The Sauk Centre herald., 1930-11-13
Lewis Wants to Get Rid
Of Bad Boy Reputation
Only Wants to Be Known as Nov
elist-Keeps Opinion of Mid
west Private

New York, Nov. 8 = Sinclair
Lewis, Nobel prize winner of 1880,
would like to be rid of his bad
boy" reputation.
He has been called names against
his wishes-this tall, thin, nervous,
red-haired satirist who put Main
Street" and "Babbitt" into the
American vocabulary.
Critics have called him roman
tic realist, reformer. He has
been accused of attacking small
towns, civic boosters, preachers,
doctors, business men, all because
he went to them for his characters.
II wish," said Lewis, they'd just
let me be novelist"
He has his private opinion of the
middle west, but he insists on
keeping it private. He was born
at Sauk Centre, MINI.
He prefers to talk about his at
tempts at journalism, or, better
yet, the star reporting of his wife,
Dorothy Thompson Lewis.
"He has an almost childlike ad-
miration," his wife once said, "for
anyone who can hold a job on a
newspaper"
Lewis couldn't. His first news
paper work was in New Haven,
Conn.,, while he was attending Yale.
'It was the only newspaper job
I wasn't fired FROM" he said
After I left New Haven I went
to the Waterloo, Iowa, Courier, at
$18 a week. I was editorial writer,
proofreader, telegraph editor and
dramatic critic.
II was fired in the middle of the
first week. The editor came to me
and said: I've got telegram. from
your successor"
'What?' I said.
" I've got telegram from your
successor. I didn't want to say
anything until heard from him.
But We'll give you a full weeks
pay. We want our boys to leave
satisfied
Lewis came to New York. For a
few weeks he was with the charity
organization society, interviewing
applicants for charity. He didn't
fit there, either.
So he borrowed $1OO and went to
California. The father of Stephen
Vincent Benet, the poet, was COM
mander of the arsenal at Benica.
He put Lewis up in the arsenal for
three months. Lewis stayed in Cali
fornia about year and wrote
poetry, short stories and jokes. He
sold one thing-a joke. He worked
on the old San Francisco Bulletin,
then for the Associated Press.
'T guess I was a bad reporter. I
couldn't go out and get story in
which I was not interested.
II soon was back in Washington
as editor office boy-of the
Vota Review, magazine for the
deaf. Then I came to New York
to work for publishing house.
''The Bulletin had paid me $50 a
week, the Associated Press paid
me $25, the Vota Review SIS, and
the New York job $3.50. That
was my progress" 6 -.
Lewis had left Yale at the be-
ginning of his senior year and
joined Helicon hall, a New Jersey
colony founded by Upton Sinclair.
There he listened to Emma Gold
man and wrote poetry.
After a while he moved to an
obscure bedroom in Manhattan's
gas house district. He wrote jokes
and was assistant editor of now
defunct magazine. Then he went
back to Yale and got his E. "A. de-
gree in 1908.
It was while he was working in
a publishers office in New York,
after his discouraging newspaper
career, that he wrote his first nov
ell, "Our Mr.. Wrenn." Since then he
has written II novels and two
plays. The novels have sold 1859,
900 copies in English and several
hundred thousand more in trans
lations. The plays were failures.
Of the money his novels earned
him, he said he has "plenty."