If ever a novel was prescient about what is occurring in America now, then this book written by Sinclair Lewis is the one hooting its clarion call. In 1930, Sinclair became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Praised for his satirical takes on materialism and consumerism in American culture between the two World Wars, this novel written in 1935 is prophetic and has become his most enduring writing, perhaps because its a chillingly recognisable depiction of the rise of a populist leader in America. The novel explores implications of creeping fascism and far-right ideologies, many of which gained popularity in the present day. Lewis saw totalitarian patriotic populism emerging in his own period and used his novel to satirise society’s failures to halt its ascendancy.
The story begins with F.D.Roosevelt defeated by a fictitious zealot, Berzelius ‘Buzz’ Windrip, thanks to his appeals to ‘traditional’ values and his hateful position on immigration.a newspaper editor, Doremus Jessup, bears shocked witness to this unexpected rise to power. Eventually, Jessup must go into hiding, ultimately making his escape to Canada. Shades of Margaret Atwood’s pregnancy dystopia, The Handmaid’s Tale, in which an exit to Canada is similarly presented as a political dissident’s only chance of escape. The extract from Sinclair’s novel is the first chapter of the novel, opening with details of a Ladies’ Rotary Dinner— an event at which politicians, activists, and lobbyists present their causes and fundraise through speeches and networking. One speech in the scene is by General Edgeways. His rhetoric is war-mongering and self-congratulatory. ‘We must be prepared to defend our shores against all alien gangs of international racketeers that call themselves ”governments” and and that with feverish envy are always eyeing our inexhaustible mines, our towering forests, out titanic and luxurious cities, our fair and far-flung fields.’ Some of these positions are repeated later in the extract by Mrs Gimmitch who advocates for war to protect the United States from ill-defined European nations suggested by the General. In this portrayal Lewis lampoons the idea that American nature is inexhaustible, and presents the isolationist character of totalitarian ideology.
Opening with his dinner scene, Lewis creates at times hilariously exaggerated and insidious portraits of people who hold perspectives that make the election of someone like Windrip possible. The apathy of certain characters (Mrs Doremus suggesting the bone voice in the room against an aggressively isolationist policy is a ‘silly Socialist’). The vehement pro-war sentiment of the local elite and industrialists, such as Francis Tasbrough, the quarry owner, insisting that the capacity of one-third generation immigrants forget their origins and “pull up the ladder” behind them. Louis Rotenstern, a one-third generation pole, believes “we ought to keep all these foreigners out of the country,” forgetting that his grandfather was born in Prussian Poland. In this way Lewis establishes a social setting in which immigrants reject their cultural and ethnic identities, women advocate for their own oppression and local elites lobby for conflicts that can only be beneficial to themselves. These, the scene implies, are the circumstances under which far-right populism can fo
ment and become successful.
So the scene is set for the descent into Windrip’s Nazi-like populist regime, fuelled by propaganda. Journalist Jessup struggles to understand the shift in the political discourse, but finds that despite his work, he is almost powerless. While he is not wholly likeable a character, Jessup is a plausible protagonist. Lewis writes him as a kind of Everyman, flawed and at times even misogynistic, whose journey from the dining room where he hears ridiculous propaganda to the underground resistance is one that dwells on the necessity of individual action to resist the creep of fascism.
Several writers have compared the demagogue Buzz Windrip to Donald trump and the similarities between trump’s America with the country depicted in the book. Following the results of the 2016 presidential election, sales of IT CANT HAPPEN HERE surged significantly and appeared on best selling lists. One has to constantly remember that this novel was published during the heyday of fascism in Europe and centres on the journalist Doremus Jessup’s opposition to the new regime and his subsequent struggle against it as part of a liberal rebellion.Lewis based his tale in part on the experiences of his wife, Dorothy Thompson, a journalist who was expelled from Nazi Germany for writing articles critical of Adolf Hitler. Lewis used her research and personal experiences in Germany and Fascist Italy to imagine how America might become a Fascist state. Regrettably, he had many American people to draw upon from Huey long, who prior to his assassination planed to challenge FDR’s reelection on his “Share Our’ Wealth” platform.
Sinclair Lewis’s book is worth every star in the five-star rating. Every person who thinks Make America Great Again, should read this book. A best seller due to its unnervingly contemporary resonance.
