Arrowsmith

Martin Arrowsmith's singular, if somewhat ascetic, devotion to science affords Sinclair Lewis his most dramatic opportunity to portray an American whose work becomes his life. Forced to give up successive sinecures - instructor in medicine, small-town doctor, research pathologist - by obstacles ranging from public ignorance to the publicity-mindedness of a great foundation, Arrowsmith becomes virtually isolated as a seeker after truth. Even so, Lewis' poignant thesis would seem to be that American idealism cannot beget true tragedy, because its adherents lack a sympathetic audience and their stumbling-blocks are, for the most part, petty. Observing the Nobel Prize-winning author's double gifts for satire and realism, E.M. Forester said, "He has lodged a piece of a Continent in the world's imagination" and André Maurois proclaimed him "a great novelist." [Take from the back cover]