Dodsworth (1929)

I was reading Sinclair Lewis anyway, and I liked the 1936 movie directed by William Wyler based on Dodsworth, so I decided to give the novel a try. The Wikipedia article sees it as a novel of Europe and the US, Old World and New, in the Henry James tradition. Yes, it’s that, but I think more centrally it is about middle-class—really, upper-class—marriage in the US. Samuel Dodsworth is an auto manufacturer tycoon who has made his nut and retired at age 50. He built his auto company up from the ground and has now sold out—not to General Motors by name, but it’s GM. The elder of his two kids, a daughter, is getting married, and his son is a junior at Yale or something. His wife now wants to go to Europe and roam for a long time, like months and years. She feels they deserve it. Particularly she deserves it. So a fair amount of traipsing around goes on here, along with the people they meet—in London, Paris, Berlin, Italy. Written in 1927 and 1928, published in 1929—the year before Lewis won his Nobel (which specifically cited Babbitt)—Dodsworth is curiously silent about the rise of fascism, which might have still had a relatively low profile in the late ‘20s. But there’s also no mention in the Berlin scenes of any calamitous economic conditions. Fascism comes up as a background item in Italy, but it’s all quite anodyne. I chalk it up to the difficulty of reading the sweep of history in any present moment, at which few are actually very good. The comparisons of European and US customs and manners seems more accurate to me than those of Henry James, who could be more soft-headed and romantic about the Old World. Lewis had already demonstrated his keen eye for Midwestern white man business ways and how the good ol’ boy stuff works here—still works here. So there are lots of interesting scenes with Dodsworth trying to find himself somewhere in between. He’s a creative spirit, even as a tycoon, which is not 100% believable, but the suspension of disbelief was worth the price here for me. Lots of things creak along the way, but the dissolving marriage is handled particularly well, as affairs of the heart (chaste as they may be in terms of actual sex) begin to happen on their travels and the future of the marriage seesaws precariously. Dodsworth is made a little too much the hero for my taste, and his wife a little too hateful, but I think the novel makes its points candidly and well about the difficulties of marriage. I would compare it favorably to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, which travels similar paths. Lewis is your basic 20th-century workaday social realist. He may not have the best eye for US class distinctions—in fact, he doesn’t as a general rule—but he gets lots of details right about humdrum rituals we still know.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)