Arrowsmith [Leather Bound]

Sinclair Lewis (Author)

Product Details

• Leather Bound
• Publisher: Franklin Library (1977)
• ASIN: B000IVHMD4
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Sinclair Lewis was born in 1885 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, and graduated from Yale University in 1908. His college career was interrupted by various part-time occupations, including a period working at the Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's socialist experiment in New Jersey. He worked for some years as a free lance editor and journalist, during which time he published several minor novels. But with the publication of Main Street (1920), which sold half a million copies, he achieved wide recognition. This was followed by the two novels considered by many to be his finest, Babbitt (1922) and Arrowsmith (1925), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, but declined by Lewis. In 1930, following Elmer Gantry (1927) and Dodsworth (1929), Sinclair Lewis became the first American author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for distinction in world literature. This was the apogee of his literary career, and in the period from Ann Vickers (1933) to the posthumously published World So Wide (1951) Lewis wrote ten novels that reveal the progressive decline of his creative powers. From Main Street to Stockholm, a collection of his letters, was published in 1952, and The Man from Main Street, a collection of essays, in 1953. During his last years Sinclair Lewis wandered extensively in Europe, and after his death in Rome in 1951 his ashes were returned to his birthplace.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last: Sinclair Lewis writes a hero, January 17, 2007

By 

Jesse Kornbluth "Head Butler" (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Arrowsmith (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

Sinclair Lewis is the bookend to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both were born in Minnesota. Fitzgerald went to Princeton, Lewis to Yale. Both wrote their best books in the 1920s. Both drank, had women trouble, and turned bitter.

But Fitzgerald is everyone's favorite author --- even the high school kids who are clueless about metaphors swoon over "The Great Gatsby." You need an appreciation of satire to love Lewis; nobody does, and he goes unread.

It's understandable. What would you rather read --- a romantic tale about a poor boy's rise and violent death on the glittering shores of Long Island (Gatsby) or a withering take on narrow-minded life in the midwest (Main Street)? Who's more interesting --- a criminal who went to Oxford (Jay Gatsby) or a blowhard whose ambition is total conformity to soul-deadening values (George Babbitt)?

And yet. If you ask who describes America better, the more necessary writer is Sinclair Lewis. Main Street and Babbitt made his name, and most readers stop there. They shouldn't --- my wife, who once attended a one-room schoolhouse in Minnesota --- recently read "Main Street," and found it a very close description of life in our chic Manhattan neighborhood. Dodsworth --- later made into a toweringly great movie --- is as fine a love story as Fitzgerald ever dreamed up, and a lot more realistic one, at that. It Can't Happen Here is a powerful political drama with a subject that's not as far-fetched as you might think: how fascism comes to America.

And then there's Arrowsmith, which has an actual hero. Set in the midwest, it doesn't lack for satire; as Lewis depicts it, happiness in a small town seems to havbe the shelf life of about a year. And for a writer who won the Pulitzer Prize (and refused it), Lewis can write some dreadful dialogue. But the heroism thing --- that's compelling, and if you can move sprightly through the first half of the book, you'll find yourself getting excited and turning pages quickly for the right reason.

The hero is Martin Arrowsmith. We meet him in 1897, in the midwest town of Elk Mills ("a dowdy red-brick village, smelling of apples"), where he is the 14-year-old helper of the local doctor. Martin is prone to hero worship --- he sees magic in the old man's love of puttering in a lab. That ignites a dream in Martin, and so, seven years later, he's in medical school. There he falls under the spell of bacteriology professor Max Gottlieb: "tall, lean, aloof" --- and a Jew.

Gottlieb's love of science is pure; in an environment where many students and faculty think only of money, he alone seems to have ideals. Martin blossoms. But he's still a rube. He falls for a snooty graduate student in English and proposes marriage; later, he meets Leora, a nursing student, and proposes to her as well. His inept solution: to bring them together over lunch. Leora loves him more. They marry.

Leora's family is important --- in their tiny town of Wheatsylvania, North Dakota. But don't call them cultured: They lived in a house "that has a large phonograph but no books." Money talks, though. They bankroll Martin's first practice, and he settles into the life of a country doctor.

The novel is about the impossibility of "settling" --- as Martin climbs the medical ladder, he can't ignore research, his first love. He has a knack for it, and, to his delight, he's invited to join Gottlieb at a prestigious New York research institute. And now the novel kicks into high gear --- the plague has broken out in the Caribbean, and the vaccine that Arrowsmith has been working on might just be the cure.

Let me not spoil the thrill of these pages by revealing too much. Let's just say: success always comes at a price. And success doesn't always bring people what they most want. "Arrowsmith" is a book about the forces that fight to dominate us. As Lewis has it, that fight never ends.

"Arrowsmith" is smart about the world of research, and drug companies, and the modest ambitions of many men and women in white coats. It is also about the love of knowledge and the desire to heal; it gets the blood pumping. My brother --- one of our best AIDS researchers --- tells me that "Arrowsmith" is the book that made him decide to study medicine. Long before page 450, I could see why.

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece of Medical Literature - Idealism at Risk, August 28, 2002

By 

Juliana LHeureux "Maine Writer" (Topsham, Maine United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Arrowsmith (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

Author Sinclair Lewis had some exposure to the medical profession early in his life through his father, who was a country doctor. Yet, even with some personal exposure, it's amazing how much of the idealism and cynicism, evident in modern physician practice, Lewis portrays in his 1926 pulitizer prize winning book, "Arrowsmith". Martin Arrowsmith, M.D. is a fictional idealist who is a human being before all else, but trying to bring science to the practice of Medicine. Actually, the story seems almost autobiographical due to the personal intensity and human fraility of the complex main character. As a registered nurse, reading Arrowsmith brings flashbacks of the past, like the cliches "deja vu all over again", or worse, "the more things change, the more they stay the same". Medicine for financial- profit, patient care challenges, personality conflicts, political shenanigans, professional competition, and overutilization of medical technology are some of the common problems Arrowsmith faces as he pursues a career in medicine after barely struggling through the politics of medical school in the mythical town of Wheatsylvania, Midwest, USA, in the early 20th century. This is not another novel about how physicians affect people's lives, but a masterpiece about the nuances of the medical profession as mysterious and suspect,of physicians who are heros and villans. Most surprising are the humerous vignettes sprinkled throughout the plot like bits and pieces of old Jack Benny radio show skits. When Martin Arrowsmith must decide if he is to fulfill his promise to marry Madeline Fox or betray her for his soul mate Leora Tozer, the genious writer Lewis creates such humor in the ensuing restaurant scene, that should be frought with melodrama, but, instead, is absolutely delightful reading. Similar humor engulfs the life portrayed of Arrowsmith's employer, Pickerbaugh, and his fleet of daughters named after flowers, like the saucy Orchid. Arrowsmith is simply a joy to read, especially for people who have a flair for some classic literature without getting too deep into concentrated philosophic thought. Simply put, Arrowsmith today, were he to practice in modern medicine, would probably be no better or worse off than he was in 1908 through circa 1920, when the novel takes place. Arrowsmith is a classic American novel and an entertaining story.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Realistic Novel Without a Clear Protagonist, June 15, 2001

By 

Tim Kidd (Plover, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arrowsmith (Hardcover)

Once again, Sinclair Lewis engulfed me. This is the fourth of his works that I have read (Elmer Gantry, Main Street and Babbit being the others) and although I didn't like Arrowsmith quite as much as those three, I still couldn't put it down.

Unlike so many novelists, Lewis' endings are impossible to predict. They're not necessarily happy, or tragic, they're open-ended, which often mirrors real life. For Martin Arrowsmith, he ends up, in a sense, free and able to devote the rest of his life to research without any distractions. At the same time, he's lost his first wife and deserted his second and their son.

Like the main characters of Lewis' other books, Elmer Gantry, Carol Kennicot and George Babbit, Martin Arrowsmith is not clearly a protagonist or an antagonist. The reader sympathizes with his frustrations, especially in dealing with his first wife's knee-jerk family. At the same time, I found myself rather angry with Martin's attitude now and then. Many of the other major characters: Max Gottleib (Arrowsmith's mentor), Almus Pickerbrauh, and Terry Wickett (Arrowsmith's friend and partner) evoke the same mixed reactions. Once again, I think this is an example of Lewis' realism, for in real life, there are few "pure" heroes; and even the noblest soul is tainted at times.

Read this book to understand the personal frustrations and conflicts that infect everyone's soul; read it for a contrasted depiction of American life in small towns, mid-sized cities and large metropolis' in the earlier 20th century. But read it.