which seem less brilliant than laborious to bystanders not particularly
concerned in his crusade. The question, of course, arises whether the
ancient war upon stupidity is a better literary cause to fight in than
the equally ancient war upon sin. Both narrow themselves to doctrinal
contentions, apparently forgetting for the moment that either being
virtuous or being intelligent is but a half--or thereabouts--of
existence, and that the two qualities are hopelessly intertwined. There
are thoughtful novelists who, as they do not condemn lapses of virtue
too harshly, so also do not too harshly condemn deficiencies of
intelligence, feeling that the common humanity of men and women is
enough to make them fit for fiction. Mr. Lewis must be thought of as
sitting in the seat of the scornful, with the satirists rather than with
the poets, must be seen to recall the earlier, vexed, sardonic _Spoon
River_ rather than the later, calmer, loftier.

Satire and moralism, however, have large rights in the domain of
literature. Had Mr. Lewis lacked remarkable gifts he could never have
written a book which got its vast popularity by assailing the populace.
The reception of _Main Street_ is a memorable episode in literary
history. Thousands doubtless read it merely to quarrel with it; other
thousands to find out what all the world was talking about; still other
thousands to rejoice in a satire which they thought to be at the
expense of stupid people never once identified with themselves; but that
thousands and hundreds of thousands read it is proof enough that
complacency was not absolutely victorious and that the war was on.


_Zona Gale_

Before _Main Street_ Sinclair Lewis, though the author of such promising