Main Street - Lewis, Sinclair

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Résumé :
Main Street is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis, and published in 1920. Satirizing small town life, Main Street is perhaps Sinclair Lewis's most famous book, and led in part to his eventual 1930 Nobel Prize for Literature. It relates the life and struggles of Carol Milford Kennicott in the small town of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, as she comes into conflict with the small-town mentality of its residents. Highly acclaimed upon publication, Main Street remains a recognized American classic. Main Street initially was awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, but was rejected by the board of trustees, who overturned the jury's decision. The prize instead went to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. In 1926, Lewis refused the Pulitzer when he was awarded it for Arrowsmith. In 1930, Lewis was the first American ever awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. While a Nobel Prize is awarded to the author, not the work, and itself does not cite a particular work for which he was chosen, Main Street was Lewis' best-known work and enormously popular at the time. In the Nobel committee's presentation speech, both Main Street and Arrowsmith were cited. The prize was awarded ... for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Main Street #68 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. (wikipedia.org)

Biographie:
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 - January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. At the age of 13, he unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War. In late 1902, Lewis left home to attend Oberlin Academy in order to qualify for acceptance at Yale University. Lewis' first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, a Tom Swift-style potboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham. He is best known for his novels Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).Compared to his contemporaries, Lewis's reputation suffered a precipitous decline among literary scholars throughout the 20th century. Despite his enormous popularity during the 1920s, by the 21st century most of his works had been eclipsed in prominence by other writers with less commercial success during the same time period, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Since the 2010s there has been renewed interest in Lewis's work, in particular his 1935 dystopian satire It Can't Happen Here. In the aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election, It Can't Happen Here surged to the top of Amazon's list of best-selling books. Scholars have found eerie parallels in his novels to the COVID-19 crisis, and to the rise of Donald Trump. His works are known for their critical views of American capitalism and materialism in the interwar period. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women.

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