Free Air [Paperback]

Sinclair Lewis (Author), Robert E. Fleming (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1993

Fame was just around the corner when Sinclair Lewis published Free Air in 1919, a year before Main Street. The latter novel zeroed in on the town of Gopher Prairie; the former stopped there briefly and then took the reader by automobile in search of America. Free Air heads toward a West that was brimming with possibilities for suddenly mobile Americans at the end of a world war.

The vehicle in Lewis’s novel, not a Model T but a Gomez-Dep roadster, takes Claire Boltwood and her father from Minnesota to Seattle, exposing them all to the perils of early motoring. On the road, the upper-crust Boltwoods are at once more insignificant and more noble. The greatest distance to be overcome is the social one between Claire and a young mechanic named Milt, who, with a cat as his traveling companion, follows close behind. If Free Air anticipates many of the themes of Lewis’s later novels, it also looks forward to a genre that includes John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley and Josh Greenfeld and Paul Mazursky’s Harry and Tonto. And the character of Claire, blazing her own trail across the West, looks back to the nineteenth-century pioneer woman and ahead to the independent-minded movie heroines played by Katherine Hepburn.



In his introduction Robert E. Fleming discusses the place of this early novel in Lewis’s canon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Travel from Minnesota to Seattle brings an upper-class family down to earth in this early effort from Lewis.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"An American story in every page. . . . amusing, interesting, alive to its final period."—New York Times

(New York Times )

"[Lewis] really seems to catch the sweep and exhilaration of the great open country over which his characters wind their way."—New Republic

(New Republic )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 370 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (April 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803279434
• ISBN-13: 978-0803279438
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #244,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why couldn't all his books have been like this?, August 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Free Air (Paperback)

Apparently Lewis didn't become disillusioned and embittered until after 1919, when this absolutely delightful book was published. We have an original copy that my mom got from a library sale or something. She loved it, I loved it, which is no suprise because I am a sucker for sweet old novels, but the most ringing endorsement it that my impossible-to-please dad loved it. In fact, he was the one who made me read it.

There really isn't a lot of substance to this book - it's mostly fluff. (There's some social commentary in the later parts of the book, when they're in Seattle, but I try to ignore it.) But it's grade-A, high-quality fluff we're talking about here. Claire Boltwood's transformation from a Brooklyn snob to a real woman is highly believable, and Milt Daggett is one of the sweetest, most wholesome men ever created. Set against the well-painted backdrop of the American West, the story shifts from amusing to heartwarming to bittersweet and back again flawlessly.

Just a good, simple love-story, unique and well-written. I would recommend this book to anyone just looking for a good read.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Early, less profound Sinclair Lewis, April 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Free Air (Paperback)

One of my favorite books. I was lucky to get a copy (original edition) from the New York Public Library. Have read all his well-known books, but might like this best. His usual themes of Americana, social climbing, etc. But this is a "road" book and a very innocent love story - wonderful book by one of the best American writers. I'm surprised it's in print since it's such a minor title of his.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars unpaved roads, flat tires and chasing that dream, April 22, 2005

By 

T. Patrick Killough "All about Patrick" (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Free Air (Paperback)

Sinclair Lewis's FRESH AIR, published in 1919, is sheer, chuckling delight. It offers no great insights into psyches or interpersonal relations. Read it rather as a straightforward magazine serial pot boiler romance of frontier boy and car mechanic (Milt Daggett) pursuing a sentimental girl (Claire Boltwood) worth an impressive $5,000 around 1916. The girl, a high living Brooklynite, is driving her ailing workaholic father in a heavy Gomez-Dep roadster long day after weary day across northern plains and mountains towards a vacation with cousins in Seattle. She wonders whether she can ultimately avoid marrying Jeff Saxton, a notably older beau back in sophisticated New York.

Milt complicates things by falling in love with Claire after pulling her car out of a Minnesota mud hole created by a German hick to extort money from stranded motorists. Milt almost instantly decides to drive in his modest Teal "tin beetle" or "bug" with or near Claire and her father all the way to Seattle. And so it goes, with Claire wondering if she can (or should) civilize the manly Milt up to the level of suave and prosperous Jeff or whether that is too, too patronizing. Should she, alternatively, simply sweep off to Alaska with Milt -- heeding the call of the wild? Were Jane and Tarzan in the back of Sinclair Lewis's mind? For Edgar Rice Burroughs had created them only seven years earlier in 1912. No, the story takes another twist. Read the book and discover what this novel is said to be "prelude and curtain raiser" to.

FRESH AIR can also be read just for its sweaty heft as a part of midwestern and western America not long before the nation declared war on the Kaiser. On the drive through Minnesota, North Dakota, etc. to Washington state, roads are rarely paved. Gravel is luxury. Dust is daily. Mud is just around the bend. Tires are thin and frequently burst or are punctured. Steep slopes demand drivers with braking and gear shifting skills. And don't forget low spots covered by running water.

In every town where the Boltwoods overnight, they routinely drive their Gomez-Dep (a make apparently invented by Sinclair Lewis) into a sure-to-be-there full service garage for the night. These and other cross country garages often display a sign "Free Air," which must have been a reassuring come-on in the early days of cross-continental motoring.

The author, just one year before his first masterpiece, MAIN STREET, convincingly presents his personally experienced North American driving world from an expert mechanic's point of view: an automobile-crazed country with its starters, carburetors, rumble seats, dubiously effective head lamps, oil leaks, hitchhikers, fleabag hotels, country stores, a haunted house and country people who speak German and at first seem gruff but then are seen by sophisticated Easterner Claire Boltwood to have hearts of gold. As does her new suitor, Milt Daggett. It is an all-American world where even auto mechanics are romantic and knightly.

Boys and girls should read FRESH AIR a year or so before they tackle TOM SAWYER and HUCKLEBERRY FINN. One leads to the others.

-OOO-