Historical Context of Elmer Gantry Progressive Movements leading

							Historical Context of Elmer Gantry

Progressive Movements leading into the 1920s:

 Socialist movement
 Farmer’s alliances
 Industrial labor unions
 Struggles against racism
 Women’s movements
          prohibiting child labor
          right to vote
          prohibition of alcohol

“Higher Criticism” undermines Christianity and literal interp. of Bible
         Applied methods of historical and literary analysis.
         Revealed similarities to other religions and mythologies.

Protestant Fundamentalism react against this modern thought:
         Immaculate conception
         Physical resurrection of Jesus
         The atonement
         Second Coming of Christ
         Infallibility of the Scriptures
Real Elmer Gantrys

Gipsy Smith (1860 – 1947)
Billy Sunday (1862 – 1935)
Aimee Semple McPherson (1890 – 1944)

“Elmer Gantry” enters the national language.

60 years later:
Oral Roberts – held hostage by God
Jim Bakker – drug rehab / affair
Jimmy Swaggart - prostitutes
Biographical Notes
Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885 – 1951)

Third son of a doctor – grandfather was a doctor – access to hundreds of
medicals books.
Wanted to be drummer boy in Spanish-American War.
1903 – 1906 Attended Yale University.
Left to work as a janitor in Upton Sinclair’s socialist colony, Helicon Hall.
Also traveled to England and Panama to find work building Panama
Canal.
1908 Returned to graduate Yale.
Journalist, editor, freelance writer is SF, D.C., NY
1914 Marries first wife Grace Hegger.
1917 Son, Wells, is born.
1920 Main Street.
1922 Babbitt.
1925Arrowsmith.
Work on Gantry

1925 Scopes “monkey” trial in Dayton, Tenn.
1926 Pulizter Prize. Father dies.
Early 1927 Spoke in pulpits to experience being a preacher.
1928 Divorces Grace and marries Dorothy Thompson.
1930 Awarded Nobel Prize. Son, Michael, is born.
1930 – 1951 “The Decline”

Second divorce.
Son, Wells, killed in WWII
Son, Michael, unsuccessful actor
Skin disease, heart disease
Died alone in Rome of alcoholism
American Nobel Prize Winners
1930 Sinclair Lewis
1936 Eugene O’Neill
1938 Pearl S. Buck
1948 T.S. Eliot
1949 William Faulkner
1954 Ernest Hemingway
1962 John Steinbeck
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer
1993 Toni Morrison
One of Lewis’ Favorite Recipes:

Sinful Christmas Cookies

½ lb. butter
½ cup finely chopped almonds
2 eggs
1 shot bourbon
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tbsp. Droste’s cocoa
2 cups flour

from John Koblas’ book, Sinclair Lewis: Home at Last