{"id":13098,"date":"2022-07-11T06:14:36","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T06:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/?post_type=product&p=13098"},"modified":"2022-07-11T06:15:09","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T06:15:09","slug":"american-freedom-sinclair-lewis-and-the-open-road","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/fr\/american-freedom-sinclair-lewis-and-the-open-road\/","title":{"rendered":"American Freedom Sinclair Lewis and the Open Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some three decades before Kerouac and friends hit the road, Sinclair Lewis published\u00a0Free Air<\/em>, one of the very first novels about an automobile-powered road trip across the United States. Steven Michels looks at the particular vision of freedom espoused in the tale, one echoed throughout Lewis’ oeuvre.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Sinclair Lewis<\/a> is experiencing a renaissance of late \u2014 but not for a reason he would have liked. His 1935 novel,\u00a0It Can\u2019t Happen Here<\/em><\/a>, depicts an authoritarian American president, whose rise and rhetoric very much resemble the current commander in chief.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Criticized at the time for making American fascism sound too European, Lewis\u2019 prescience is remarkable. Eschewing the conservative fear of moral and cultural relativism, the libertarian fear of a regulatory state, and the progressive fear of economic elites and corporations, Lewis follows Plato in pointing to democracy itself as the cause for the slide to tyranny.\u00a0It Can\u2019t Happen Here<\/em>, like\u00a0The Republic<\/em>, shows how someone elected to satisfy the severe passions of the mass can quickly run afoul of legal norms and institutions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lewis\u2019 most affirmative vision of what he means by freedom is found in his novel\u00a0Free Air<\/em>, which was serialized in the\u00a0Saturday Evening Post<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>in the spring of 1919, the year before\u00a0Main Street<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Babbitt<\/em>\u00a0made him a household name.\u00a0Free Air<\/em>\u00a0is the story of two young people, Milt and Claire. Milt is a small-town mechanic and garage owner, and Claire is from Long Island and in the middle of a coast-to-coast trip to Seattle with her father. Like many Northeasterners, Claire believes that the rest of the country is filled with folks who are good but simple. Milt knows better. He had been plotting an escape from its dreary doldrums, but is enthralled with Claire when she comes through town, and he ends up following her and her father on their journey west. Claire quickly falls for the heartiness of the outdoors, even though she sees Milt more like a brother than a romantic partner. \u201cThere is an America!\u201d Claire cheers by her tent, after she and Milt forgo her usual hotel. \u201cI\u2019m glad I\u2019ve found it!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Once they get to their destination, however, they discover that everyone is obsessed with \u201cthe View\u201d and ranks houses accordingly. What’s worse is that everyone builds and buys from the assumption that houses ought to resemble the East Coast as much as possible. Milt and Claire were looking for something unique and interesting, but instead find a stale sameness and imitation. The book ends with the couple heading back on an open-ended road trip. It might be, Lewis suggests, the only place where they are unburdened by society and its conventions enough to be together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Free Air<\/em>\u00a0is not kind to the petty and conniving rural dwellers, but Lewis\u2019 most devastating take on small-town life appears in\u00a0Main Street<\/em>. Lewis, a product of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, rails against the idea that these remote burgs are the source of all that is good. Rather, they infect their residents with \u201cthe village virus\u201d, symptomized by a firm ignorance, self-satisfaction, and general intolerance of anyone who doesn\u2019t look or think like they do. Will Kennicott loves weekend driving, but he never gets too far out of town. All the roads he takes lead him back to Gopher Prairie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"