The Man Who Knew Coolidge: Being the Soul of Lowell Schmaltz, Constructive and Nordic Citizen (Short story index reprint series) [Hardcover]

Sinclair Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1971 | ISBN-10: 0836938968 | ISBN-13: 978-0836938968

1927. A collection of works from the Nobel prize winning novelist. Contents: The Man Who Knew Coolidge; The Story by Mack McMack; You Know How Women Are; You Know How Relatives Are; Travel is So Broadening; and The Basic and Fundamental Ideals of Christian American Citizenship.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 275 pages
• Publisher: Books for Libraries (June 1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0836938968
• ISBN-13: 978-0836938968
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,571,831 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

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like SEINFELD, a very funny "story about absolutely nothing", June 4, 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: The Man Who Knew Coolidge: Being the Soul of Lowell Schmaltz, Constructive and Nordic Citizen (Short story index reprint series) (Hardcover)

Remember the pitch that Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza made for their network TV show SEINFELD? Sinclair Lewis's 1928 novel THE MAN WHO KNEW COOLIDGE is equally a story "about nothing at all." Or perhaps it is about H. L. Mencken's "boobus americanus." One cannot fail to notice that the novel's hero Lowell T. Schmaltz is an air head. Or that he talks too much about things of little salience to anything. Schmaltz moves in the same circles as Lewis's unforgettable realtor George Babbitt but lacks any of Babbitt's humanizing touches. And yet, and yet Schmaltz is recognizable as representing millions of ordinary, bumbling American Dagwoods. That is, if you can imagine an utterly self-absorbed humorless Dagwood Bumstead.

Critics tell us that Sinclair Lewis was tired of writing increasingly well researched, carefully plotted novels like MAIN STREET and BABBITT. He wanted some time off and for a lark, and to please his pal Mencken, he dashed off in THE MAN WHO KNEW COOLIDGE the kind of manic monologues that Lewis himself was likely to launch at parties on the slightest provocation. The result is shaggy dog humor, deliberate low-brow nonsense and is weirdly effective. Plot there is none unless, in its six parts, there is steadily unraveled Lowell T. Schmalz's claim to any slightest sort of credibility in invoking his college day acquaintance with future President Calvin Coolidge.

Yet notable quips, asides and observations abound. Examples:

PART I "The Man Who Knew Coolidge"

--Behind every great surgeon, lawyer, banker or department-store owner there stands..."the office-supply man! ...Just take filing-cabinets alone!"

--George F. Babbitt and I, "we're as different as Moses and Gene Tunney."

--"I've always felt the Catholics were too tolerant toward drinking and smoking and so aren't, you might say, really hardly typically American at all."

--"every truck had on it a great big red sign, "Free Outing for the Unfortunate Kiddies, provided Free by Zenith Kiwanis Club."

PART III "You Know How Women Are"

--"I guess that in the vacuum cleaner America has added to the world its own mystery, that'll last when the columns of the Acropolis have crumbled to mere dust!"

PART VI "The Basic and Fundamental Ideals of American Citizenship"

--"it is thinkers like Dr. (Elmer) Gantry... who finally determine our philosophy ... and our ethics..."

--"Rotarians and Kiwanians" have insisted on "the religion of Service."

Imagine L'il Abner Yokum in the big city. Fancy an Archie Bunker who never lets anyone else talk. Or an Al Bundy who reads books. Then think back to a world of 1928 and you have their archetype, Lowell T. Schmaltz, THE MAN WHO KNEW COOLIDGE. The book is a hoot.

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