, it was clear that the main character was not going to lie in the hospital and brood forever. And indeed, once he decided to set out for Italy, the novel began to sparkle with satire and the promise of adventure.
So about this time in the reading, I decided I'd find my own copy, because I was enjoying some of it enough to want to underline things, and I didn't want to ruin the library copy. I guess I really didn't know much about Sinclair Lewis, aside from the fact he had once won the Nobel Prize in Literature and that my high school American Lit teacher liked his books but no one else seemed to pay him much mind; his work was not being taught by the time I went to college to study literature. So I was not surprised to find that this book (like so many other books by writers once revered but now sort of laid aside) had gone out of print. But I was a little shocked to look at the book's reviews on Goodreads and to see that it hadn't knocked most people's socks off. I mean, maybe I'm not the most discriminate reader in the world, but I was actually enjoying the novel. I saw that this was Lewis's last published work and I thought, "well, maybe the damn thing tanks about mid-way through, or maybe it was never really 'finished'." I mean, I was prepared at every stage along the way to NOT LIKE THIS BOOK. Even now, I think, "well maybe I just didn't read it right, because I seem to be one of the few people who actually liked it." Hopefully I won't be the only one. This book just sailed right along, as soon as Hayden Chart got on that boat to Italy.
Hayden's not exactly the most likable character, nor really are any of the characters likable. And perhaps that's one reason readers are put off. But I've also read plenty of satirical novels in which none of the characters were at all charming, and really, isn't that one of the pleasures of satire? Olivia, Lorenzo, Sir Henry Belfont...all of the American characters are so desperately invested in Old World culture; they are seeking validation through acquiring and utilizing knowledge of European history, art, architecture... They are what we would call "poseurs," pretenders to the thrones of the past. Sinclair Lewis's satire of Yanks abroad also celebrates the simple, gangly, homespun and open-hearted adventurousness of Americans, even while poking fun at this inexplicable desire to be validated by Europeans and, most of all, to become "expert," to endlessly explain.
Smoochers--the word was Hayden's own; first blooming of his Florentine poetic revelations--are those shaggy and lumbering men who in a church or a ruined palace or a public square pop out of a vacuum, guides and sextons and loafers and plain floor sweepers, who with hazy but persistent firmness wreck and ruin and shatter the still raptness in which you have been contemplating a facade or, say, a Ghirlandaio by telling you that, remarkably enough, it is a church or a Ghirlandaio. You knew it already. That is why you went there.
The story line is not all that remarkable. But the punch and pull of the prose is uplifting, and I found myself waking each of these past few mornings wanting to read on, if only to laugh at how marvelously wretched nearly all of the characters are. I won't spoil the ending; it is perhaps not even a satisfactory ending, but that's hardly the point. The story does not live in its completion but in its telling.
October 15, 2021
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Crisis de la mediana edad. Comer, rezar y amar antes de la película.
Una historia de amor singular, ambientada en la cultura medieval italiana vista desde la posguerra, sus visitantes, sus paisajes y su cultura. También se plantean críticas interesantes mientras se observa el problema de la identidad al estilo de Luigi Pirandello, para luego desembocar en el redescubrimiento del amor. Una esperanza para quienes piensan en volverse a casar.
Crisis de la mediana edad. Comer, rezar y amar antes de la película.
Una historia de amor singular, ambientada en la cultura medieval italiana vista desde la posguerra, sus visitantes, sus paisajes y su cultura. También se plantean críticas interesantes mientras se observa el problema de la identidad al estilo de Luigi Pirandello, para luego desembocar en el redescubrimiento del amor. Una esperanza para quienes piensan en volverse a casar.
December 1, 2021
Acabo de leer que alguien dijo que es otra versión de "comer rezar amar" y me reí en serio. Empieza tan tan bien que después su propio final no está a la altura. Parece que el autor un día se aburrió y dijo: en fin, pim pum pam, cerramos. Pero hasta las últimas páginas está bellísimamente escrito. Y es increíble cómo aparentemente todos los que pisamos Florencia sentimos lo mismo, esa estupefacción por lo hermosa que es, a la vez hipnótica y frustrante (por no poder quedarse). No lo había podido poner en palabras hasta que él lo explicó, así que le agradezco eso. Siento que yo también viví en Italia un par de meses, que conocí a esos personajes tan burgueses aspirantes a cultos de otra época, que me reí de ellos y de mi misma; y ese, creo yo, es el mayor logro del libro.
January 13, 2015
Sinclair Lewis always looks on Americans as being rather provincial – but also seems to appreciate the American character, flawed though it is.
Our hero, Hayden Chart is a Colorado architect, who to his great good fortune manages to kill his wife in a car accident. He doesn’t feel so at the time, but after being introduced to his wife I think most readers would agree that her mangled corpse is must better company than the living woman.
Mr. Chart runs off to Europe to brush the American hay out of his hair and eventually settles in Florence Italy. There he takes up with a woman who should beaten, shot, then thrown down a well, but I think Mr. Lewis want us to see her as a somewhat sympathetic manner. I am not an ogre – I would only kill her once and with minimal giggling – well, until later.
Through the romance and wandering about Hayden confronts intellectual pretense and the hypocrisy which is so common to the human animal; this, as always, done with Lewis’ almost patented satirical style.
This is not Arrowsmith or Babbitt, but still damn good.
Our hero, Hayden Chart is a Colorado architect, who to his great good fortune manages to kill his wife in a car accident. He doesn’t feel so at the time, but after being introduced to his wife I think most readers would agree that her mangled corpse is must better company than the living woman.
Mr. Chart runs off to Europe to brush the American hay out of his hair and eventually settles in Florence Italy. There he takes up with a woman who should beaten, shot, then thrown down a well, but I think Mr. Lewis want us to see her as a somewhat sympathetic manner. I am not an ogre – I would only kill her once and with minimal giggling – well, until later.
Through the romance and wandering about Hayden confronts intellectual pretense and the hypocrisy which is so common to the human animal; this, as always, done with Lewis’ almost patented satirical style.
This is not Arrowsmith or Babbitt, but still damn good.
March 10, 2015
Uneven at times, "World So Wide" is still an enjoyable book with many bright spots. I've never been to Florence, but Lewis's description of the city and the ex-pats that live there gripped my interest. His characters are extremely well defined, even though the story moves along at a slow pace at times. Lewis is a master of witty dialog, and this book as plenty of it as characters verbally spar with one another to gain or hold their social positions. The last 30 pages, when Roxy and Olivia go at each other, is especially rewarding.
Sidebar: I read the paperback version of this hard to find book. The price on the cover was $0.35, so I'm guessing it was a first edition from about 1950.
Sidebar: I read the paperback version of this hard to find book. The price on the cover was $0.35, so I'm guessing it was a first edition from about 1950.
March 4, 2021
Not one of Sinclair Lewis' better books but still fairly entertaining. The story follows Hayden Chart who is in a car accident that injures him and kills his wife. After his recovery he decides to go to Europe for an extended period of time to put his life back together. While in Florence Italy he meets a woman named Olivia and a romance of sorts begins. This strange love story continues through the book until the end when Lewis threw in a bit of a twist. Lewis books are very identifiable by the unique dialog between the characters that he uses. I've always thought that the dialog in his books is unnatural and has an unrealistic quality to it but, for some reason, is enjoyable to read. That is especially true in this book, it is even more Sinclair Lewis-ish that his other books.
January 21, 2018
No lo disfruté
December 17, 2013
Final novels from respected novelist are always dicey reading experiences. Few face the same fate as Dickens' Edwin Drood. Instead, more often than not, they are incomplete early drafts further fragmented by poor health or else they are finished works so indelibly stamped with evidence of illness and decline that they scarcely seem penned by an once great writer.
World So Wide falls into the last category. By 1950, alcoholism and public disfavor, among other factors, gutted the Nobel laureate's skill. Much of his artistic reputation rests on his intelligent, ferocious satire of American life and personalities. However, unlike in earlier novels, Lewis' serio-comic observations of his characters and modern life are blurry, like a private joke with just enough context provided that his apparent amusement becomes frustrating. Lewis' protagonist, architect Hayden Chart, has no real dimension - virtually every important element of character is presented in such a garrulous fashion that the reader can't possibly take him seriously.
"Life could have been tremulous with noble emotions and cultivated senses - or so the poets informed him, Hayden sighed - and was he to spend its awful flicker in listening to an old miser bellowing, 'See whatta mean'? Whenever Hayden had a notion for a warehouse that should be something more than a prison, Jesse protested, 'You long-haired artists give me a pain. I'm a practical man!'
"It was painful that while Jesse regarded him as an anarchist, the local Modernist and Functionalist and general Impossibilist, Mr. Kivi from Finland - Doctor Kivi - considered Hayden 'a nize fella personal, but yoost anudder old-fashion architectural tailor, giffing the dumb bourgeois whateffer kind suitings dey tink dey vant'."
I can picture Lewis laughing mightily as he lapsed into the mock-Finnish accent. He never expected few others would. Another terrible lapse in judgment is hauling an earlier novel's protagonist, Samuel Dodsworth, for a pointless cameo. As well, it only serves to remind this reader how far Lewis' prose has fallen.
Recommended for a Lewis fan and completest, but prepare to be depressed - this great writer came to a bad end in more ways than one.
World So Wide falls into the last category. By 1950, alcoholism and public disfavor, among other factors, gutted the Nobel laureate's skill. Much of his artistic reputation rests on his intelligent, ferocious satire of American life and personalities. However, unlike in earlier novels, Lewis' serio-comic observations of his characters and modern life are blurry, like a private joke with just enough context provided that his apparent amusement becomes frustrating. Lewis' protagonist, architect Hayden Chart, has no real dimension - virtually every important element of character is presented in such a garrulous fashion that the reader can't possibly take him seriously.
"Life could have been tremulous with noble emotions and cultivated senses - or so the poets informed him, Hayden sighed - and was he to spend its awful flicker in listening to an old miser bellowing, 'See whatta mean'? Whenever Hayden had a notion for a warehouse that should be something more than a prison, Jesse protested, 'You long-haired artists give me a pain. I'm a practical man!'
"It was painful that while Jesse regarded him as an anarchist, the local Modernist and Functionalist and general Impossibilist, Mr. Kivi from Finland - Doctor Kivi - considered Hayden 'a nize fella personal, but yoost anudder old-fashion architectural tailor, giffing the dumb bourgeois whateffer kind suitings dey tink dey vant'."
I can picture Lewis laughing mightily as he lapsed into the mock-Finnish accent. He never expected few others would. Another terrible lapse in judgment is hauling an earlier novel's protagonist, Samuel Dodsworth, for a pointless cameo. As well, it only serves to remind this reader how far Lewis' prose has fallen.
Recommended for a Lewis fan and completest, but prepare to be depressed - this great writer came to a bad end in more ways than one.
September 22, 2008
WORLD SO WIDE is a pretty good book, and even though it's the first of Sinclair's novels I have read, it is understandable that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930.
The novel regards the life and times of Hayden Chart, a typical American living in Colorado during the post WWII years. Chart's seemingly perfect life is suddenly shattered by the death of his wife in an automobile accident, for which cannot help but feel guilty.
When his wife passes away, Chart decides to run away to Europe, in an effort to reconstruct his life. He winds up in Florence, where most of the novel takes place. He has realized that all that he is, is a good architect, and apart from that his life is very empty. He had thought of himself as a well cultured person, only to realize that on the contrary, he is quite ignorant. His circle of friends in Colorado consists of a group of superficial characters, from which he must run away. He makes up his mind to become a european history scholar, which he sees as a way to live a better life.
In his process to relive his life, he meets Olivia, a cold hearted Italian history professor, with whom he falls deeply in love with.
While in Italy, he develops a relationship with the American colony, which is also filled with a set of pretty superficial characters.
The plot flows with much ease, and the 200+ pages are both involving and easy to read.
Chart, Olivia, and a few of the secondary characters are extremely well developed, humanized and extremely believable characters.
I would not consider the book to be a page turner, but none the less, it is definitely a novel worth reading.
Chart's effort to rebuild his life, his being exposed to real love for the first time, and his effort to survive in a new world, quite different from his own, provide for a few hours of entertainment. He never becomes a historian, but he is able to turn his life around.
The novel regards the life and times of Hayden Chart, a typical American living in Colorado during the post WWII years. Chart's seemingly perfect life is suddenly shattered by the death of his wife in an automobile accident, for which cannot help but feel guilty.
When his wife passes away, Chart decides to run away to Europe, in an effort to reconstruct his life. He winds up in Florence, where most of the novel takes place. He has realized that all that he is, is a good architect, and apart from that his life is very empty. He had thought of himself as a well cultured person, only to realize that on the contrary, he is quite ignorant. His circle of friends in Colorado consists of a group of superficial characters, from which he must run away. He makes up his mind to become a european history scholar, which he sees as a way to live a better life.
In his process to relive his life, he meets Olivia, a cold hearted Italian history professor, with whom he falls deeply in love with.
While in Italy, he develops a relationship with the American colony, which is also filled with a set of pretty superficial characters.
The plot flows with much ease, and the 200+ pages are both involving and easy to read.
Chart, Olivia, and a few of the secondary characters are extremely well developed, humanized and extremely believable characters.
I would not consider the book to be a page turner, but none the less, it is definitely a novel worth reading.
Chart's effort to rebuild his life, his being exposed to real love for the first time, and his effort to survive in a new world, quite different from his own, provide for a few hours of entertainment. He never becomes a historian, but he is able to turn his life around.
August 6, 2012
As far as I can tell, this book is meant to be in the tradition of novels on Americans, preferably single, in Italy. The obvious antecedents in many particulars are Hawthorne's The Marble Faun and Howells's Indian Summer. From this perspective Lewis's work isn't bad at all. Taken by itself, it seems a bit pointless.
November 16, 2025
I really had higher expectations from this book and was a bit disappointed… the plot started off quite interesting, however, although the storyline had a lot of potential, in the end it felt rushed and disorganized… Despite that, I will say that I enjoyed the fluidity of the writing style overall.
September 19, 2011
Perhaps one of Lewis's worst books; not even a guest appearance by my beloved Dodsworth can salvage it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews