Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis ( born February 7, 1885 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, † January 10, 1951 in Rome ) was an American writer who became famous for his socially critical and satirical novels. In 1930 he was awarded as the first American Nobel Prize for Literature.
Life
Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the son of a doctor. After completing his studies at Yale University, he worked on the set up in New Jersey by Jack London socialist school. After many trips through Europe, he settled first as a journalist and translator in New York down until he was private secretary to Jack London. In 1912 came his little-noticed novel Hyke and the Aeroplane. This was followed by Our Lord Wrenn (1914), The acquisition (1917 ), High Street (1920 ) and finally his most important novels Babbitt (1922 ), Dr. Arrowsmith (1925) and Elmer Gantry (1927 ).
Sinclair Lewis, the attention given to the accurate representation and critique of the American petty bourgeoisie and the middle class, grabbing the reader about the quackery in medicine or the humbug of some representatives of the American clergy. The evisceration of made him an unpopular but successful writer and earned him the nickname " The Staubaufwirbler " one.
Sinclair Lewis was indeed honored for his work Dr. Arrowsmith the Pulitzer Prize, but refused it on the grounds that the dutiful Arrowsmith was an uncharacteristic for America doctor shape. In 1930 he received, however, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Committee stressed in particular the literature figure of Babbitt, who had led to the decision for Lewis. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Lewis pointed to the 15 years younger than Thomas Wolfe and his novel Look Homeward, Angel! down. He was a supporter of the America First Committee, an isolationist movement that sought 1940/41, to prevent the participation of the U.S. in World War II.
Between 1928 and 1942 he was with Dorothy Thompson ( 1894-1961 ), writer and journalist, and founder of the " World Organization of Mothers of all nations " ( WOMAN ), married. The joint compound was a son, Michael ( born 1930 ), produced. Sinclair Lewis died in 1951 in Rome by the consequences of his advanced alcoholism. A novel he was working on at that time, remained unfinished.