Dangerous Liaisons 
Choderlos de Laclos, 1782
Penguin Group USA
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780140449570


Summary
Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives.

While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, he is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. Eventually their human pawns respond, and the consequences prove to be more serious—and deadly—than the players could have ever predicted. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—October 19, 1741
• Where—Amiens, France
• Death—September 5, 1803
• Where—Taranto, Sicily, Italy

Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos was a French novelist, official and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

A unique case in French literature, he was for a long time considered to be as scandalous a writer as the Marquis de Sade. He was a military officer with no illusions about human relations, and an amateur writer; however, his initial plan was to...write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on earth after his death.

From this point of view he mostly attained his goals, with the fame of his masterwork Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It is one of the masterpieces of novelistic literature of the 18th century, which explores the amorous intrigues of the aristocracy. It has inspired a large number of critical and analytic commentaries, plays, and films.

Laclos was born in Amiens into a bourgeois family, and in 1760 was sent to the École royale d'artillerie de La Fere, ancestor of the Ecole Polytechnique. As a young lieutenant, he briefly served in a garrison at La Rochelle until the end of the Seven Years War (1763). Later he was assigned to Strasbourg (1765-1769), Grenoble (1769-1775) and Besancon (1775-1776).

Despite being promoted to captain (1771), Laclos grew increasingly bored with his artillery garrison duties and the company of the soldiers, and began to devote his free time to writing. His first works, several light poems, were published in the Almanach des Muses. Later he wrote an Opera-comique, Ernestine, inspired by a novel by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni. Its premiere on 19 July 1777, in presence of Queen Marie-Antoinette, was a failure. In the same year he created a new artillery school in Valence, which was to include Napoleon among its students. At his return at Besançon in 1778, Laclos was promoted second captain of the Engineers. In this period he wrote several works, which showed his great admiration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In 1779 he was sent to Ile-d'Aix to assist Marc-Rene de Montalembert in the construction of fortifications there against the British. He however spent most of his time writing his new epistolary novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, as well as a Letter to Madame de Montalembert. When he asked for and was granted six months of vacation, he spent the time in Paris writing.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses was published by Durand Neveu in four volumes on 23 March 1782, turning into a widespread success (1,000 copies sold in a month, an exceptional result for the times). Laclos was immediately ordered to return to his garrison in Brittany; in 1783 he was sent to La Rochelle to collaborate in the construction of the new arsenal. Here he met Marie-Soulange Duperre, 18 years his junior, whom he would marry in 1786. The following year he began a project of numbering Paris streets.

In 1788 Laclos left the army, entering the service of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, for whom, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, he carried forward with intense diplomatic activity. Captured by the Republic ideals, he left the Duke to obtain a place as commissar in the Ministry of War. His reorganization has been credited as having a role in the Revolutionary Army victory in the Battle of Valmy. Later, after the desertion of general Charles François Dumouriez, he was however arrested as "Orleaniste," being freed after the Thermidorian Reaction.

He thenceforth spent some time in ballistic studies, which led him to the invention of the modern artillery shell. In 1795 he requested of the Committee of Public Safety reintegration in the army, which was ignored. His attempts to obtain a diplomatic position and to found a bank were also unsuccessful. Eventually, Laclos met the young general and recent First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, and joined his party. On 16 January 1800 he was reinstated in the Army as Brigadier General in the Armee du Rhin, taking part in the Battle of Biberach.

Made commander-in-chief of Reserve Artillery in Italy (1803), Laclos died shortly afterward in the former convent of St. Francis of Assisi at Taranto, probably of dysentery and malaria. He was buried in the fort still bearing his name (Forte de Laclos) in the Isola di San Paolo near the city, built under his direction. Following the restoration of the House of Bourbon in southern Italy, his burial tomb was destroyed; it is believed that his bones were tossed into the sea. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
(Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

If this book burns, it burns as only ice can burn.
Baudelaire

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Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Dangerous Liaisons:

1. How would you describe the characters of the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil (in fact, how does she define herself)? What inspires their games of sexual predation?

2. Describe Cecile Volange and Presidente de Tourvel. Why are they each selected as the objects of Valmont's conquests?

3. How does the Marquise view romantic love? Does she see it as a genuine, selfless emotion...a weakness, a competition... or what?

4. Talk about Valmont's view of love? Is he as immune to sincere feelings as he believes himself to be?

5. How does Valmont manipulate language in his letters to Presidente de Tourvel? In what ways does he play upon, even pervert, her religious beliefs?

6. Madame de Rosemonde claims a difference exists between the ways in which men and women experience happiness. How does she explain the difference...and do you agree with her assessment?

7. Discuss the role of older women in this work, particularly in helping to educate younger women into the ways of society. In fact, how is the term "education" used in this work? Does education refer to scholarly knowledge, tests or trials, loss of innocence...or what?

8. Discuss the distinctions among the classes—the servant class, aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie (the upcoming middle class). How, for instance does Merteuil treat her servant, Victoire.

9. Talk about the ways in which desire and battle are intermingled thematically in this work.

10. What is the role of opera in society and, thematically, in this work itself? For instance, how is the staging of an opera like life? What might de Laclos be saying about artifice or sincerity in the social interactions of his characters?

11. What are Valmont's feelings for Presidente? Why does he decide to abandon her? And why does he agree to sacrifice himself...both through the duel and giving the letters to Danceny?

12. What do you feel about Danceny's abandonment of Cecile at the end? Is he justified or did he betray his own profession of being true and faithful?

13. In this work, how do physical maladies reflect characters' spiritual state?

14. What is with these people? Really.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Jubilee
Margaret Walker, 1966
Houghton Miflin Harcourt
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780395924952


Summary
Here is the classic—and true—story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress, a Southern Civil War heroine to rival Scarlett O'Hara. Vyry bears witness to the South's prewar opulence and its brutality, to its wartime ruin and the subsequent promise of Reconstruction. It is a story that Margaret Walker heard as a child from her grandmother, the real Vyry's daughter.

The author spent thirty years researching the novel so that the world might know the intelligent, strong, and brave black woman called Vyry. The phenomenal acclaim this best-selling book has achieved from readers black and white, young and old, attests to her success. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Aka—Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander
• Birth—July 6, 1915
• Where—Birmingham, Alabama, USA
• Death—November 30, 1998
• Where—Chicago, Illinois
• Education—B.A., Northwestern University; M.A., Ph.D.,
  University of Iowa

Margaret Walker was an African-American poet and writer. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she wrote as Margaret Walker. One of her best-known poems is "For My People."

Walker was born to Sigismund C. Walker, a Methodist minister and Marion Dozier Walker, who helped their daughter by teaching her philosophy and poetry as a child. Her family moved to New Orleans when Walker was a young girl. She attended school there, including several years of college before she moved north.

In 1935, Margaret Walker received her Bachelors of Arts Degree from Northwestern University and in 1936 she began work with the Federal Writers' Project under the Works Progress Administration. In 1942, she received her master's degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa. In 1965, she returned to that school to earn her Ph.D.

Walker married Firnist Alexander in 1943; they had four children and lived in Mississippi. Walker was a literature professor at what is today Jackson State University (1949 to 1979). In 1968, Walker founded the Institute for the Study of History, Life, and Culture of Black People (now the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center) at the school. She went on to serve as the Institute's director.

Among Walker's more popular works are her poem "For My People," which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1942 under the judgeship of editor Stephen Vincent Benet, and her 1966 novel Jubilee, which also received critical acclaim. The book was based on her own grandmother's life as a slave.

In 1975, Walker released three albums of poetry on Folkways Records—Margaret Walker Alexander Reads Langston Hughes, P.L. Dunbar, J.W. Johnson, Margaret Walker Reads Margaret Walker and Langston Hughes, and The Poetry of Margaret Walker.

In 1988, she sued Alex Haley, claiming his novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family had violated Jubilee's copyright. The case was dismissed. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Nobel for helpful customer reviews.)

[With] a tough spirit that insists upon survival...Vyry becomes one of the memorable women of contemporary fiction.... The publishers tell us that Jubilee is "based on the true life story of the author's great-grandmother," and that for the first time such a story "is told from the Negro point of view...." What is of first importance is not the race of its author or the sources of its inspiration but its ring of artistic truth.... In it's best episodes, and in Vyry, Juliee choronicles the triumphs of a free spirit over many kinds of bondages.
Wilma Dykeman - New York Times

Do yourself a favor by picking up Jubilee.
Chicago Tribune

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Jubilee:

1. Upon her mother's death (at the heart-breaking age of 29, with 15 children), Vyry is sent to work in the plantation household where she encounters the cruelty of Missy Salina. Why is Vyry treated with such viciousness? Even more important, how does Vyry sustain herself through the brutality—what enables her to survive? How does Lillian treat Vyry and how does her treatment change over time?

2. What other kinds of inhuman punishments does Vyry witness?

3. Aside from the art of cooking, what else does Aunt Sally teach Vyry that will stand her in good stead in life?

4. Prior to the 1960's most accounts of slavery were written by and seen through the perspectives of white Anglo-Americans. Jubilee is one of the first books to break from that traditional telling. Talk how reading the novel through African-American eyes makes a difference in what we learn about the South's antebellum and reconstruction eras.

5. Talk about the role that faith plays in Vyry's life. How does it prevent her from falling into bitterness and despair?

6. Discuss Vyry's dream about a door to freedom and the man who will not give her the key? Symbolically, what might the dream represent?

7. Why does Vyry remain to help Miss Lillian after the war is over? What keeps her on the plantation when other former slaves, May Liza, Caline and Jim, leave?

8. What was the irony of the long hoped for Emancipation? In what ways were the Reconstruction years more frightening, perhaps even more painful, than the years of slavery? What about Jim's observation that freedom seems to do them no good when all they do is work with little to show for their efforts?

9. Some reviewers felt it was unfortunate that Walker drew on stereotypes to move the story forward. On the other hand, some of the characters, while not fully developed, represent an aggregate of historic individuals: cruel overseer, poor whites, angry black men, spoiled masters, and so on. Point out which characters seem to represent types...and which "types."

10. How do you feel about Vyry's choice in the end between Innis and Randall Ware?

11. In what way can this book be seen as a "coming-of-age" story for Vyry—a story in which a young person matures and comes to take her place in the adult world?

12. Jubilee is a true account of Margaret Walker's great-grandmother. Talk about what you've learned as a result of reading this work? Have you gained a deeper, more personal understanding of slavery...or the politics of Reconstruction, or the activities of the Ku Klux Klan?

13. What other books have you read about this time period? Beloved by Toni Morrison? Roots by Alex Haley, Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe? Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell? How does Jubilee compare with any of these works?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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The Painter from Shanghai
Jennfier Cody Epstein, 2007
W.W. Norton & Co.
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393335316

Summary
Reminiscent of Memoirs of a Geisha, a re-imagining of the life of Pan Yuliang and her transformation from prostitute to post-Impressionist.

Down the muddy waters of the Yangtze River and into the seedy backrooms of "The Hall of Eternal Splendor," through the raucous glamour of prewar Shanghai and the bohemian splendor of 1920s Paris, and back to a China ripped apart by civil war and teetering on the brink of revolution: this novel tells the story of Pan Yuliang, one of the most talented—and provocative—Chinese artists of the twentieth century.

Jennifer Cody Epstein's epic brings to life the woman behind the lush, Cezannesque nude self-portraits, capturing with lavish detail her life in the brothel and then as a concubine to a Republican official who would ultimately help her find her way as an artist. Moving with the tide of historical events, The Painter from Shanghai celebrates a singularly daring painting style—one that led to fame, notoriety, and, ultimately, a devastating choice: between Pan's art and the one great love of her life. (From the publisher.

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Author Bio
Based in New York, Jennifer Cody Epstein has written for Self, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune. She has published short fiction in several journals and was a finalist in a Glimmer Train fiction contest. (From the publisher.)

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Book Reviews
In this age of memoir and thinly veiled autobiographical fiction, writers who take high dives into deeply imagined waters have become increasingly rare—and valuable. What a pleasure, then, to discover that Jennifer Cody Epstein, whose luminous first novel, The Painter from Shanghai, is based on the actual life of Pan Yuliang, a former child prostitute turned celebrated painter, also happens to be one such writer.... In an epigraph, Epstein quotes the English painter John Sloane, who wrote that "though a living cannot be made at art, art makes life worth living. It makes starving, living." In the end, this is precisely what Epstein illustrates in her moving characterization of Pan Yuliang.
Sarah Towers - New York Times

Epstein's spotless pace, vivid characterizations, and often breathtaking descriptions elevate the novel.... The book's intimacy is spellbinding, not because of the courtesan era when Yuliang "feels like a peach without its skin," but because Epstein's true achievement in resurrecting such a passionate woman who pursued a life of her own despite intrinsic barriers.
Chicago Tribune

A refreshing telling...non-Chinese-speaking Epstein writes about historical China and the Chinese in a surprisingly authentic way. Her descriptions of brothel life and the landscape of Shanghai, and her rendering of traditional weddings, funerals and foot bindings, make the book feel like a cross between Zhang Yimou's movies and Chen Yifei's oil paintings.
South China Morning Post

Epstein's sweeping debut novel, set in early 20th-century China, fictionalizes the life of Chinese painter Pan Yuliang. Born Xiuquing, she is orphaned at a young age and later sold into prostitution by her uncle, who needs the money to support his opium habit. Renamed Yuliang, she becomes the brothel's top girl and soon snags the attention of customs inspector Pan Zanhua, who makes her his concubine. Zanhua sets her up in Shanghai, where she enrolls in the Shanghai Art Academy and early on struggles with life study, unable to separate the nude's monetary value from its value in the "currency of beauty." She eventually succeeds, winning a scholarship to study in Europe. But when she returns to China, itself inching toward revolution, the conservative establishment is critical of Yuliang, balking as she adopts Western-style dress and becomes known for her nudes (one newspaper deems her work pornography). Simmering resentments hit a flashpoint at a disastrous Shanghai retrospective exhibit, and the fallout nearly destroys Yuliang's artistic ambition. Convincing historic detail is woven throughout and nicely captures the plight of women in the era. Epstein's take on Yuliang's life is captivating to the last line.
Publishers Weekly

Journalist Epstein's first novel showcases two turbulent decades in Chinese history (1913-37) as experienced by prostitute-turned-painter Pan Yuliang. This fictionalized account of real-life artist Madame Pan reveals the woman who created some of China's most provocative post-impressionist paintings. Sold into slavery by her opium-addicted uncle, Yuliang survives life in a brothel, rises from maid to top girl, and eventually achieves quasirespectability by becoming a concubine (second wife) to an honorable civil servant, Pan Zanhua. He teaches her to read and write and helps her gain admission to the Shanghai Arts Academy. Throughout her career, Yuliang is criticized for painting nude self-portraits that reflect a Western sensibility. Her modern artistic and political convictions take a toll on her husband's career, and he allows her to follow her own destiny and supports her when she leaves China to study first in Paris and later in Rome. When Yuliang returns to China, she finds her country torn by political factions. Fans of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha and Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan will enjoy this engrossing story of a woman forced to choose between following her heart and pursuing her art. Recommended for public libraries. —Loralyn Whitney, Edinboro Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib.
Library Journal

Fictional portrait of Pan Yuliang, a real-life 20th-century Chinese prostitute turned successful artist. In the mold of Memoirs of a Geisha, Epstein's debut devotes itself to the exotic life of a woman whose early years were spent in the service of men. Orphaned Yuliang is 14 in 1913 when her opium-addicted uncle sells her into a brothel. Beatings are routine, and escapees are caught and murdered. Having learned to please clients, Yuliang rises to "top girl" and has the good fortune to meet a modern-thinking customs inspector, Pan Zanhua, who buys her freedom, "marries" her (he already has a wife and child) and moves her to Shanghai. There she develops an interest in drawing and becomes one of very few women admitted to the Art Academy. Epstein touches on the shifting political background as Yuliang travels to France and Rome and develops her controversial work, which sometimes uses her own naked body as subject matter. Later she returns to Shanghai and Nanjing where, in 1936, an exhibition of her "Western-style" art is vandalized. In 1937 she abandons Zanhua and leaves once more for France, as war with Japan looms. She dies in 1977, only "modestly successful in the commercial sense," but with awards to her name and a body of some 4,000 works of art. The enlivening spark flickers only intermittently in this professional account of an unusual life.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. What happened to Yuliang's mother and father? How are Yuliang's experiences of family and intimacy shaped by her Uncle Wu and, later, her life in the brothel?

2. In rendering Yuliang's years working as a prostitute, Epstein depicts the intersection of the sexual economy, the business elite, and political leadership. How do the intrigues of the brothel affect the economy and government in Wuhu?

3. How does poetry play a role in Yuliang and Zanhua's relationship? How does their shared appreciation for poetry stand in contrast to their feelings about visual art?

4. Yuliang's budding talent for sketching is not revealed until chapter sixteen. Do earlier chapters contain any hints of her artistic abilities?

5. How is Shanghai different than Wuhu? How does Yuliang's life change after she moves to Shanghai?

6. What results from Yuliang's confrontation with the women in the bathhouse in chapter twenty-four? What does this scene reveal about Chinese female society—and what does it reveal about Yuliang?

7. Teacher Hong instructs Yuliang to "see the skin as more than simply skin." Jingling, as she mentors Yuliang in the brothel, advises her protégée to remember that "it's just skin." Whose advice does Yuliang follow, and why? Why is painting nude figures important for Yuliang?

8. How does politics play a role in the story? To what extent is Yuliang a political person?

9. Both Xudun and Zanhua have strong feelings about politics and government in China. What two ideologies do these men represent? Are they entirely opposed?

10. In the 1920s and '30s Shanghai was often called "the Paris of the East." As depicted in the novel, how does Shanghai compare with the French capital? Both cities are cosmopolitan, but in different ways. How do you see those differences?

11. Why does Yuliang demand an abortion? Do you think she comes to regret that decision?

12. How does the course of Yuliang's personal and artistic career compare with that of her mentor, Xu Beihong?

13. In chapter thirty-three, when Xudun takes Yuliang to the top of Notre Dame Cathedral—in what seems to be one of the most exciting and romantic moments of Yuliang's life—her thoughts return to her uncle, who sold her into prostitution. Yuliang, however, frequently professes a desire to stay "rooted in the present." To what extent is she able to do that? How do the wounds of her past manifest themselves later in Yuliang's life? How do they affect her art?

14. After she moves to Nanjing—after years in Paris and Rome and a stint as an outspoken teacher at the Shanghai Art Academy—why does Yuliang submit to acting as "the second woman" to Guanyin in Zanhua's household? Why does Yuliang feel sympathy for Zanhua's first wife? Do you think Guanyin deserves sympathy?

15. "It is hard to find heroes in times such as these," says Qihua, referring to Zanhua. After all that is revealed about him later in the book, does Zanhua emerge as a hero in this story? Does Xudun? Had Xudun lived, do you think Yuliang would have chosen him over her husband? Would you want her to?

16. In moving back to Paris, Yuliang chooses a life of free artistic expression over a more traditional life of marriage. The last chronological scene in the novel is the prologue. Based on that opening scene, how do you think Yuliang views her life's choices? How do you view them? Having finished the book, how has your feeling about her life and character changed? Why do you think Epstein chose to begin the novel with this scene?

17. At the end of her life, Pan Yuliang had become known in her Paris circle as the "Woman of Three 'No's" for her steadfast refusal to work with dealers, take French citizenship, or enter into love affairs. Why do you think she was so firmly against each of these things? Are they in keeping with the image of her you've formed from reading The Painter of Shanghai.
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Arrowsmith 
Sinclair Lewis, 1925
CreateSpace
316 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781452849102


Summary
Winner, 1926 Pulitzer Prize
New York Times Book of the Century

The Pulitzer Prize winning Arrowsmith (an award Lewis refused to accept) recounts the story of a doctor who is forced to give up his trade for reasons ranging from public ignorance to the publicity-mindedness of a great foundation, and becomes an isolated seeker of scientific truth. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio 
• Birth—February 7, 1885
• Where—Sauk Centre, Minnesota, USA
• Death—January 10, 1951
• Where—Rome Italy
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—Nobel Prize; Pulitzer Prize

Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American society and capitalist values, as well as for their strong characterizations of modern working women.

Born in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis began reading books at a young age and kept a diary. He had two siblings, Fred (born 1875) and Claude (born 1878). His father, Edwin J. Lewis, was a physician and a stern disciplinarian who had difficulty relating to his sensitive, unathletic third son. Lewis's mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died in 1891. The following year, Edwin Lewis married Isabel Warner, whose company young Lewis apparently enjoyed. Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly Lewis—tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat popeyed—had trouble gaining friends and pined after various local girls. At the age of 13 he unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War.

Early life and writings
Lewis entered Yale in 1903 but did not receive his bachelor's degree until 1908, having taken time off to work at Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's cooperative-living colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and to travel to Panama. Lewis's unprepossessing looks, "fresh" country manners and seemingly self-important loquacity made it difficult for him to win and keep friends at Oberlin and Yale. He did initiate a few relatively long-lived friendships among students and professors, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer.

Lewis's earliest published creative work—romantic poetry and short sketches—appeared in the Yale Courant and the Yale Literary Magazine, of which he became an editor. After graduation Lewis moved from job to job and from place to place in an effort to make ends meet, write fiction for publication and to chase away boredom. While working for newspapers and publishing houses (and for a time at the Carmel-by-the-Sea, California writers' colony), he developed a facility for turning out shallow, popular stories that were purchased by a variety of magazines. He also earned money by selling plots to Jack London, including one for the latter's unfinished novel The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

Lewis's first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, a Tom Swift-style potboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham.

Lewis's first serious novel, Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, appeared in 1914, followed by The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life (1915) and The Job (1917). That same year also saw the publication of another potboiler, The Innocents: A Story for Lovers, an expanded version of a serial story that had originally appeared in Woman's Home Companion. Free Air, another refurbished serial story, was published in 1919.

Marriage and family
In 1914 Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger, an editor at Vogue magazine. They had one son, Wells Lewis (1917–1944), named after British author H. G. Wells. Wells Lewis was killed while serving in the military in World War II.

Lewis divorced Grace in 1925 and married Dorothy Thompson, a political newspaper columnist, in 1928. They had a son, Michael Lewis, in 1930. Their marriage had virtually ended by 1937, and they divorced in 1942. Michael Lewis became an actor, and died in 1975 at age 44.

Success
Upon moving to Washington, D.C., Lewis devoted himself to writing. As early as 1916, Lewis began taking notes for a realistic novel about small-town life. Work on that novel continued through mid-1920, when he completed Main Street, which was published in 1920. As his biographer Mark Schorer wrote, the phenomenal success of Main Street "was the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history." Based on sales of his prior books, Lewis's most optimistic projection was a sale of 25,000 copies. In the first six months of 1921, Main Street sold 180,000 copies, and within a few years, sales were estimated at two million. According to Richard Lingeman, Main Street earned Lewis the equivalent of $3 million in 2002 dollars.

Lewis followed up this first great success with Babbitt (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture and boosterism. The story was set in the fictional Midwestern town of Zenith, Winnemac, a setting to which Lewis would return in future novels, including Gideon Planish and Dodsworth.

Lewis continued his success in the 1920s with Arrowsmith (1925), a novel about the challenges faced by an idealistic doctor. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (which Lewis refused). Adapted as a 1931 Hollywood film directed by John Ford and starring Ronald Colman, it was nominated for four Academy Awards.

Next came Elmer Gantry (1927), which depicted an evangelical minister as deeply hypocritical. The novel was denounced by many religious leaders and banned in some U.S. cities. Adapted for the screen more than a generation later, the novel was the basis of the 1960 movie starring Burt Lancaster, who earned a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.

Lewis closed out the decade with Dodsworth (1929), a novel about the most affluent and successful members of American society. He portrayed them as leading essentially pointless lives in spite of great wealth and advantages. The book was adapted for the Broadway stage in 1934 by Sidney Howard, who also wrote the screenplay for the 1936 film version. Directed by William Wyler and a great success at the time, the film is still highly regarded. In 1990, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, and in 2005 Time magazine named it one of the "100 Best Movies" of the past 80 years.

Alcoholism
After an alcoholic binge in 1937, Lewis checked into the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for treatment. His doctors gave Lewis a blunt assessment that he needed to decide "whether he was going to live without alcohol or die by it, one or the other." Lewis checked out after 10 days, lacking, one of his physicians wrote to a colleague, any "fundamental understanding of his problem."

Nobel Prize
In 1930, Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first writer from the United States to receive the award. In the Swedish Academy's presentation speech, special attention was paid to Babbitt. In his Nobel Lecture, Lewis praised Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and other contemporaries, but also lamented that "in America most of us — not readers alone, but even writers — are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues," and that America is "the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today." He also offered a profound criticism of the American literary establishment: "Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead."

Later years and death
After winning the Nobel Prize, Lewis wrote eleven more novels, ten of which appeared in his lifetime. The best remembered is It Can't Happen Here, a novel about the election of a fascist to the American presidency.

Lewis died in Rome on January 10, 1951, aged 65, from advanced alcoholism, although his friend and admirer, William Shirer, says he simply had a heart attack. Lewis's cremated remains were buried in Sauk Centre. A final novel, World So Wide (1951), was published posthumously.

In summing up Lewis' career, Shirer concludes, "It has become rather commonplace for so-called literary critics to write off Sinclair Lewis as a novelist. Compared to...Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Faulkner...Lewis lacked style. Yet his impact on modern American life...was greater than all of the other four writers together." (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
(Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

Artistically, Arrowsmith is an authentic step forward. The novel is full of passages of a quite noble felicity and the old skill in presenting character through dialogue never fails.
Henry Longan Stuart - New York Times (3/8/1925)

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Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Arrowsmith:

1. How does Martin view Winnemac Medical School? What does he find fault with? How do his views differ from those of his classmates?

2. Talk about Madeleine—what kind of young woman is she? Why does Martin turn to her initially, and why does he want to marry her? Why does Martin tell Madeleine that he would work to become a successful surgeon, the very thing he has criticized?

3. Describe Leora—in what ways is she different from Madeleine? Why is Martin attracted to her? And what about the luncheon to which Martin invites both Leora and Madeleine!

4. Martin Arrowsmith, the book's hero: what do you think of him—what kind of character is he? Is he steadfast in his principles or vacillate with the wind? Is he an arrogant know-it-all, or a callow young man who has yet to achieve maturity?

5. Sinclair Lewis can be unmercifully funny—but always to make a point. How, for instance, does he use the character of Roscoe Geake to criticize the medical establishment? (What of Geake's speech, "The Art and Science of Furnishing the Doctor's Office"?) On who or what else does Lewis train his satiric eye (don't overlook the Nautilis Health Fair)?

6. Does Martin deserve his suspension from medical school? Was he rude and arrogant, or standing on principle? After he returns to school, how and why is he changed?

7. Talk about Gottlieb's experience working at Hunziker in Pittsburgh. Why does he take the position; is it an ethical compromise on his part? How does Martin react when he learns of Gottlieb's position? Are the pressures facing Gottlieb prevalent today?

8. Martin's first position out of medical school is a country doctor? What kind of doctor does he make...and why can't he win the trust of the townspeople? Why does Martin become dissatisfied in Wheatsylvania? What is he seeking there that he cannot find? In what way is Sinclair Lewis using Wheatsylvania as a critique of small town America? Do you think his portrait is fair or unfair?

9. Martin eventually becomes acting director of public health in Nautilis, but again controversy and unpopularity seek him out. What's wrong in Nautilis? Is Martin the maker of his own conflict...or is he a true reformer in a corrupt system?

10. After a stop in Chicago, Martin ends up at the McGurk Institute in New York with his old mentor Max Gottlieb. What problematic issues arise in this environment? Again, what is Sinclair Lewis training his critical eye on this time?

11. What are the differences between Tubbs and Gottlieb? What does each represent in the world of science and medicine?

12.. What does Martin learn from Oliver Marchand when the McGurk commission travels to St. Hubert?

13. What role do women play in this novel? How does Lewis portray them? Are they men's equals?

14. Is Martin right to withhold phage from people who are desperately ill? In what way is this issue relevant today?

15. The narrator says in Chapter 36, "the papers were able to announce that America, which was always rescuing the world from something or other, had gone and done it again." Is that a fair assessment of America's position in the world? Is it relevant to today? Does America try to be the world's savior?

SPOILER alert: Go no farther unless you've finished the book.

16. Is Leora's death necessary in this story? Did you feel her loss?

17. Throughout the novel, Martin is a seeker. Still, is his final act justified—that of abandoning his family and retreating into the woods of Vermont to pursue pure research?

18. What has changed, from from the early 20th century to today, in the way medicine and medical research are practiced? What has not changed—what issues addressed in Arrowsmith continue to plague science and medicine 100 years later?

19. Does this novel end on an optimistic...or pessimistic note?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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