Ditch-Digging and Bricklaying: Sinclair Lewis on Main Street

Last night, as part of my five-year plan to read the Essentials , I started Main Street , Sinclair Lewis’ 1920 satire of small-town life in the Midwest. I didn’t get too far before I bonded with the author’s irascibility.

In 1937, his publisher asked him to write a new introduction to the book and Lewis reluctantly complied:

I must, says the publisher of this edition of Main Street, write an introduction; and what, he suggests, with the blandness characteristic of all publishers urging slothful...