become famous, he began to promulgate an official view of his youth that

represents perhaps an adult wish for a inoffensive life that never was. He was

Sinclair Lewis (Hutchisson 8). In the years from 1914 to 1951 Sinclair Lewis, a

flamboyant, driven, self-devouring genius from Sauk Centre, Minnesota, aspired

in twenty two novels to make all America his province. (Hutchisson 9). Although

his star has now waned, he was in his time the best-known and the most

controversial of all writers and through a number of books remarkable for their

satiric bite and for their ambivalent love and hatred of the land and the people he

took as his domain, he helped to make Americans known to themselves and to

the world. Lewis was a descendant of the line of Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau,

Whitman and Twain (Mencken 17). Like them, he railed against the insidious

effects of mass culture and the standardization of manners and ideas. Lewis

dreamed of a better America and in his best novels he turned the light of his

critical gaze upon our most hallowed institutions including the small town. He

became the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize

by irrelevant and uncomplex conversations. During this time, Carol brings up

1922: "... [She is] always groping for something she isn't capable of obtaining,

"I'll make 'em lively, if nothing else. I'll make 'em stop regarding parties as

life of the period as portrayed in the novel, and World War I and its impact on the

but they are also infested with curiosity. Such a society produces cheap

Some common words found in the essay are:
Gopher Prairie, Carol Isn't, Miles Bjornstam's, Carol Don't, Blodgett College, Jolly Seventeen, Raymie Wutherspoon, Ella Stowbody, City Hall, Equally Carol, gopher prairie, sinclair lewis, main street, carol tries, jolly seventeen, change town, lewis satirizes, criticizing instead admiring, social conditions, dooley 62, carol tries change, tries change, towns specifically gopher, novel world war, specifically gopher prairie,
Approximate Word count = 2877
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)