Sinclair Lewis
A Self-portrait.

I read in the public prints that the man Lewis, as
Wodehouse would call him, is a raging reformer, an
embittered satirist, a realist dreary as cold gravy, and
a bustling journalist. I don't know. Maybe. The critics
ought to know — it's their job. True, these categories
are mutually contradictory, but the same critics can
undoubtedly explain a little matter like that. Only, I
should have thought Brother Lewis was essentially a
story-teller — just as naive, excited, unselfconscious
as the Arab story-tellers about the caravan fires seven
hundred years ago, or as O. Henry in a hotel room on Twenty-
third Street furiously turning out tales for dinner and
red-ink money. In his stories Lewis does not happen to be
amused only by the sea or by midnight encounters on the
Avenue, but oftener by the adventure of the soul in religion
and patriotism and social climbing. But they are essentially
stories just the same. And as for the man Lewis himself
and his private personality, I rather doubt his having any,
outside those stories.