Customer Reviews

Go East, Young Man: Sinclair Lewis on Class in America

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I suppose SInclair Lewis is mostly known these days for a handful of novels - Elmer Gantry, Babbitt, Main Street, It Can't Happen Here, and Arrowsmith. I've only read the first two, and intend to read the others, but I was leaving on a trip where I wasn't sure how much time I was going to have to read, so I packed 'Go East, Young Man' rather than taking a novel.
I hadn't known beforehand that Lewis even wrote short stories. But I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Lewis fashions several of these stories around adages, or age-old dilemmas, such as 'watch out what you wish for', 'crime doesn't pay', 'the grass is always greener', materialism, struggles between conflicting goals/wants in a marriage, alcoholism, and more. Another thing that is present in a few of these stories is a very funny, but very dry, sense of humor, which I don't think you'll see nearly as often in his novels, although it's been a while since I read a couple of those.
If you like Sinclair Lewis, and/or maybe if you simply like good short stories, and if the flavor of America in the teens, 20's and 30's doesn't bore you (and as I said above, a lot of the subject matter is timeless), check out this book.