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Our Mr. Wrenn
He stands out in the correspondence of the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company as "Our Mr. Wrenn," who would be writing you directly and explaining everything most satisfactorily. At thirty-four Mr. Wrenn was the sales-entry clerk of the Souvenir Company.
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1914
19 people are currently reading
171 people want to read
About the author
Sinclair Lewis
507 books1,120 followersNovelist Harry Sinclair Lewis satirized middle-class America in his 22 works, including
Babbitt
(1922) and
Elmer Gantry
(1927) and first received a Nobel Prize for literature in 1930.
Middle-class values and materialism attach unthinking George F. Babbitt, the narrow-minded, self-satisfied main character person in the novel of Sinclair Lewis.
People awarded "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."
He knowingly, insightfully, and critically viewed capitalism and materialism between the wars. People respect his strong characterizations of modern women.
Henry Louis Mencken wrote, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade...it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclai...
Middle-class values and materialism attach unthinking George F. Babbitt, the narrow-minded, self-satisfied main character person in the novel of Sinclair Lewis.
People awarded "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."
He knowingly, insightfully, and critically viewed capitalism and materialism between the wars. People respect his strong characterizations of modern women.
Henry Louis Mencken wrote, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade...it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclai...
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 22, 2018
This book is more than a window intro the minds of the prewar people from 1910's New York and a debut made by Sinclair Lewis, a future Nobel laureate, is also a coming of age story, where the simplicity of the narration cannot hide moments where the description of words unsaid are more revealing than those used in a dialogue. Wren, the lucky inheritor of a small fortune, with a penchant for travel guides, decides to forsake his job and life in New York for a trip in Europe, and in doing thiss he chooses the frugality and hard work required from those who pass the Atlantic by being employed as temporary ship workers. As a cattle herder there he gets the chance to understand the life of those poorer than him. But this social streak will not be the only one: artists, radical Englishwomen and men, simple clerks or salespeople, all will show to the hero that friendship cannot be only one based on status, political affinities or kinship. Its diversity is the one that matters.
The book is an old gem, where by reading it you unravel something forgotten, something which needs a dust up from time to time.
The book is an old gem, where by reading it you unravel something forgotten, something which needs a dust up from time to time.
May 13, 2015
I gave this book a 5 star because it kept my attention and entertained throughout when I didn't think that was possible. Mr. Wrenn is a Thurber type of character; he dreams of traveling when he has a secure job at an Art Novelty and Souvenir company in New York. Sinclair Lewis is hilarious. Being from Minnesota, I feel ashamed that I haven't read his most known novels. I will now. The question was whether he could keep me reading about this dreamer character who, after an inheritance, did part of his planned travels. Yet the story is really about Mr. Wrenn and even when his traveling was cut short from disillusionment and a woman, his life in New York was just as compelling. I could count on this book for a laugh and for entertainment. Sinclair Lewis is really as funny and poignant as James Thurber.
January 22, 2020
Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man is a 1914 novel by Sinclair Lewis. Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."I find it interesting that Lewis, at the age of 13 unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War. Who runs away to become a drummer boy? And in a war of all places? Although I'm not sure where else but in a war he would have been a drummer boy.
Getting back to our book, "Our Mr. Wrenn" was the first to be published under his real name. Now when I first learned that the thing that popped into my mind was "what book did he publish under a different name?" and here is the answer: " Lewis's first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, a Tom Swift-style potboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham."
I must say that I usually love novels by Sinclair Lewis, just thinking of Babbitmakes me want to go dig it out and start reading it; "Main Street" ," Elmer Gantry", "Dodsworth" I just love them all. However there were other ones that I wouldn't exactly say that I loved, "Free Air", "Ann Vickers", "It Can't Happen Here", I liked them but didn't love them. "Our Mr. Wrenn" falls in with those that I didn't love.
In the beginning of the story we meet our "Mr. Wrenn" a very mild, very ordinary American clerk. Mr. Wrenn was the sales-entry clerk of the Souvenir Company. He is described as "a meek little bachlor—a person of inconspicuous blue ready-made suits, and a small unsuccessful mustache, who was always bending over bills and columns of figures at a desk behind the stock room."Mr. Wrenn is not happy with his life; he does not want to work for the Souvenir Company and he does not want to live at Mrs. Zapp's boarding house:
"Mrs. Zapp was a fat landlady. When she sat down there was a straight line from her chin to her knees. She was usually sitting down. When she moved she groaned, and her apparel creaked.....Mr. Wrenn did nothing more presumptuous than sit still, in the stuffy furniture-crowded basement room, which smelled of dead food and deader pride in a race that had never existed. He sat still because the chair was broken. It had been broken now for four years."
No, Mr. Wrenn is not happy with his life; in the evenings he goes to the" Nickelorion Moving-Picture Show". There are many other picture shows that are closer to the boarding house where Mr. Wrenn lives, but at the Nickelorion is a ticket-taker who nods to all the patrons and his nod is "the most cordial nod in town. Poor, lonely Mr. Wrenn passes"ever so many other shows, just to get that cordial nod, because he had a lonely furnished room for evenings, and for daytime a tedious job that always made his head stuffy." Mr. Wrenn is a lonely man who says he has one friend where he works, Charley Carpenter, the assistant bookkeeper at the Souvenir Company. As for any other friends we are told,
"But on the old marble mantelpiece lived his friends, books from wanderland. Other friends the room had rarely known. It was hard enough for Mr. Wrenn to get acquainted with people, anyway, and Mrs. Zapp did not expect her gennulman lodgers to entertain. So Mr. Wrenn had given up asking even Charley Carpenter, the assistant bookkeeper at the Souvenir Company, to call. That left him the books, which he now caressed with small eager finger-tips. He picked out a P. & O. circular, and hastily left for fairyland."
What Mr. Wrenn wants to do above all else is travel, foreign travel is the aim and goal of his life. He lives as cheaply as possible saving up all his money for "future great traveling". We are told that Mr. Wrenn is "so experienced in all of travel, save the traveling."He dreams of the day when he can leave "The Job" forever and travel the world although, "his fear of losing The Job was almost equal to his desire to resign from The Job."
Then one day it happens, Mr. Wrenn receives a small inheritance, nine hundred and forty dollars, which is enough to allow him to quit his job and go abroad, for a while anyway. In the words of meek Mr. Wrenn:
"Gee! It's happened. I could travel all the time. I guess I won't be--very much--afraid of wrecks and stuff. . . . Things like that. . . . Gee! If I don't get to bed I'll be late at the office in the morning!"
He does resign from his job, a thing that surprised me, I never thought he would have the nerve to do it. Two weeks after leaving his job:
"He was lying abed at eight-thirty on a morning of late June, two weeks after leaving the Souvenir Company, deliberately hunting over his pillow for cool spots, very hot and restless in the legs and enormously depressed in the soul. He would have got up had there been anything to get up for. There was nothing, yet he felt uneasily guilty. For two weeks he had been afraid of losing, by neglect, the job he had already voluntarily given up. So there are men whom the fear of death has driven to suicide."
So poor Mr. Wrenn still hasn't begun his grand dream of traveling the world. We are told that he has planned so many trips these years that now he can't decide on any one of them for more than an hour at a time, and that after saving money for his trip for so many years he can't bring himself to spend it. This is the state he is in when one day he happens to see a help wanted advertisement:
"MEN WANTED. Free passage on cattle-boats to Liverpool feeding cattle. Low fee. Easy work. Fast boats. Apply International and Atlantic Employment Bureau,—Greenwich Street."
This is how he gets to Europe, on a cattle boat. It is on this boat that he makes another friend, a youth named Morton who is a clerk for the P.R.R. in New York. Mr. Wrenn is excited about having a new friend and makes plans of how he and his friend will travel through the countries together, then when the money is gone they will get jobs and work together. Morton, however has other ideas and shortly after arriving in Liverpool Wrenn finds himself alone again. Now he begins his trip through England always dwelling on his friend Morton. "Wouldn't Morty have loved this?" or "Wouldn't Morty have loved that?" he is often wondering. Mr. Wrenn then spends a few lonely weeks in England, until he meets the elegant art student Istra Nash. Mr. Wrenn and Istra begin traveling through England together and of course he falls in love with her, but she too leaves him. After losing Istra he sits in his room and thinking that now he had no friend in all the world.
"Friends… I got to make friends, now I know what they are…. Funny some guys don't make friends. Mustn't forget. Got to make lots of 'em in New York. Learn how to make 'em."
He has decided to return to America. His travels are over. He sails for New York, one month and seventeen days after leaving Portland.
There is much more to the story than this. There is his return to Mrs. Zapp's boarding house and the reaction of the people there. There is his returning to his old job at the Souvenir Company which he seemed to think would be as easy as walking through the door and he would have the job just as if it were simply another work day. It wasn't as easy to come back to his company as he thought it would be, but in the end worked out well. There is the great change in his old pal Charley that has taken place in the short amount of time he has been gone. There is his reunion with Morton, and near the end of the novel his reunion with Istra, neither reunion ending the way Mr. Wrenn thought it would.
If I would have to say what I thought the theme of the novel was I would say loneliness. Mr. Wrenn is an extremely lonely man, perhaps the loneliest man I've ever known in a novel, at least in the beginning. Perhaps not though, for much of the novel Mr. Wrenn seems desperately seeking a friend, he seems so lonely to me, but perhaps the theme isn't loneliness, perhaps it is friendship. Mr. Wrenn wants friends, he needs friends, and when he returns to New York he does work harder at making friends than every before. Does Our Mr. Wrenn end up a happier, less lonely man surrounded by friends and loved ones? Read the book.
Getting back to our book, "Our Mr. Wrenn" was the first to be published under his real name. Now when I first learned that the thing that popped into my mind was "what book did he publish under a different name?" and here is the answer: " Lewis's first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, a Tom Swift-style potboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham."
I must say that I usually love novels by Sinclair Lewis, just thinking of Babbitmakes me want to go dig it out and start reading it; "Main Street" ," Elmer Gantry", "Dodsworth" I just love them all. However there were other ones that I wouldn't exactly say that I loved, "Free Air", "Ann Vickers", "It Can't Happen Here", I liked them but didn't love them. "Our Mr. Wrenn" falls in with those that I didn't love.
In the beginning of the story we meet our "Mr. Wrenn" a very mild, very ordinary American clerk. Mr. Wrenn was the sales-entry clerk of the Souvenir Company. He is described as "a meek little bachlor—a person of inconspicuous blue ready-made suits, and a small unsuccessful mustache, who was always bending over bills and columns of figures at a desk behind the stock room."Mr. Wrenn is not happy with his life; he does not want to work for the Souvenir Company and he does not want to live at Mrs. Zapp's boarding house:
"Mrs. Zapp was a fat landlady. When she sat down there was a straight line from her chin to her knees. She was usually sitting down. When she moved she groaned, and her apparel creaked.....Mr. Wrenn did nothing more presumptuous than sit still, in the stuffy furniture-crowded basement room, which smelled of dead food and deader pride in a race that had never existed. He sat still because the chair was broken. It had been broken now for four years."
No, Mr. Wrenn is not happy with his life; in the evenings he goes to the" Nickelorion Moving-Picture Show". There are many other picture shows that are closer to the boarding house where Mr. Wrenn lives, but at the Nickelorion is a ticket-taker who nods to all the patrons and his nod is "the most cordial nod in town. Poor, lonely Mr. Wrenn passes"ever so many other shows, just to get that cordial nod, because he had a lonely furnished room for evenings, and for daytime a tedious job that always made his head stuffy." Mr. Wrenn is a lonely man who says he has one friend where he works, Charley Carpenter, the assistant bookkeeper at the Souvenir Company. As for any other friends we are told,
"But on the old marble mantelpiece lived his friends, books from wanderland. Other friends the room had rarely known. It was hard enough for Mr. Wrenn to get acquainted with people, anyway, and Mrs. Zapp did not expect her gennulman lodgers to entertain. So Mr. Wrenn had given up asking even Charley Carpenter, the assistant bookkeeper at the Souvenir Company, to call. That left him the books, which he now caressed with small eager finger-tips. He picked out a P. & O. circular, and hastily left for fairyland."
What Mr. Wrenn wants to do above all else is travel, foreign travel is the aim and goal of his life. He lives as cheaply as possible saving up all his money for "future great traveling". We are told that Mr. Wrenn is "so experienced in all of travel, save the traveling."He dreams of the day when he can leave "The Job" forever and travel the world although, "his fear of losing The Job was almost equal to his desire to resign from The Job."
Then one day it happens, Mr. Wrenn receives a small inheritance, nine hundred and forty dollars, which is enough to allow him to quit his job and go abroad, for a while anyway. In the words of meek Mr. Wrenn:
"Gee! It's happened. I could travel all the time. I guess I won't be--very much--afraid of wrecks and stuff. . . . Things like that. . . . Gee! If I don't get to bed I'll be late at the office in the morning!"
He does resign from his job, a thing that surprised me, I never thought he would have the nerve to do it. Two weeks after leaving his job:
"He was lying abed at eight-thirty on a morning of late June, two weeks after leaving the Souvenir Company, deliberately hunting over his pillow for cool spots, very hot and restless in the legs and enormously depressed in the soul. He would have got up had there been anything to get up for. There was nothing, yet he felt uneasily guilty. For two weeks he had been afraid of losing, by neglect, the job he had already voluntarily given up. So there are men whom the fear of death has driven to suicide."
So poor Mr. Wrenn still hasn't begun his grand dream of traveling the world. We are told that he has planned so many trips these years that now he can't decide on any one of them for more than an hour at a time, and that after saving money for his trip for so many years he can't bring himself to spend it. This is the state he is in when one day he happens to see a help wanted advertisement:
"MEN WANTED. Free passage on cattle-boats to Liverpool feeding cattle. Low fee. Easy work. Fast boats. Apply International and Atlantic Employment Bureau,—Greenwich Street."
This is how he gets to Europe, on a cattle boat. It is on this boat that he makes another friend, a youth named Morton who is a clerk for the P.R.R. in New York. Mr. Wrenn is excited about having a new friend and makes plans of how he and his friend will travel through the countries together, then when the money is gone they will get jobs and work together. Morton, however has other ideas and shortly after arriving in Liverpool Wrenn finds himself alone again. Now he begins his trip through England always dwelling on his friend Morton. "Wouldn't Morty have loved this?" or "Wouldn't Morty have loved that?" he is often wondering. Mr. Wrenn then spends a few lonely weeks in England, until he meets the elegant art student Istra Nash. Mr. Wrenn and Istra begin traveling through England together and of course he falls in love with her, but she too leaves him. After losing Istra he sits in his room and thinking that now he had no friend in all the world.
"Friends… I got to make friends, now I know what they are…. Funny some guys don't make friends. Mustn't forget. Got to make lots of 'em in New York. Learn how to make 'em."
He has decided to return to America. His travels are over. He sails for New York, one month and seventeen days after leaving Portland.
There is much more to the story than this. There is his return to Mrs. Zapp's boarding house and the reaction of the people there. There is his returning to his old job at the Souvenir Company which he seemed to think would be as easy as walking through the door and he would have the job just as if it were simply another work day. It wasn't as easy to come back to his company as he thought it would be, but in the end worked out well. There is the great change in his old pal Charley that has taken place in the short amount of time he has been gone. There is his reunion with Morton, and near the end of the novel his reunion with Istra, neither reunion ending the way Mr. Wrenn thought it would.
If I would have to say what I thought the theme of the novel was I would say loneliness. Mr. Wrenn is an extremely lonely man, perhaps the loneliest man I've ever known in a novel, at least in the beginning. Perhaps not though, for much of the novel Mr. Wrenn seems desperately seeking a friend, he seems so lonely to me, but perhaps the theme isn't loneliness, perhaps it is friendship. Mr. Wrenn wants friends, he needs friends, and when he returns to New York he does work harder at making friends than every before. Does Our Mr. Wrenn end up a happier, less lonely man surrounded by friends and loved ones? Read the book.
March 13, 2019
The story of a very meek accounting clerk who hates his job and lonely life and dreams of adventure and travel until he receives a modest inheritance. So he quits his job and decides to travel. He hires on to work on a ship that is carrying cattle to get passage to England. Here he discovers that life is really just as boring for him in Europe as back home until he becomes involved in a romance that eventually ends after a few weeks. After this he returns back home to resume his old life. This was Sinclair Lewis' first full novel and was not up to the excellent standard of his later books. It didn't have his distinctive and recognizable writing style that I enjoy so much, in fact I found it a little on the boring side. It was a must read for me because of the author but not one that I would recommend to anyone.
January 31, 2014
This was sweet (un-PC word choices aside). I love the idea that you can take control of a bland existence and reshape your life at any age.
Also the librivox recording is pretty okay.
Also the librivox recording is pretty okay.
June 15, 2020
Oh gee gosh!
April 18, 2020
This is the first novel I've read from the 1930 American winner of Nobel Prize Literature. I've enjoyed reading it. Mr. Wrenn has been living in the same boarding house during many year and has been working in the same an office clerk position for as many years in a company in NY. One day he receives money inheritance and decides to quit his job to go travel on a world tour.
He traveled to England during a month and half during which he discovers truths about himself and learns about the outside world. Upon returning home, he's different from the man before traveling and at the same time he's still the same.
It is interesting to read this brief travel and return home and how the leading character changes around his life. It is true that traveling abroad or doing something outside of our world changes an individual. Although the novel is interesting, I found that for a contemporary reader the historical setting story to be too common for us nowadays.
He traveled to England during a month and half during which he discovers truths about himself and learns about the outside world. Upon returning home, he's different from the man before traveling and at the same time he's still the same.
It is interesting to read this brief travel and return home and how the leading character changes around his life. It is true that traveling abroad or doing something outside of our world changes an individual. Although the novel is interesting, I found that for a contemporary reader the historical setting story to be too common for us nowadays.
March 7, 2021
I've read most of Sinclair Lewis's "big" novels and, having recently finished one of his early books, FREE AIR, recognized that there is a worthiness to these novels written before he "made it" as well. OUR MR. WRENN, though his first regular novel, is written with the assurance of someone who is confident that he knows what he's doing. It might be a shade more conventional than his later books, but he seemingly refuses to put any effort into trying to get the reader to like his hero and, when one finally does get around to liking him, it is all the more rewarding.
August 17, 2017
I've read and loved all of Lewis' greatest achievement, which is why I sought out this lesser known early novel. Unfortunately, this one just didn't do it for me. While it had some shining moments that foreshadow Lewis' ear for dialogue and social interaction, it's often boring at times. What I liked about it most was its seemingly close depiction of life in 1910 Manhattan. This one is really only for Lewis scholars.
August 1, 2018
One of Lewis's earlier works. Not as good as some of his later, more famous novels, still a nice, light-hearted story. What I love about Lewis's books, most of them anyway, is the period in which they take place.
September 28, 2020
If you have always wanted to travel but found life got in the way, this is the book for you! Mr. Wrenn has longed to travel, but feels stuck in his boring life. When he finally gets away to Europe, he learns more about himself than he ever guessed.
September 3, 2019
The unromantic adventures of a naive man.
August 30, 2022
I always finish the book I'm reading but I couldn't with this one. I'm so confused and disappointed
October 14, 2024
I enjoyed this altho I thought the main character was a bit more clueless than necessary. However it was a good historical case study.
November 10, 2019
1934-edition. Pre war language.
Mr. Wrenn searching for purpose.
Sinclair Lewis - Nobel Prize Winner 1930
Mr. Wrenn searching for purpose.
Sinclair Lewis - Nobel Prize Winner 1930
August 2, 2019
Little known early novel by Sinclair Lewis. Mr. Wrenn was having a small and somewhat lonely life in the big city. He bravely made changes to his life, including some extended international travel. As a result of these changes, he improves his life. Even though some of the language is dated (and not pc), it is a good story about the value of taking the initiative to improve one’s life.
January 24, 2022
This was Sinclair Lewis’ first published book for grown-ups. It was about a milquetoast kind of guy who lives not far from where I grew up in NYC who quits his job and travels to Europe looking for adventure. But he’s actually a pretty bourgeois guy so he doesn’t want too much adventure. He meets The downfall of this book: racism. I did enjoy it when I read it but it was strangely forgettable. I brought it on a trip with me thinking I hadn’t read it yet and I was dumbfounded when I opened it up and realized I’d just read it a few weeks earlier. But what’s to blame here, the book? Or the lack of cover art? Or my demented mind?
August 19, 2014
I found this a very enjoyable read, though it sort of fizzled out at the end. But what can one expect from a first novel? I am also pleased to have read a book that not a lot of people read these days, and still have enjoyed myself quite a bit.
The part I enjoyed the most was when he was in England with Istra. I found that section really engaging.
The part I enjoyed the most was when he was in England with Istra. I found that section really engaging.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews