Truly great social satire produced by strong imaginative vigor are the chief traits which will make Sinclair Lewis work live as long as American literature is read anywhere three professors of English agreed last night.
Lewis died is Rome on Tuesday.
Howard Mumford Jones, professor of English, said that he considered Lewis certainly the best fiction writer of the 1920's. His portrayal of such typically American types, imbued with a spirit half of rebellion, half of acceptance, as well as a vivid imagination comparable to Dickens' will make Lewis' name and fame last forever, said Jones.
"He was in the great American tradition of self-criticism," Harry T. Levin, '33, professor of English, stated. "Lewis stayed in America when so many other writers went abroad in the era after the war. He criticised what he knew and loved."
Kenneth B. Murdock '16, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English, also emphasized the importance of Lewis as a social critic and historian, adding that he would be very surprised in Lewis didn't continue to be read."
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