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Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man

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For whatever reason you choose to read the novels of Sinclair Lewis and no matter what you are looking for (e.g.his attack on Rotary Clubs, amusing lists of place names, 20th century American colloguialisms, etc.), there are certain people or things which will pop up at you again and again. There is a quixotic young man or woman (or both) yearning to chuck job, neighborhood, small town or boredom for travel and adventure in at least relatively exotic places, yearning hotly for "somewhere else." There is personal loneliness and the hero's growing sense that being lonely is the greatest problem of his life. Experiments are made to counteract loneliness: plunging feverishly into work, seeking unattainable women friends, settling for conventional but reliable male friends, or such blind alleys as drink and dissipation.

Can narrowly focused work alone make a man happy? Must a man have more interests than his work, no matter how distracting those "temptations" are: e.g. golf, a wife, going to operas, children, travel? Can anyone possibly "have it all?" If not, is it desirable to strike a balance between work and play?

Lewis's first novel, the 1914 OUR MR. WRENN: THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN probes such questions. William Wrenn, age 34 in 1910, is a bachelor who frequents motion picture halls and saves his pennies for travel to fabulous India or Java. He has worked for some years for a New York job house buying and selling knickknacks. One fine day, he gets a modest legacy which permits him to quit his work, give notice to the landlady of his boarding house and ship out on a cattle boat for Liverpool. During a few weeks in London and tramping about the English countryside Our Mr. Wrenn continues evolving into his latent personality "Bill Wrenn," a bully boy tough who had proven himself with his fists on the cattle boat. In London Wrenn meets the gorgeous red headed art student Istra Nash who teaches him to "play" with her and be on the lookout with her for rare "interesting persons. But Istra treats him in a motherly albeit palsy way and usually calls him "Mousey," a name he only slowly outgrows thanks to the all too often listless "Bill Wrenn" within him. Istra's key question to him is, "Who do you play with --know?"

In Wrenn's case, at least, "playing" or dalliance is not a permanent solution to loneliness. He had tried a he man version of it earlier with a comrade on the cattle boat. But playmates of either sex are footloose and do not want permanence or commitment. Nor is Wrenn much tempted by alcohol or sex. Our Mr. Wrenn decides that for him happiness will somehow have to be built on "The Job" back in New York, on any humdrum unimaginative friends he will be lucky to meet and on not much else.

Back in New York, Our Mr. Wrenn hurls himself into work with his new found Bill Wrenn drive and hustle and begins to rise within the company. He marries Nelly Croubel, a lingerie saleswoman who offers not much as a playmate, but is kind and loving. His striving, his quest all fall into place for William/Bill during an ordinary walk with his ordinary girl (Ch. XVI): "Then, in a millionth of a second, he who had been a wanderer in the lonely grey regions of a detached man's heart knew the pity of love, all its emotion, and the infinite care for the beloved that makes a man of a rusty sales-clerk." -OOO-

Our Mr. Wrenn. The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man by Sinclair Lewis. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

Excellent read, extremely interesting and intelligent prose. If you enjoy it half as much as I did, you'll love it.