It Can't Happen Here: A Novel by Sinclair Lewis


My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
A charismatic Democratic candidate whose speeches are more memorable than the content... hmmm.... Hints of populism to get the support of the most naive voters -- who think the candidate will give them all they need -- with no intention of following through... hmmmm... Bailing out the big companies in order to control them and the economy... hmmm... Personality cults.... hmmm...



The idea is eerily prescient, though it took two parties and two Presidents in real life. I know that I will be labeled a "Republican" or a "conservative" (the currently rankest epithets) for saying that Barack Obama is a closer match to Berzelius Windrip than George W. Bush, but it is just the honest truth. Also, I am a free-market populist of my own ideology, which I call "Popular Capitalism", so the labels are wrong. It is part of Lewis' genius that he recognizes that type of mislabeling as an integral part of the fascist toolbox.



However, the writing is uneven. It is poetic in parts but the imagery doesn't tie with the rest of the work. The chronology is loose towards the end for no particular reason, leading some readers to think that Lewis forgot who was killed when. The ending, though ultimately realistic, trails off as if Lewis got tired of writing.



I don't think, however, that the main character, Doremus Jessup, being unsympathetic was a flaw of the book. The whole point is to show that a Fascist dictatorship can happen here, so if Jessup was sympathetic enough to us, he would have been sympathetic enough to his fellow citizens to be a "hero" and would have garnered enough support to stop or overthrow the regime. There are no sympathetic characters in the book, so it can happen here.



My overall impression is that Lewis rushed to get this book out before the 1936 Presidential campaign. He probably saw the voter as getting complacent after Huey Long's assassination in thinking "it can't happen here." Though I would differ with Lewis in his assessment of Long, colored as it was by virulently anti-Long and anti-populist propaganda of the time, he is certainly correct in pointing out that there were threats to liberty which did not bear the scapegoated name of "Huey Long". The importance of this message and of getting it out in 1935, in time for the 1936 elections was greater for Lewis than producing a literary masterpiece.


View all my reviews.