University of Northern Iowa

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair LewisReview by: Herschel BrickellThe North American Review, Vol. 240, No. 3 (Dec., 1935), pp. 543-546Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25114679 .

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Book Reviews

IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE. By Sinclair Lewis. Doubleday Doran, $2.50.

SINCLAIR

LEWIS' latest novel, "It Can't Happen Here," which takes its title from the typical American remark

concerning the possibility of a dictatorship in this country, is a piece of journalistic fiction in every page of which is the

sound of a swiftly pounded typewriter. In fact, without listen

ing, the attentive reader will catch in its pages the rattle of the

flying keys and the tinkle of the bell at the end of the line.

Written at a white heat, the novel is filled with feeling, as

well as with the sharp and accurate observation that has

always marked Mr. Lewis' work even when it has failed, as

has often been the case, to reach his top mark. One might naturally suppose that such a book would call for the exercise

of a good deal of creative imagination, but actually Mr. Lewis

has saved himself from the exercise of a faculty for which he

has never been noted by the simple expedient of transferring what has happened in other countries to this; there is a strik

ing resemblance to our dictatorship in that of Hitler ? too

striking, in fact, for credible accuracy. The parts of the book that relate to the actual operations of

the dictatorship are but little more than rewritten passages from the many volumes that have told of hardships and cruel

ties in Nazi Germany. Here again, as in the whole plan and

tempo of the novel, the author is writing as a journalist, taking available material and reshaping it, but not enough so to

suit his own purposes. His descriptions of concentration camps, for example,

parallel exactly similar descriptions of such institutions in

Germany, and when he insists upon the widespread existence of homosexuality from the top to the bottom of the dictator

ship, it is seen that he is merely following an established

pattern, rather than trying to work out an American version. The principal virtue of the work, aside from the fact that it

represents Mr. Lewis as a tale-teller, the writer of exciting and even gripping narrative which carries the reader along at a

[543]

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[ 544 ] THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

breathless speed, lies in its re-statement of the liberal principles that belong to the generation of Americans of which Mr. Lewis

himself is a member. For, without laboring the point too much, he makes it clear that both fascism and communism will in

evitably find hard going in this country merely because of the

existence of a large number of people who do not have to

rationalize their belief in freedom of thought and expression, as well as in the exercise of the kindlier virtues, but whose

minds are set on these matters in such a way that nothing but death can change them.

In other words, Mr. Lewis again makes it apparent that as much as he has scolded his fellow-Americans ? even in the

present book he finds them relieved of their dictatorship but

uncertain what they want ? there has never been any doubt

in his mind that certain Americans are possessed of admirable

qualities. Toward these he can be as gentle, almost sentimental, as he can be brutal to the whole tribe of hypocrites and stuffed

shirts. Hence, while the present book is filled with rude and raucous laughter at many of our follies, it is also tender toward

what Mr. Lewis considers our best in both men and women.

The spokesman for his own opinions is Doremus Jessup, a

sixty-odd-year-old newspaper editor in the Vermont town of

Fort Jessup. Mr. Lewis remains loyal to his own Middle West in having the "radical" territory lead in the revolt against the

dictatorship, but his real tribute is to the state of his adoption.

Jessup is shrewd, whimsical and liberal to the bone, quite a

"character."

Often in his cogitations the accents of Mr. Lewis himself are

unmistakable. This is a familiar Lewis trick, of course, elbow

ing the character aside to do the talking himself. In fact, there

is one place where the phrase, "meditated Jessup," seems

purely an interpolation, an afterthought, as if Mr. Lewis in

making his revision had decided that it would be more in

accordance with the rules of fiction if he retired a little more

from the center of the stage. His plan for the establishment of the dictatorship is not by

the use of force and arms, which the Communists declare is

the only possible method. On the contrary, he prophesies the next presidential election as resulting in the choice of one Buzz

Windrip, who more nearly resembles the dead Huey Long

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BOOK REVIEWS [ 545 ] than anyone else at present in the political picture. (The death

of Long takes some of the punch out of Mr. Lewis's book, inci

dentally.) Windrip is full of fair promises, $5,000 a year for

everybody, and so on; and he is greatly aided by Bishop

Prang, the famous broadcaster, who is a Methodist Father

Coughlin. The real devil in the Windrip administration is Lee

Sarason, who more nearly resembles Hitler than he does an

American. Windrip is in the main a sort of poker-playing,

whiskey-drinking Harding, a good-natured, not very shrewd

politician, who knows how to rouse the rabble and to play

"Man-of-the-People" with finish and effect.

The League of Forgotten Men is the basis of Windrip's

strength, and his administration is backed by the Minute Men, who are Hitler's Brown Shirts or Mussolini's Black Shirts all over again, taking the trick of beating with steel tapes from one

and the use of castor oil from the other.

Eventually, after the dictatorship has grown in severity, and has resulted in what might be expected in the way of

suppression of all freedom, Sarason, the diabolical, succeeds

in getting rid of Windrip by sending him off to France. Then

Sarason is killed by Haik, another member of the group, and

things go from bad to worse the country over until the reaction sets in and the curtain falls, with our old friend Doremus

Jessup active in what seems to be an excellent chance of the

reestablishment of democratic government, with an honest liberal Republican, Walt Trowbridge, as its head.

While all this is happening, Jessup has lost his paper, and is sent away to a concentration camp for his subversive activities in printing and distributing anti-Windrip propaganda. His

daughter Mary, whose husband has been murdered, takes her melodramatic revenge by diving her airplane into a ship carrying the judge who sentenced her husband. His sweetheart, Lorinda, who is another one of Mr. Lewis's "free women," is done with complete sympathy

? the same sort of tender affec tion as Sissy, the youngest Jessup child, who sounds, one must

admit, slightly antiquated, as if she were a left-over flapper from the post-war revolt of youth.

It is easy to see that in describing the course of the dictator

ship alone, with the German pattern at hand, Mr. Lewis is

handling essentially dramatic material. This, coupled with his

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[ 546 ] THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

satirical jibes, his sketches of many living people, particularly of politicians

? one way he has of dodging the identification of his characters with the living, or the freshly dead, as in the case of Huey Long, is to put in both

? his joshing of patriotic songs, and the warm friendliness of his treatment of the

Vermonters he likes, makes his book quite as readable as

anything he has ever done. It is not literature, nor is it in any sense profound. But it is unadulterated Sinclair Lewis, and it

represents him perfectly as the essential journalist he has

always been.

I may add, as a personal observation, that the book left me

unconvinced of the possibility of a dictatorship's arriving any time soon, or in the manner described by Mr. Lewis. The

difference between us is that I have more faith in the Doremus

Jessups than he has; I still think they would go into action

before a Buzz Windrip and a Lee Sarason got as far as the

White House. HERSCHEL BRIGKELL

VEIN OF IRON. By Ellen Glasgow. Harcourt Brace, $2.50.

MUCH

of our modern fiction is either a cry of despair, or a

more or less whining protest against what the writers

regard as the general futility of life. Everything, they declare,

being for the worst in this worst of all possible worlds, the only amelioration to weariness and woe is getting drunk continu

ally, if not continuously, But now, ringing high above this

wailing chorus, Ellen Glasgow's new novel comes like a

trumpet call, stirring men's minds and hearts to a renewal, not

so much of hope or faith, as of pride and fortitude. It is possi

ble, proclaims this book by America's foremost novelist, not

merely to refuse to yield to misfortune but even, if you are

proud enough and strong enough, to wring something of hap

piness out of pain and disappointment. At the very last, John Fincastle attains a peace which is greater than joy; his daugh ter Ada, whose story the novel tells, closes it on a note of

triumph. Miss Glasgow has a full appreciation of the power of

heredity, and shows it as a dominant factor in the lives of her

characters. The Fincastles were Scotch Presbyterians who had

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