Arrowsmith

published	1998 by Signet Classics
first published	1925
binding	Paperback
isbn	0451526910 (isbn13: 9780451526915)
ebook
pages	440
literary awards	Pulitzer Prize
description	As the son and grandson of physicians, Sinclair Lewis had a store of experiences and imparted knowledge to draw upon for Arrowsmith.Published i...more [close] As the son and grandson of physicians, Sinclair Lewis had a store of experiences and imparted knowledge to draw upon for Arrowsmith.Published in 1925, after three years of anticipation, the book follows the life of Martin Arrowsmith, a rather ordinary fellow who gets his first taste of medicine at 14 as an assistant to the drunken physician in his home town. It is Leora Tozer who makes Martin's life extraordinary. With vitality and love, she urges him beyond the confines of the mundane to risk answering his true calling as a scientist and researcher. Not even her tragic death can extinguish her spirit or her impact on Martin's life. [close]
date added	12-18-06 edit book

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Pulitzer Winners: Fiction

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Tyler rated it:

08/04/08

bookshelves: 20th-century

Read in August, 2008

recommended to Tyler by: _Pulitzer Prize award
recommends it for: _anyone

What a premise for a book: A young man falls in love, not just with a young woman, but with a quest. This is the passion that infuses Arrowsmith. How the author was able to put blood into such an idea explains in part the Pulitzer prize.

The other part that explains the award is that the book is a good read. Covering the nearly 20 years during which a student (and later researcher) learns to embrace his life's calling, the plot never stalls. The constant motion guides us along with Mar...more What a premise for a book: A young man falls in love, not just with a young woman, but with a quest. This is the passion that infuses Arrowsmith. How the author was able to put blood into such an idea explains in part the Pulitzer prize.

The other part that explains the award is that the book is a good read. Covering the nearly 20 years during which a student (and later researcher) learns to embrace his life's calling, the plot never stalls. The constant motion guides us along with Martin Arrowsmith as he follows the thread leading him out of a labyrinth of false promises, and up upon his own personal road less traveled by.

During my reading, I couldn't help comparing the book to The Fountainhead, a book with a similar moral and strikingly similar plot elements. The notion of man as a hero who overcomes constant adversity drives the action in both stories. But Arrowsmith, published some 20 years before, is the better book. One difference is that the later book presents us with a young hero having a fully developed moral sense to start with, and with our book here we see, to better effect, how a man becomes a heroic figure in the first place -- how he learns which choices really matter. Another point of contrast lies in the role of capitalism, which helps the protagonist in The Fountainhead but hampers Martin in his own search for creative freedom. Either way, the effective status of the free market plays a crucial role in both books.

In further contrast, one finds in Martin a callow lad vulnerable to poor judgment, a flaw that elicits an indulgent sympathy. This high-strung fellow with a slightly nerdy disposition, black hair on pale skin and "dreamy" eyes, yaps away with an impossible "awe shucks" Midwestern affectation. His voice sometimes hits an jarringly piercing note; at other points his brusque rudeness abrades. Testy frustration at times pushes him to overwrought tears. And does his own self-discovery, in the end, arrive at the expense of a family member? Proneness to error makes up the bread and butter of the plot.

Rare for a novel, the scientific method is a theme, for Martin's self-actualization depends on it. The necessity of controls in a solid experiment and the need for uninterrupted research factor into the story. The corrupting power of commerce and personal popularity is a danger in which the young doctor finds himself entangled again and again. Like him, we find ourselves even today grappling with the effect that the profit motive exerts on clinical research.

Let's not think that a man turned so inward ends up entirely alone. But again, we find Martin's affections becoming psychological, possibly even at the expense of the sexual and familial. For such as he, the attraction of the mental bond two people can forge is a discovery that sets his psychic makeup apart from the crowd.

To this book, with its distinctive Midwestern tang, I gave a high rating. I recommend it for readers who are looking for an unlikely subject and an unusual hero, a protagonist pushing against a riptide toward unexpected contentment....less

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4 comments

Ellie rated it:

05/10/07

Read in May, 2005

I was a bit apprehensive before starting this book, because it was published in 1924 and I thought perhaps the language and structure would be too old-fashioned and it would be terribly boring and a drag to get through. I was very pleasantly surprised, however. The language itself is a bit old-fashioned, but the structure is not, and the book is thoughtful, funny, and enjoyable to read. It’s about this guy Martin Arrowsmith who goes to college and then medical school (“medic school;” appar...more I was a bit apprehensive before starting this book, because it was published in 1924 and I thought perhaps the language and structure would be too old-fashioned and it would be terribly boring and a drag to get through. I was very pleasantly surprised, however. The language itself is a bit old-fashioned, but the structure is not, and the book is thoughtful, funny, and enjoyable to read. It’s about this guy Martin Arrowsmith who goes to college and then medical school (“medic school;” apparently back then you didn’t have to go to college first), and his life as a doctor. He tries out private practice in a semi-rural area, public health, private practice as part of a large and rich partnership in the city, and his real love in life, research. I was surprised that the themes match so closely with the themes in medicine today. The issues of doing procedures only for profit, commercialism in medicine, the idea of “selling out”, the difficulties of being a small-town doctor, the lure of research, funding for research and the absurdity of the direction of research institutes, and so many others. Martin as a student rails against selling out and doing procedures for profit, just becoming a doctor for the money, and then at one point is drawn into a practice where he is forced to do just that. He believes research is the loftiest of goals, and in fact reveres his mentor Professor Gottlieb as almost a saint or a god of research. As a public health official he is faced with a director spouting silly poetry about cleanliness and in fact giving in to all of the businesses and doing nothing for the real scientific goals of containing disease. When he travels to a Caribbean island to treat the plague with his newly discovered bacteriophage, he forces himself to run a scientific experiment of it and only treat half of the people in a certain village, in order to have controls. His beloved wife Leora dies, which is a very sad part of the book. He remarries into high society but hates it, he returns to research and makes something of a name for himself. I can’t go through the entire book in detail, but overall the issues it addresses are still so relevant, and the writing is very good, so I think it is a very good book. The weakest aspect is the portrayal of Leora, who is really just a shell of a person who is content to sit around all day and worship Martin. And the book doesn’t seem to have any real plot structure, just sort of travels along at the same pace and then suddenly ends. But neither of those is enough to seriously diminish the overall quality of this excellent book....less

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