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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1920s) Elmer Gantry
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1920s Highlights
Books
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Elmer Gantry
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(MARCH 14, 1927)
</p>
<p> Elmer Gantry--Sinclair Lewis. Author Sinclair Lewis, whose
position as National Champion Castigator is challenged only by
his fellow idealist, Critic Henry Louis Mencken, has made
another large roundup of grunting, whining, roaring, mewing,
driveling, snouting creatures--of fiction--which, like an
infuriated swineherd, he can beat, goad, tweak, tail-twist,
eye-jab, belly-thwack, spatter with sty-filth and consign to
perdition. the new collection closely resembles the herd
obtained on the Castigator's last foray against the medical
profession (Arrowsmith, 1925) and a parallel course is run, from
upcreek tabernacles, through a hayseed college and seminary to
a big-city edifice with a revolving electric cross. But the
Arrowsmith plot is altered. This time the Castigator, instead of
exerting his greatest efforts in harrying a fine-mettled
creature to refuge in the wilderness, singles out the biggest
boar in sight and hounds him into a gratifyingly slimy slough.
The tale has an obscure hero, another Lewisian lie-hunter who,
to purge the last bitter dregs of pity and fear, gets his gentle
eyes and mouth whipped to a black pulp by the K.K.K. before he
is released. But the boar is the chief sacrifice and its name
has the inimitable Lewis smack, Elmer Gantry.
</p>
<p> What folk of the 21st Century are going to ask about 20th
Century cinemas, tabloid newspapers and this book, is: "Did such
people really live in the U.S.?" Their hastier historians will
say: "Yes," and show convincing clippings from the N.Y. times's
rag editions (instituted 1927) about John Roach Straton, Edward
Hall and Aimee Semple McPherson. Of course, these headliners are
no more representative of the U.S. Senate. But the Castigator,
trained on newspapers to inflict sansculottism, portrays
skeletal types of Americanos with all the malice, which is more
than all the art, of which he is capable. The clerical creatures
in Elmer Gantry are children of ideas and the ideas seem to have
been shipped up out of unhappy memories of the Sauk Centre
Sunday School, with all the panicky fury of a believer's
wrestling with Doubt. This wrestling has cost the Castigator ill
nature, megalomania, nervous breakdowns and the creatures of his
forced moods are far less credible, as contemporary humanity,
than Hogarth's Gin Alleyites, Swift's Anglo-Lilliputs or even
Dante's infernals. As literature Elmer Gantry is compelling and
permanent, but only for its violent virtuosity.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>