If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis

by Sinclair Lewis, Anthony Di Renzo (Editor)

Anthony Di Renzo makes available for the first time since their original publication some eighty years ago a collection of fifteen of Sinclair Lewis’s early business stories. Among Lewis’s funniest satires, these stories introduce the characters, themes, and techniques that would evolve into Babbitt. Each selection reflects the commercial culture of Lewis’s day, particularly Reason Why advertising, self-help manuals, and the business fiction of the Saturday Evening Post. The stories were published between October 1915 and May 1921 (nine in the Saturday Evening Post, four in Metropolitan Magazine, one in Harper’s Magazine, and one in American Magazine). Because some things have not changed in the American workplace since Lewis’s day, these highly entertaining and unflinchingly accurate office satires will appeal to the fans of Dilbert and The Drew Carey Show. In a sense, they provide lay readers with an archaeology of white-collar angst and regimentation. The horror and absurdities of contemporary corporate downsizing already existed in the office of the Progressive Era. For an audience contemplating the death of the American middle class, Lewis’s stories provide an important retrospective on earlier times and a preliminary autopsy on the American dream. Appearing just in time to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Babbitt, this collection rescues Lewis’s best early short fiction from obscurity, provides extensive information about his formative years in advertising and public relations, and analyzes both his genius for marketing and his carefully cultivated persona as the Great Salesman of American letters.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, Business

363 pages, Paperback

First published November 3, 1997

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

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy reading Sinclair Lewis. He has a very distinctive narrative style, especially in his use of dialog. He uses a lot of slang from the period but there is also an almost unrealistic quality to the dialog that is enjoyable. I think that anyone familiar with his writing could identify his dialog from other writers if given snippets to choose from. This book is a great collection of short stories that he wrote for various magazines over a short period of years in the early 1900's.

[Shelley Diamond · Rating 3 out of 5]

The competitive nature of people in business has not changed in the nearly 100 years since this book was written. Read these stories and you will probably find many types of people you know today and the same old tricks of the trade. Sad but true....

[Rick Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book. Having read close to a dozen Lewis books in the last year, this ranks high on my list of faves.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2.5/5)

While I don't think very many readers would argue that Lewis' shorts were better than his string of popular master-satires in the 1920s, he does use his knack for realism to poke fun at the activities and mannerisms of office culture in a way that still holds up a hundred years later. No amount of technological advancements in the form of excel spreadsheets, conference calls, or slack pages can change the fact that white collar work seems to have consisted of the same middle management struggles, the same false smiles on the faces of polite sales folks just trying to earn enough to pay their mortgages, and the same searching for self worth amidst the proverbial moving of units.

[William Bibliomane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating retrospective of Sinclair Lewis's early writing, with countless hints at what was to come from his later. Unfortunately, the book is plagued with failures of editing which at times will drive the reader to distraction. Still worth the effort for those interested in early 20th century Americana and readers of Lewis in particular.

Full review here: https://bibliomaneblog.wordpress.com/...