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THE PRODIGAL PARENTS

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The year 1938 in America would not have found many viewers at all of TV family sitcoms. Hence, Sinclair Lewis's THE PRODIGAL PARENTS could do no more than anticipate The Beaver, Archie Bunker, Dan and Rosie, Ted Bundy, Samantha of Bewitched and other later favorites.

The novel's hero, Frederick William Cornplow ("Fred"), on the eve of his 56th birthday, is a very successful retailer and wholesaler of automobiles and recreational vehicles. He has solicitously taken good financial care of his parents and siblings. He is very fond of his kindly wife Hazel. But he draws the line (in theory if not always in practice) when it comes to coddling his demanding "you owe me a living" 28 year old Vassar graduate Sara (baptized Sarah) who still lives comfortably at home and gives no sign of moving out. Then there is Fred's and Hazel's handsome college student son Howard, a dreamer of fantastic dreams without a practical bone to his name. Curiously, Howard is much loved by Annabel Staybridge, daughter of the richest, most aristocratic businessman in Sachem Falls, New York.

Fred shakes up his children when he announces out of nowhere that we will retire in one year and travel. This does not fit in with the plans of his children, especially Sara. Fred has to stay Fred and take care of them! The rest of the novel presents Fred constantly plotting ways to get away at least for a vacation with his wife while the children generally succeed in frustrating Fred's plans. Sara goes so far as to insist the family doctor examine her father. Fred passes with flying colors. She then tricks him into being interviewed by a psychiatrist. That is the limit for Fred who then sneaks off with his wife and spends five glorious months on ships and ashore from England to Constantinople and finally southern France. Fred and Hazel were almost cut off at the dock in Boston by son Howard and pregnant wife Annabel, Fred's most sincere admirer after his wife.

Fred wants time off to find out who he is and what is his reason for living. His children, friends, critics and doctor provide a consensus that Fred is a very ordinary person, a creature of habits which he is too weak-willed ever to break. Fred is small and must be kept small. He is not to expect much of himself. After all, no businessman is of interest to anyone except for what he does and what he earns.

Against all this Fred rebels, with a certain amount of success. Since 1914 there had been growing a counter-revolution of parents against the rebellion of Youth (Ch. 38). To him it was the Fred Cornplows down through the centuries who created civilization. Egyptian Cornplow planned the pyramids and showed compassion to sweating slaves. A Roman Fred Cornplow had conquered Syria and ruled it with justice. In the Dark Ages Father Abbot Cornplow innovated in agriculture and in building stones. Under Oliver Cromwell Fred Cornplow had tamed ecclesiastics. The American Civil War was not between Grant and Lee but "between Private Fred Cornplow of Massachusetts and Private Ed Cornplow of Alabama." Cornplows had been John Bunyan and Lord Byron. Once his name was pronounced Babbitt; another time it was Ben Franklin. "He is the eternal Bourgeois, the bourjoyce, the burgher, the Middle Class..." "He is Fred Cornplow; and when he changes his mind, that crisis is weightier than Waterloo or Thermopylae" (ch. 13) As he travels abroad, Fred hopes wistfully and at the end of the road to "be minutely great" after a lifetime of hard work where he was to others merely "greatly small" (Ch. 36).

The recurring Sinclair Lewis theme that travel, travel anywhere, just might bring enduring solutions to human problems is underscored in THE PRODIGAL PARENTS as in his last novel WORLD SO WIDE when Fred Cornplow approvingly quotes Kipling,

"For to admire an' for to see,
For to be'old this world so wide--
It never done no good to me,
But I can't drop it if I tried."

Under ceaseless criticizing by his gimme, gimme son and daughter, Fred hammers out some truths about American families. Children have become bossy and scare their parents (Ch. 26). When Howard and Annabel marry, Fred doesn't mind the idea of a grandson but does not "figure on being both granddad and dad" (Ch. 29).

The novel's already brisk pace accelerates toward the end. Daughter in law Annabel and recently born Franklin Delano Cornplow arrive unannounced on the cote d'azur. She has left Howard Cornplow, who has become a drunken mess. Fred rushes back home alone to Sachem Falls to find his daughter Sara now married and happily bossing her husband. Fred nurses Howard back to health and takes him fishing in Canada. There one day Fred's wife Hazel who is also Howard's mother arrives at their lakeside fishing camp in a canoe piloted by a tall Indian. She reports that Annabel is in Paris studying. Their baby is there too, thriving. His mother tells Howard that his wife "ought to stay away until you earn her." That is a novel idea to the much pampered Howard. But he assents: "Hm, Man earn his own wife? Well, maybe it isn't such a sour idea. It' ll be something to work for." (Ch. 40) And the Cornplow family begins to knit itself back together.

Everyman can dream of greatness. Everyman occasionally breaks the habit of being ordinary and tastes greatness or at least tastes now and then doing what he would like to do. That taste will have to suffice.

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