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“Sure. You bet you have,” said Kennicott. “Well, good night. Sort of feels to me like it might snow tomorrow. Have to be thinking about putting up the storm-windows pretty soon. Say, did you notice whether the girl put that screwdriver back?”

ENDNOTES

1 (p. 6) the University Settlement: The first settlement house in America, the University Settlement was established in 1886 by Stanton Coit and originally named the Neighborhood Guild. The settlement movement was at the cutting edge of social reform for decades, and it continues, in a modified form, today. Its purpose was to improve living conditions in city slums and help the “settlement” of new immigrants through various services, including adult education and Americanization classes, trade and vocational training, provisions for the schooling of children, and public health programs.

2 (p. 71) Sir Thomas Browne, Thoreau, Agnes Repplier, Arthur Symons, Claude Wasbburn, Charles Flandrau: Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English physician, scholar, and writer, and author of Religio Medici (1643) and Vulgar Errors (1646). Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American writer, mystic, and transcendentalist, and author of Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). Agnes Repplier (1858-1950) was a Philadelphia author and essayist. Arthur Symons (1865-1945) was an English poet and influential critic, and author of The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899). Claude Washburn (1883-1926) was a Minnesota writer and friend of Sinclair Lewis, and author of the novel Gerald Northrop (1914). Charles Flandrau (1871-1938) was a witty Minnesota author and journalist, and author of The Diary of a Freshman (1901) and Viva Mexico (1908).

3 (p. 215) the Little Theaters: The Little Theaters were amateur or semi-professional theater groups with an artistic rather than a commercial agenda. The Little Theater movement was strong in the early part of the twentieth century through the 1930s; it familiarized the public with many of the period’s great playwrights, including Anton Chekhov, William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, Sean O‘Casey, Eugene O’Neill, Oscar Wilde, and Clifford Odets. Some of the most influential of these theaters were the Moscow Art Theater, the Abbey Theatre and the Irish National Theater, the Washington Square Players in New York, the Provincetown Players in Massachusetts, and the Theater Guild in New York.

COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.

Comments

THE NATION

“Main Street” would add to the power and distinction of the contemporary literature of any country. [Sinclair Lewis] must not again forget the responsibility which his talent involves, nor his own sure knowledge that our literature and our civilization need just such books as this. —November 10, 1920

THE NEW YORK TIMES

A remarkable book is this latest by Sinclair Lewis. A novel, yes, but so unusual as not to fall easily into a class. There is practically no plot, yet the book is absorbing. It is so much like life itself, so extraordinarily real. These people are actual folk, and there was never better dialogue written than their revealing talk. The book might have been cut without harm, possibly, for there is an infinite amount of detail, yet this very detail has its power, exerts its magic. The latter half is the more forcefully, clearly written, moves more soundly. In fact, one cannot shake off the impression that this book was begun long ago, when Mr. Lewis was but recently out of college, laid aside, and taken up lately, to be rewritten and reconstructed