What do you think?
Rate this book
It Can't Happen Here
The only one of Sinclair Lewis's later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith, It Can't Happen Here is a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression when America was largely oblivious to Hitler's aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a President who becomes a dictator to "save the nation." Now finally back in print, It Can't Happen Here remains uniquely important, a shockingly prescient novel that's as fresh and contemporary as today's news.
400 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1935
About the author
Sinclair Lewis
384 books1,000 followersNovelist Harry Sinclair Lewis satirized middle-class America in his 22 works, including
Babbitt
(1922) and
Elmer Gantry
(1927) and first received a Nobel Prize for literature in 1930.
Middle-class values and materialism attach unthinking George F. Babbitt, the narrow-minded, self-satisfied main character person in the novel of Sinclair Lewis.
People awarded "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."
He knowingly, insightfully, and critically viewed capitalism and materialism between the wars. People respect his strong characterizations of modern women.
Henry Louis Mencken wrote, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade...it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclai...
Middle-class values and materialism attach unthinking George F. Babbitt, the narrow-minded, self-satisfied main character person in the novel of Sinclair Lewis.
People awarded "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."
He knowingly, insightfully, and critically viewed capitalism and materialism between the wars. People respect his strong characterizations of modern women.
Henry Louis Mencken wrote, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade...it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclai...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,270 reviews
February 15, 2020
A friend of mine that was recently in London told me that all the bookshops there had Roth's The Plot Against America and It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. Alarmist? Perhaps, but as I already said in my review of The Plot Against America, maybe not.
In It Can't Happen Here, rather than Lindbergh tromping FDR as in The Plot Against America, we have a populist Windrip who takes the Democratic nomination in 1936 by storm on a platform promising $5000 to each American citizen and naturally crushes the Republican opposition. Before becoming President (and subsequently dictator), Windrip wrote a populist book called Zero Hour which was your typical Drumpf-ian boisterous blather about the evils of everyone except himself and espousal of views about making America great again (but not in so many words.) Doremus Jessup is the protagonist, an ageing editor for the Vermont Daily Informer and as events unfold goes from "It Can't Happen Here" to "Oh shit, it has already happened."
Windrip issues a 15-point plan which has some parallels to Drumpf's platform and appoints equally unqualified people to his inner circle. Doremus' characterization of Windrip in Chapter 9 "The Sentator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar almost detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and yet his more celebrated humor the shy cynicism of a country store" certainly fits Drumpf to an extent.
Worse, Windrip "in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts - figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely wrong" which is of course pure "Drumpf on Twitter."
Lewis' book is even more pessimistic than Roth's because America spins out into a mess of mass murders under the Gestopo-like Militia Men (M.M.) corps which are deployed nationwide and terrorise all sectors of the population preferably the educated, Jewish, and anyone even suspecting of whispering slander against the administration. It is a terrifying narrative and - again unlike Roth - does NOT have a happy ending.
We were warned at least twice by our own writers (and also by Orwell and others outside of the US) of letting ignorant populism run away with American politics. I hope that the dire sequence of events under the fictional Windrip will not be echoed by the reality of Drumpf, but then sometimes fact is even stranger and more terrifying than fiction.
I like how Doremus sums it up near the end: "More and more, as I think about history, I am convinced that everything that it is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever."
A must read.
Unfortunately, gets more real every passing day :/
Incredible that ever passing day things continue to devolve into what Sinclair Lewis envisioned. Yesterday's hate filled publicity inciting gun owners to rise against liberals is not dissimilar from Windrip's use of the MM for fomenting racist attacks. Not to mention Drumpf's sexist tweets against Morning Joe. How many Doremuses will there be to #resist this current frontal assault on American democracy?
Time continues to slip by and the world it continues to happen here, unfortunately.
In It Can't Happen Here, rather than Lindbergh tromping FDR as in The Plot Against America, we have a populist Windrip who takes the Democratic nomination in 1936 by storm on a platform promising $5000 to each American citizen and naturally crushes the Republican opposition. Before becoming President (and subsequently dictator), Windrip wrote a populist book called Zero Hour which was your typical Drumpf-ian boisterous blather about the evils of everyone except himself and espousal of views about making America great again (but not in so many words.) Doremus Jessup is the protagonist, an ageing editor for the Vermont Daily Informer and as events unfold goes from "It Can't Happen Here" to "Oh shit, it has already happened."
Windrip issues a 15-point plan which has some parallels to Drumpf's platform and appoints equally unqualified people to his inner circle. Doremus' characterization of Windrip in Chapter 9 "The Sentator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar almost detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and yet his more celebrated humor the shy cynicism of a country store" certainly fits Drumpf to an extent.
Worse, Windrip "in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts - figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely wrong" which is of course pure "Drumpf on Twitter."
Lewis' book is even more pessimistic than Roth's because America spins out into a mess of mass murders under the Gestopo-like Militia Men (M.M.) corps which are deployed nationwide and terrorise all sectors of the population preferably the educated, Jewish, and anyone even suspecting of whispering slander against the administration. It is a terrifying narrative and - again unlike Roth - does NOT have a happy ending.
We were warned at least twice by our own writers (and also by Orwell and others outside of the US) of letting ignorant populism run away with American politics. I hope that the dire sequence of events under the fictional Windrip will not be echoed by the reality of Drumpf, but then sometimes fact is even stranger and more terrifying than fiction.
I like how Doremus sums it up near the end: "More and more, as I think about history, I am convinced that everything that it is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever."
A must read.
Unfortunately, gets more real every passing day :/
Incredible that ever passing day things continue to devolve into what Sinclair Lewis envisioned. Yesterday's hate filled publicity inciting gun owners to rise against liberals is not dissimilar from Windrip's use of the MM for fomenting racist attacks. Not to mention Drumpf's sexist tweets against Morning Joe. How many Doremuses will there be to #resist this current frontal assault on American democracy?
Time continues to slip by and the world it continues to happen here, unfortunately.
November 1, 2020
October 8, 2015:
I am just on page 84 of this book but I cannot wait to write a review. So I will write a preliminary review.
Sinclair Lewis wrote this meanwhile classic satire in 1936. And I am afraid that fictious history might become true, 80 years after this book has been written.
The satiric novel tells about an American presidential candidate who is very belligerent and bombastic. Irony of all irony: Even though he is clearly a fascist, he hitches a ride from the Democratic Party to come to power.
Will keep you updated.
I URGE YOU TO READ THIS BOOK.
October 10, 2015
I rarely have time to read anywhere else than in bed or in the bathroom. At neither locations I keep any writing material. So in order to be able to treat you to a few excerpts from this book, I had to sit down at a table to reread part of what I had already read and take some notes.
I try to keep this review short, so I’ll confine myself to only a few passages. They all portray the presidential candidate protagonist, whom, for simplicity, I will only call “The Candidate”. I’ll leave it up to you to find similarities to any of the present presidential candidates.
Here I go:
At the nomination event, The Candidate eventually retires to his hotel room, leaving a letter to be read to the electorate.
“Summarized, the letter explained that he was all against the banks but all for the bankers … … … ; that he had thoroughly tested (but unspecified) plans to make all wages very high and the prices of everything produced by these same highly paid workers very low; that he was 100 per cent for Labor but 100 per cent against all strikes; and that he was in favor of the United States so arming itself, so preparing to produce its own coffee, sugar, perfumes, tweed, and nickel instead of importing them, that it would defy the World …, and maybe, if that World was so impertinent as to defy America in turn [The Candidate] hinted, he might have to take it over and run it properly.”
The other protagonist, owner of a small-town newspaper, whom I’ll call The Newspaper Man, describes The Candidate as follows:
“Aside from his dramatic glory, The Candidate was a Professional Common Man.—Oh he was common enough. He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. … … … But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering among them, and they raised hands to him in worship.”
And the Newspaper Man continues a few pages later:
“The few who did fail [to adore and support The Candidate], most of them newspapermen, disliked the smell of him more than before they had met him. … … … Even they, by the unusual spiritedness and color of their attack upon him, kept his name alive in every column … … …”
Will keep you updated.
PLEASE READ THIS BOOK.
October 12, 2015
I am now getting towards the middle of the book; more precisely, I have read to page 156.
As you might have guessed, The Candidate became The Nominee, and The Nominee became The President.
My, oh, my! What can I say? The book is getting eery. As a matter of fact, I think Sinclair Lewis has plagiarized “Pfaffenhofen unterm Hakenkreuz” (“Pfaffenhofen under the swastika”), a non-fiction book, written by a local historian, telling how my hometown was nazified during the 1920s and 1930s. This was accomplished with rallies (some of which Hitler, in person, attended), promises, marches, songs, propaganda, and finally with hard-core brainwash; and as you might have heard of because it happened all over Germany, with harassing and threatening those citizens who resisted the brainwash and sending dissidents of every couleur to Dachau. Actually, not all of the latter were sent to Dachau; some were properly arrested and brought in front of the “Volksgericht” (People’s Court), where a defense attorney was unnecessary. And a few were found dead, said to be murdered by some bolshevik swines. Mind you, all this happened before I was born (in 1939). So I cannot really testify to it and have to take the local historian’s word for it. (This book, btw, is out of print, and there is unlikely to be a new edition because there are rumors that the author has received death threats.)
Getting back to America: No, this can’t happen here. IT, definitely, CAN’T HAPPEN HERE. None of our present presidential candidates are evil. I have said this before, but I cannot say it often enough: NONE OF THEM ARE EVIL. Some are even very pious. Mind you, some are a bit power-craving (o.k., a few are a bit more than a bit power-craving). Some (and here I am definitely not naming names) are not the very brightest. One seems to be megalomaniac (might be treatable). This particular one is also very rude, vulgar, and scarily belligerent. I wouldn’t even rule out that one or another is a bit of a scoundrel, but none of them are evil. So IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE.
Yet an old German proverb says: “Man soll den Tag nicht vor dem Abend loben.” (“One should not praise the day before the evening.”) I am not yet finished reading this book. So let’s see how it will go from here.
Oh, btw, I have trouble with all the names in this book. Being nuttin’ but an immigrant (listen, Mr. Trump, a LEGAL immigrant!), I am not very familiar with American politicians and other celebrities of days past. But I get by without identifying all of these characters.
One of the things I really like about this book is that it enables me to widen my meager ESL vocabulary. So for instance, I just recently came across the word “gas bag”. I had known “wind bag”, but “gas bag” can be so much more fitting. Sinclair Lewis even uses the expression “the gassiest of all gassy gas bags”. This is such a beautiful and flowery expression. I don’t know how I have been able to live without this expression for almost 76 years.
Talk to you again when I read further on.
In the meantime: GO AND START READING THIS BOOK.
October 17, 2015
I am now on page 258. America has been turned into a bomb-tight police state, terrorizing and murdering its non-conformist citizens. And I tell you, this COULD HAVE HAPPENED in the 1930s because, all differences taken into account, Americans are NOT THAT MUCH DIFFERENT from Europeans and even Germans.
Yet I am rather sure that IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE now, in the early 21st century. But don’t relax yet. Worse things CAN HAPPEN now.
So get off your couch and do something. Don’t let worse things happen.
Will keep you posted.
HOPE YOU HAVE ALREADY STARTED READING THIS BOOK.
October 21, 2015
I have now read to page 355.
It’s not funny anymore. And I don’t mean the police state, as it goes without saying that this isn’t funny. I mean the book. It is turning into a horror story, and I don’t like horror stories. I never read horror fiction, and I get more than I ever want non-fiction horror from the news and from reading Holocaust memoirs, which I consider every decent person’s duty to read.
So what is happening to this satire novel? I always thought that satire, while allowed to be acid, is supposed to be funny.
Could it be that Sinclair Lewis’s wife, the journalist who visited Germany several times and even interviewed Hitler, got mad at her husband for writing too funny a book about such a serious matter as an abominable police state with concentration camps, torture, and state-approved murder? Could it be that she kicked him and coaxed him to describe in detail what oppressive, totalitarian regimes do to their non-conformist citizens (and occasionally even to their conformist citizens who fall out of grace for one reason or another)?
I am confused. Let’s see where this book goes from here. I hope to be able to finish reading tonight.
However, regardless of how much criticism of this book I might come up with and whether or not I’ll see myself compelled to snip off a star, GO AND READ THIS BOOK.
October 21, 2015 — evening.
I am now done with page 380; this means that I have finished reading this book.
So what can I say? First of all, I would like to express my relief that the last 25 pages contain no more horror details.
I don’t wish to include spoilers. So just let me say that a lot of things happened already in the previous pages—changes in government and the like.
But now, guess what! The President of the United States has STARTED A WAR WITH MEXICO—no, not because of illegal immigrants, and not even because he wants to build a wall on the Mexican border and the Mexican government refuses to pay for it. (There wasn’t even any talk about Mexicans raping American women. Instead, there are songs about American soldiers having fun with Mexican girls.) No, it is something else.
Oh gosh! I forget what this war is for, but it doesn’t really matter. The underlying cause is that the President of the United States and his Secretary of War (plus a few other government officials) consider the Mexicans inferior, and inferior people shouldn’t be allowed to own a country. As I said, I don’t quite remember the official reason.
And now what? Well, I won’t give away the end. It is a bit inconclusive, and I am not too impressed with it. So don’t expect a happy end. Who expects a happy end anyway with a book like this one?
Let me close with an uplifting thought: In the 1930s, there were no nuclear weapons. Thus, no one, not even Hitler, would be able to produce a total Armageddon. So don’t worry about the ending of this book. It can’t be all bad.
Today, however, there are nuclear weapons, and a WWIII will, most likely, be the war to end all wars, except maybe for insect wars. (I hear that insects are more resistant to radiation than mammals.)
Now, where was I? Allow me. I am a senior, and seniors occasionally lose their train of thought. I wanted to close with an uplifting thought. That’s right. O.k.!
So let’s return to the title of the book. It says: “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE”.
(I decided to leave the rating at 5 stars. The general message of this book makes up for the flaws.)
P.S. February 9, 2016: After the primary results in New Hampshire, I am afraid, "IT CAN HAPPEN HERE." Time to start doomsday prepping.
P.P.S. November 9, 2016: "IT HAS HAPPENED HERE."
I am just on page 84 of this book but I cannot wait to write a review. So I will write a preliminary review.
Sinclair Lewis wrote this meanwhile classic satire in 1936. And I am afraid that fictious history might become true, 80 years after this book has been written.
The satiric novel tells about an American presidential candidate who is very belligerent and bombastic. Irony of all irony: Even though he is clearly a fascist, he hitches a ride from the Democratic Party to come to power.
Will keep you updated.
I URGE YOU TO READ THIS BOOK.
October 10, 2015
I rarely have time to read anywhere else than in bed or in the bathroom. At neither locations I keep any writing material. So in order to be able to treat you to a few excerpts from this book, I had to sit down at a table to reread part of what I had already read and take some notes.
I try to keep this review short, so I’ll confine myself to only a few passages. They all portray the presidential candidate protagonist, whom, for simplicity, I will only call “The Candidate”. I’ll leave it up to you to find similarities to any of the present presidential candidates.
Here I go:
At the nomination event, The Candidate eventually retires to his hotel room, leaving a letter to be read to the electorate.
“Summarized, the letter explained that he was all against the banks but all for the bankers … … … ; that he had thoroughly tested (but unspecified) plans to make all wages very high and the prices of everything produced by these same highly paid workers very low; that he was 100 per cent for Labor but 100 per cent against all strikes; and that he was in favor of the United States so arming itself, so preparing to produce its own coffee, sugar, perfumes, tweed, and nickel instead of importing them, that it would defy the World …, and maybe, if that World was so impertinent as to defy America in turn [The Candidate] hinted, he might have to take it over and run it properly.”
The other protagonist, owner of a small-town newspaper, whom I’ll call The Newspaper Man, describes The Candidate as follows:
“Aside from his dramatic glory, The Candidate was a Professional Common Man.—Oh he was common enough. He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. … … … But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering among them, and they raised hands to him in worship.”
And the Newspaper Man continues a few pages later:
“The few who did fail [to adore and support The Candidate], most of them newspapermen, disliked the smell of him more than before they had met him. … … … Even they, by the unusual spiritedness and color of their attack upon him, kept his name alive in every column … … …”
Will keep you updated.
PLEASE READ THIS BOOK.
October 12, 2015
I am now getting towards the middle of the book; more precisely, I have read to page 156.
As you might have guessed, The Candidate became The Nominee, and The Nominee became The President.
My, oh, my! What can I say? The book is getting eery. As a matter of fact, I think Sinclair Lewis has plagiarized “Pfaffenhofen unterm Hakenkreuz” (“Pfaffenhofen under the swastika”), a non-fiction book, written by a local historian, telling how my hometown was nazified during the 1920s and 1930s. This was accomplished with rallies (some of which Hitler, in person, attended), promises, marches, songs, propaganda, and finally with hard-core brainwash; and as you might have heard of because it happened all over Germany, with harassing and threatening those citizens who resisted the brainwash and sending dissidents of every couleur to Dachau. Actually, not all of the latter were sent to Dachau; some were properly arrested and brought in front of the “Volksgericht” (People’s Court), where a defense attorney was unnecessary. And a few were found dead, said to be murdered by some bolshevik swines. Mind you, all this happened before I was born (in 1939). So I cannot really testify to it and have to take the local historian’s word for it. (This book, btw, is out of print, and there is unlikely to be a new edition because there are rumors that the author has received death threats.)
Getting back to America: No, this can’t happen here. IT, definitely, CAN’T HAPPEN HERE. None of our present presidential candidates are evil. I have said this before, but I cannot say it often enough: NONE OF THEM ARE EVIL. Some are even very pious. Mind you, some are a bit power-craving (o.k., a few are a bit more than a bit power-craving). Some (and here I am definitely not naming names) are not the very brightest. One seems to be megalomaniac (might be treatable). This particular one is also very rude, vulgar, and scarily belligerent. I wouldn’t even rule out that one or another is a bit of a scoundrel, but none of them are evil. So IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE.
Yet an old German proverb says: “Man soll den Tag nicht vor dem Abend loben.” (“One should not praise the day before the evening.”) I am not yet finished reading this book. So let’s see how it will go from here.
Oh, btw, I have trouble with all the names in this book. Being nuttin’ but an immigrant (listen, Mr. Trump, a LEGAL immigrant!), I am not very familiar with American politicians and other celebrities of days past. But I get by without identifying all of these characters.
One of the things I really like about this book is that it enables me to widen my meager ESL vocabulary. So for instance, I just recently came across the word “gas bag”. I had known “wind bag”, but “gas bag” can be so much more fitting. Sinclair Lewis even uses the expression “the gassiest of all gassy gas bags”. This is such a beautiful and flowery expression. I don’t know how I have been able to live without this expression for almost 76 years.
Talk to you again when I read further on.
In the meantime: GO AND START READING THIS BOOK.
October 17, 2015
I am now on page 258. America has been turned into a bomb-tight police state, terrorizing and murdering its non-conformist citizens. And I tell you, this COULD HAVE HAPPENED in the 1930s because, all differences taken into account, Americans are NOT THAT MUCH DIFFERENT from Europeans and even Germans.
Yet I am rather sure that IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE now, in the early 21st century. But don’t relax yet. Worse things CAN HAPPEN now.
So get off your couch and do something. Don’t let worse things happen.
Will keep you posted.
HOPE YOU HAVE ALREADY STARTED READING THIS BOOK.
October 21, 2015
I have now read to page 355.
It’s not funny anymore. And I don’t mean the police state, as it goes without saying that this isn’t funny. I mean the book. It is turning into a horror story, and I don’t like horror stories. I never read horror fiction, and I get more than I ever want non-fiction horror from the news and from reading Holocaust memoirs, which I consider every decent person’s duty to read.
So what is happening to this satire novel? I always thought that satire, while allowed to be acid, is supposed to be funny.
Could it be that Sinclair Lewis’s wife, the journalist who visited Germany several times and even interviewed Hitler, got mad at her husband for writing too funny a book about such a serious matter as an abominable police state with concentration camps, torture, and state-approved murder? Could it be that she kicked him and coaxed him to describe in detail what oppressive, totalitarian regimes do to their non-conformist citizens (and occasionally even to their conformist citizens who fall out of grace for one reason or another)?
I am confused. Let’s see where this book goes from here. I hope to be able to finish reading tonight.
However, regardless of how much criticism of this book I might come up with and whether or not I’ll see myself compelled to snip off a star, GO AND READ THIS BOOK.
October 21, 2015 — evening.
I am now done with page 380; this means that I have finished reading this book.
So what can I say? First of all, I would like to express my relief that the last 25 pages contain no more horror details.
I don’t wish to include spoilers. So just let me say that a lot of things happened already in the previous pages—changes in government and the like.
But now, guess what! The President of the United States has STARTED A WAR WITH MEXICO—no, not because of illegal immigrants, and not even because he wants to build a wall on the Mexican border and the Mexican government refuses to pay for it. (There wasn’t even any talk about Mexicans raping American women. Instead, there are songs about American soldiers having fun with Mexican girls.) No, it is something else.
Oh gosh! I forget what this war is for, but it doesn’t really matter. The underlying cause is that the President of the United States and his Secretary of War (plus a few other government officials) consider the Mexicans inferior, and inferior people shouldn’t be allowed to own a country. As I said, I don’t quite remember the official reason.
And now what? Well, I won’t give away the end. It is a bit inconclusive, and I am not too impressed with it. So don’t expect a happy end. Who expects a happy end anyway with a book like this one?
Let me close with an uplifting thought: In the 1930s, there were no nuclear weapons. Thus, no one, not even Hitler, would be able to produce a total Armageddon. So don’t worry about the ending of this book. It can’t be all bad.
Today, however, there are nuclear weapons, and a WWIII will, most likely, be the war to end all wars, except maybe for insect wars. (I hear that insects are more resistant to radiation than mammals.)
Now, where was I? Allow me. I am a senior, and seniors occasionally lose their train of thought. I wanted to close with an uplifting thought. That’s right. O.k.!
So let’s return to the title of the book. It says: “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE”.
(I decided to leave the rating at 5 stars. The general message of this book makes up for the flaws.)
P.S. February 9, 2016: After the primary results in New Hampshire, I am afraid, "IT CAN HAPPEN HERE." Time to start doomsday prepping.
P.P.S. November 9, 2016: "IT HAS HAPPENED HERE."
December 23, 2018
It Can’t Happen Here is Sinclair Lewis’ political satire and propagandized account of the rise of an American fascist.
Perhaps most compelling is the fact that Lewis wrote the book only a couple of years after Hitler’s rise to power (and 13 years before Orwell’s 1984). Lewis was an astute and keen observer of political power and was a canary in the coal mine for a world that would soon know much grief.
Considering that Lewis published this in 1935, it is eerily uncanny the way his fictitious predictions about American despotism would four years later parallel the Nazi blitzkrieg. Also noteworthy is Lewis’ ability to create a uniquely American dictator, not a swastika brandishing Teuton or an Italian variety autocrat, but one who rises to power quoting folksy barbs and appealing to the New World everyman.
Also, this is an endearing call to arms for people to stand up to tyranny, even in the early stages and to be wary of the societal symptoms of fascist beginnings. Finally, this is simply a good story told by a brilliant writer, this being published 5 years after he had received his Nobel Prize in literature and generally considered the best of his later work.
Recommended.
** 2018 - I think people in the last couple of years have looked at this book and made comparisons with the current US president. Not sure about that but what is noteworthy is Lewis' uncanny prediction in 1935, two years after Hitler rose to power, about a populace willing to elect and support such a demagogue. My own aversion to partisan politics blames our two party system for the late unpleasantness and calls to question the idea, brought out by Lewis here, about blind obedience.
Perhaps most compelling is the fact that Lewis wrote the book only a couple of years after Hitler’s rise to power (and 13 years before Orwell’s 1984). Lewis was an astute and keen observer of political power and was a canary in the coal mine for a world that would soon know much grief.
Considering that Lewis published this in 1935, it is eerily uncanny the way his fictitious predictions about American despotism would four years later parallel the Nazi blitzkrieg. Also noteworthy is Lewis’ ability to create a uniquely American dictator, not a swastika brandishing Teuton or an Italian variety autocrat, but one who rises to power quoting folksy barbs and appealing to the New World everyman.
Also, this is an endearing call to arms for people to stand up to tyranny, even in the early stages and to be wary of the societal symptoms of fascist beginnings. Finally, this is simply a good story told by a brilliant writer, this being published 5 years after he had received his Nobel Prize in literature and generally considered the best of his later work.
Recommended.
** 2018 - I think people in the last couple of years have looked at this book and made comparisons with the current US president. Not sure about that but what is noteworthy is Lewis' uncanny prediction in 1935, two years after Hitler rose to power, about a populace willing to elect and support such a demagogue. My own aversion to partisan politics blames our two party system for the late unpleasantness and calls to question the idea, brought out by Lewis here, about blind obedience.
September 19, 2012
I have always thought that if fascism ever came to America it would come clothed in red, white, and blue, with patriotic songs, and quotations from founding fathers. It would be nationalistic. It would extol military endeavors and elevate soldiers to the level of heroes. It would handle the race question in subtle yet effective ways. It would join forces with conservative Christian churches and begin to make life hard for anyone else. It would give free reign to the rich, the powerful, and the political supports they enjoy. It would ignore democratic ideals and replace them with a kind of Americanism that encourages love of country over love of people. Make no mistake, American fascism is possible with just the right rhetoric and influence.
Sinclair Lewis' book, It Can't Happen Here, portrays just such an America. His distopia is set in the 1930s, depression years during which extreme solutions to economic problems were abundant. But if you think it can't happen here, and now, think again. They won't call it "fascism" of course, but we already have Americans who think this way.
Sinclair Lewis' book, It Can't Happen Here, portrays just such an America. His distopia is set in the 1930s, depression years during which extreme solutions to economic problems were abundant. But if you think it can't happen here, and now, think again. They won't call it "fascism" of course, but we already have Americans who think this way.
November 6, 2024
“The conspicuous fault of the Jeffersonian Party, like the personal fault of Senator Trowbridge, was that it represented integrity and reason, in a year when the electorate hungered for frisky emotions, for the peppery sensations associated, usually, not with monetary systems and taxation rates but with baptism by immersion in the creek, straight whisky, angelic orchestras heard soaring down from the full moon, fear of death when an automobile teeters above a canyon, thirst in a desert and quenching it with spring water—all the primitive sensations which they thought they found in the screaming of Buzz Windrip"--Sinclair Lewis
I only just now finished listening to over 14 hours of this book, which I read for the first time, and found amazing--initially almost cartoonishly funny, and slowly, gradually frightening, and then at times turning to horrific. It can happen here, Lewis said, in 1935, watching the rise of Hitler, as Brecht said also in The Resistible Rise Arturo Ui, and Orwell said in 1984, and so many others have written over the last several decades, including Roth's The Plot Against America. These stories exist because fascism, authoritarianism, strongman demogoguery is not only possible, it is happening again in many places; some like Lewis in the thirties saw tendencies not only in Germany and Italy and Russia for the support of dictatorship, but in America, too, in movements they saw toward isolationism, xenophobia, anti-immigration, nationalism, and so on. Rachel Maddow documents America's pro-Hitler support in Prequel.
Lewis tells the story of a journalist and his family fighting Windrip and largely losing the fight, though what he says against the politician makes so much sense to us. We can't believe such a buffoon as Windrip would get elected and then turn his own military and media and government on not only his detractors but some of the very people who elected him on the basis of false promises against them. I think Lewis had in mind Huey Long as a partial model for Windrip.
Remember: A vast majority of a once proud German country supported Hitler and his Nazi party. Two weeks after the 1933 election, Hitler was able to pass an Enabling Act which effectively gave him dictatorial powers. Within months, the Nazis banned all other parties and turned the Reichstag into a rubberstamp legislature comprising only Nazis and pro-Nazi "guests." When Hindenberg objected loudly to Nazi excesses, Hitler responded by ordering the Night of the Long Knives, in which several SA leaders, including Ernst Röhm, were murdered along with several of Hitler's other past rivals. Hitler's "revenge" tour was just beginning. Of course it can't happen here. Or can it?
I had read Lewis's Main Street and Elmer Gantry, which I loved for their social satire, his skewering of hypocrisy, but this book, published after his much deserved Nobel Prize, I think this just might be his greatest work. As I said, it started out as social satire, where you smile and laugh a lot at his wit, and then it actually turns out to be very frightening and urging and moving. Bravo. Highly recommended.
I only just now finished listening to over 14 hours of this book, which I read for the first time, and found amazing--initially almost cartoonishly funny, and slowly, gradually frightening, and then at times turning to horrific. It can happen here, Lewis said, in 1935, watching the rise of Hitler, as Brecht said also in The Resistible Rise Arturo Ui, and Orwell said in 1984, and so many others have written over the last several decades, including Roth's The Plot Against America. These stories exist because fascism, authoritarianism, strongman demogoguery is not only possible, it is happening again in many places; some like Lewis in the thirties saw tendencies not only in Germany and Italy and Russia for the support of dictatorship, but in America, too, in movements they saw toward isolationism, xenophobia, anti-immigration, nationalism, and so on. Rachel Maddow documents America's pro-Hitler support in Prequel.
Lewis tells the story of a journalist and his family fighting Windrip and largely losing the fight, though what he says against the politician makes so much sense to us. We can't believe such a buffoon as Windrip would get elected and then turn his own military and media and government on not only his detractors but some of the very people who elected him on the basis of false promises against them. I think Lewis had in mind Huey Long as a partial model for Windrip.
Remember: A vast majority of a once proud German country supported Hitler and his Nazi party. Two weeks after the 1933 election, Hitler was able to pass an Enabling Act which effectively gave him dictatorial powers. Within months, the Nazis banned all other parties and turned the Reichstag into a rubberstamp legislature comprising only Nazis and pro-Nazi "guests." When Hindenberg objected loudly to Nazi excesses, Hitler responded by ordering the Night of the Long Knives, in which several SA leaders, including Ernst Röhm, were murdered along with several of Hitler's other past rivals. Hitler's "revenge" tour was just beginning. Of course it can't happen here. Or can it?
I had read Lewis's Main Street and Elmer Gantry, which I loved for their social satire, his skewering of hypocrisy, but this book, published after his much deserved Nobel Prize, I think this just might be his greatest work. As I said, it started out as social satire, where you smile and laugh a lot at his wit, and then it actually turns out to be very frightening and urging and moving. Bravo. Highly recommended.
February 11, 2017
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis is a 2014 Signet publication.
I’ll give you three guesses as to why this book showed up on my TBR list, and two don’t count.
Originally published way back in 1935, Sinclair Lewis’s novel seemed to transcend time and is a constant reminder what can happen if we are too complacent or too timid to make our voice heard.
There is no need to go over the context of this timeless classic, as it has been analyzed many times over by people far more prolific than myself. I don’t think one must be hit over the head with a brick to see the parallels of this book and our current political atmosphere in the US, which is why there has been such a renewed interest in it recently.
If you haven’t read the book, I hope you will consider doing so, and if you have read it, a second look at this stunning cautionary tale may be long overdue.
It should be noted that the story is dated, and is meant to be satirical, but the core lesson is one that remains as valuable today as it was when it was first written.
4 stars
I’ll give you three guesses as to why this book showed up on my TBR list, and two don’t count.
Originally published way back in 1935, Sinclair Lewis’s novel seemed to transcend time and is a constant reminder what can happen if we are too complacent or too timid to make our voice heard.
There is no need to go over the context of this timeless classic, as it has been analyzed many times over by people far more prolific than myself. I don’t think one must be hit over the head with a brick to see the parallels of this book and our current political atmosphere in the US, which is why there has been such a renewed interest in it recently.
If you haven’t read the book, I hope you will consider doing so, and if you have read it, a second look at this stunning cautionary tale may be long overdue.
It should be noted that the story is dated, and is meant to be satirical, but the core lesson is one that remains as valuable today as it was when it was first written.
4 stars
January 4, 2019
The first thing you might want to be clear about when you pick up this novel is that Sinclair Lewis is not Upton Sinclair. Not many people realize this. About a week after November 8th 2016, for example, when I dutifully brought It Can't Happen Here up to a clerk at Barnes & Noble (luckily, I didn't have to decide whether to look under 'L' or 'S'- seemingly overnight, without any overt explanation, all manner of totalitarian literature had been put on prominent display throughout the store, a convenience that saved me time and energy), he remarked, "so you're reading this one and not Oil!, eh?" It wasn't until I got back to my car that I realized his mistake. Some may doubt my hypothesis, but I'm certain they are two different people. Well, almost certain. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle (which I read chapters of in high school US History class) and Oil! (which was turned into a great movie with Daniel Day-Lewis), and ran for governor of California in 1934, while Sinclair Lewis wrote this book, as well as, no doubt, many other novels that I'm probably not ever going to read. Surely no single person could accomplish all of these things. Adding to the confusion, it turns out that Lewis and Sinclair knew each other, and that Lewis gave Sinclair a (unflattering) guest appearance in this novel.
Having gotten that out of the way, let's speak frankly. This is not a good novel. Don't take it from me, though. Here's a quote from the introduction- you know, the part of the book that is at the very least probably not supposed to discourage you from reading:
Unfortunately, the writing displays the haste in which he wrote...many reviewers... complained about the novel's loose, melodramatic plot, flat and even corny characters, weak cliched dialogue, padded political discourse, awkward sentimentality, and heavy-handed satire and irony...Well, I haven't been that motivated to start a book since the introduction to A Critique of Pure Reason warned darkly that readers of the text tend to experience frequent thoughts of suicide. As it turns out, I agree with all of these criticisms. Even the last hundred pages or so of the novel, easily the best and darkest, are still marked by plot improvisation, scenes that seem more sketched than carefully worked on, dialogue filled with dashes, ellipses and exclamation points, mawkishness, and awkward sentimental humor. I don't doubt that people in forced labor camps are able to find humor in their situations, but the narrator's jaunty remarks about the family dog's not being able to understand English following a scene of torture, for example, contribute to a jarring, schizophrenic tone. The novel's Afterword clarifies that "the haste in which he wrote" was from May to September of 1935 (that is, he wrote the entire novel in 5 months, which explains a few things), but also suggests the reason you might want to read this book anyway. One reviewer, I learned, called it "a vigorous antifascist tract" if "...not much of a novel." Another wrote, in a formulation I'm not convinced has an actual meaning (but I suppose I get it), presumably referencing two of Lewis's former novels, "...it is his worst book since Elmer Gantry; I think it is also, and more truly, his best book since Arrowsmith." A Marxist magazine called it a "...tremendously useful book." And so on. Point being that reviewers in general seem to have agreed that you read this book not for stylistic excellence but for its ideas, which are worth thinking about.
Buzz Windrip, for example (yes, that's the character's name, just roll with it), ranks pretty highly, at least in the top hundred, in the index of fictional dictators whom Donald Trump resembles most (granted, the list also includes characters who aren't technically dictators, like Tony Soprano).
Windrip, whom Lewis based at least in part on Huey Long (as well as Mussolini and Hitler), rises to power on a platform of economic populism (one of his campaign promises, for example, is taken from Long's plan to seize all personal annual income in excess of $500,000 for use by the federal government; it's made pretty clear, incidentally, that it's not so much that the working class who vote for Windrip- and eventually get screwed, of course- are passionate about fascism, but may be deluded about its true nature, and hey, the system hasn't been working, so they might as well give someone unconventional a try...it's the lasting economic effects of the Great Depression, however, that really seem to give Windrip his opening), xenophobia, and a non-specific mishmash of contradictory ideas and slogans; he has a hypnotic effect on crowds, holding mass rallies at which he whips them into orgiastic frenzies of nationalism (even if the people who go to the rallies never seem able to remember the details of what exactly he's said), and maintains a symbiotic relationship with a guarded, calculating, shadowy advisor who plans everything from the shadows- and who in turn needs Windrip's unconscious animal talent for demagoguery.
Lewis also has interesting things to say about the nature of fascism, and the difficulties in responding to it. One reason supporters of different political parties in Lewis's novel argue over minutiae instead of banding together to fight Windrip is that they lack the experience of fascism and treat it with more fairness and less caution than it warrants. Since they believe in fairness and making arguments in good faith, they believe that at some level everyone else does as well. But fascism is only a political position in the sense that someone coming up behind you in a bar and smashing a glass over your head is a form of argument. A willingness to extend a fundamental decency and benefit of the doubt to opponents, while an admirable quality, may be a handicap when it comes to dealing with fascism, and hints at why people like Marat, Lenin or Mao were often more brutal and autocratic than the governments they helped overthrow. Fascism doesn't breed softness; it changes people, and Lewis makes a point of demonstrating this through his characters. He captures some of the identifying features of fascism- sadism, yes, but it is also so cartoonish, so self-evidently absurd and stupid, that it can be difficult to take seriously- and it can be "too late" faster than you think.
The title of the novel is not exactly subtle, and, just in case you didn't get it, Lewis scatters straw men throughout the early chapters to guffaw, in one case the exact words, "...it can't happen here." The natural instinct is to not let yourself be the same kind of sucker, whistling past the graveyard. But while it may be happening here in the US (as well as, in various stages, in the Philippines, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, China, and now Brazil...), and while Lewis's novel is prescient, it's hard to imagine it happening in quite the way the novel describes; things seem even stranger and more complex these days, and the novel that imposes some sense of order on it all has perhaps not yet been written.
February 26, 2017
Written in 1935 this novel has had a sudden resurgence due to world events which somehow seem eerily similar. The story tells of the rise of the next President of the United Stated – Berzelius ‘Buzz’ Windrip, mostly through the eyes of small town journalist, Doremus Jessup (there are some very unusual names in this novel!), his family and local community.
Obviously, this novel was written during the time of rising fascism in Europe and the author has cleverly taken those events and the complacency of people to believe that dictators cannot happen ‘here,’ wherever ‘here’ is. So, we have the bullying, bluff, pretend humble, opinionated Buzz Windrip (sound familiar) whose every outrageous, offensive comment is instantly forgiven by his adoring followers (again….) as he pushes and shoves his way to the top, with the help of a shadowy puppet master and a horde of thugs, named the ‘Minute Men.’
Windrip is charismatic and power hungry; promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness and assuring every ‘real’ citizen (real by his definition, obviously) a sum of money, from $3-$5000 a year. One of those hoping to benefit from these promises is Shad Ledre, who works for Doremus Jessup. Sly, lazy and vicious, he uses the new regime to rise to power and lord it over those who were nominally in charge before the changes. For soon there is a new balance of power and attacks on academics, the judiciary and the press.
This is a really thought provoking novel about listening to false promises and accepting those attacks on freedom which are taken for granted, until they are no longer there. It has a lot to discuss and is a perfect read for book groups, particularly in the current political climate.
Obviously, this novel was written during the time of rising fascism in Europe and the author has cleverly taken those events and the complacency of people to believe that dictators cannot happen ‘here,’ wherever ‘here’ is. So, we have the bullying, bluff, pretend humble, opinionated Buzz Windrip (sound familiar) whose every outrageous, offensive comment is instantly forgiven by his adoring followers (again….) as he pushes and shoves his way to the top, with the help of a shadowy puppet master and a horde of thugs, named the ‘Minute Men.’
Windrip is charismatic and power hungry; promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness and assuring every ‘real’ citizen (real by his definition, obviously) a sum of money, from $3-$5000 a year. One of those hoping to benefit from these promises is Shad Ledre, who works for Doremus Jessup. Sly, lazy and vicious, he uses the new regime to rise to power and lord it over those who were nominally in charge before the changes. For soon there is a new balance of power and attacks on academics, the judiciary and the press.
This is a really thought provoking novel about listening to false promises and accepting those attacks on freedom which are taken for granted, until they are no longer there. It has a lot to discuss and is a perfect read for book groups, particularly in the current political climate.
March 14, 2016
This extraordinary novel from 1935 predicts with uncanny accuracy the American political situation of 2016, and has authentic and frightening warnings. Sinclair Lewis satirizes with biting humor the potential for America to fall to populist demagogues with nothing to say but what people want to hear, and of the terrible consequences of the people's naïvete. A must read.
January 3, 2018
UPDATE: Dorothy Thompson, Sinclair Lewis's wife at the time, wrote an article Who Goes Nazi?, where she guesses which of her fellow Americans at a party would become Nazis if given the opportunity. Well worth a read and a parlour game well worth reviving.
To give you the flavour, looks like Trump was at the party:
There is no better time to read this book than right now, except maybe for this time next year.
The story in Sinclair Lewis’ “It Couldn’t Happen Here” is a familiar one: fascism comes to America through the ballot box and the path first trod by the Nazis is faithfully followed.
These days we have learnt the lessons of history and look with suspicion at grandstanding debates and at political rallies filled with bright lights, loud music and low-level violence. But in this age these are no more than a diversion from the natural home of a new American fascism.
Different from the fascism of the Nazis a modern American fascism would be born not in the democratic process but rather in the law. It would take its first steps far away from the noisy rallies and safe from the glare of public attention in the grey offices of corporate lobbyists and in the proceedings of dull committees. A modern American fascism would be a tyranny of the legal opinion, an oppression of the outsourcing contract, a dictatorship of the draft regulations.
In dull back rooms mediocre lawyers would write legal opinions justifying torture and the majority of the public would support its use. Police would be given legal powers to seize property on spurious grounds and retain it for their own enjoyment (Canadian citizens would be warned by their state broadcaster not to travel with large amounts of money in the US). In drab state courtrooms judges would supplement their salaries by sending innocent children to jail. Prisons run for profit would be indistinguishable from concentration camps. Inmates would be sentenced to decades in jail for trivial crimes where they would be forced to work to supply goods for nominal wages.
“It Couldn’t Happen Here” was extremely popular when it was first published, so deserves recognition for the public debate it created in its time. It would need a thorough re-write before it could fulfil the same role in our more complex and subtle but no less dangerous age.
To give you the flavour, looks like Trump was at the party:
I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others.
There is no better time to read this book than right now, except maybe for this time next year.
The story in Sinclair Lewis’ “It Couldn’t Happen Here” is a familiar one: fascism comes to America through the ballot box and the path first trod by the Nazis is faithfully followed.
These days we have learnt the lessons of history and look with suspicion at grandstanding debates and at political rallies filled with bright lights, loud music and low-level violence. But in this age these are no more than a diversion from the natural home of a new American fascism.
Different from the fascism of the Nazis a modern American fascism would be born not in the democratic process but rather in the law. It would take its first steps far away from the noisy rallies and safe from the glare of public attention in the grey offices of corporate lobbyists and in the proceedings of dull committees. A modern American fascism would be a tyranny of the legal opinion, an oppression of the outsourcing contract, a dictatorship of the draft regulations.
In dull back rooms mediocre lawyers would write legal opinions justifying torture and the majority of the public would support its use. Police would be given legal powers to seize property on spurious grounds and retain it for their own enjoyment (Canadian citizens would be warned by their state broadcaster not to travel with large amounts of money in the US). In drab state courtrooms judges would supplement their salaries by sending innocent children to jail. Prisons run for profit would be indistinguishable from concentration camps. Inmates would be sentenced to decades in jail for trivial crimes where they would be forced to work to supply goods for nominal wages.
“It Couldn’t Happen Here” was extremely popular when it was first published, so deserves recognition for the public debate it created in its time. It would need a thorough re-write before it could fulfil the same role in our more complex and subtle but no less dangerous age.
December 22, 2020
A cautionary tale which remains sadly, dismally, infuriatingly relevant.
3.5 stars. Surprisingly readable and more active than I expected, although it certainly is at times windy and bloviating. But then again you don't read this type of thing for laughs, do you? (That's not fair, there actually are some funny lines but they grow less frequent as the Fascism intensifies)
3.5 stars. Surprisingly readable and more active than I expected, although it certainly is at times windy and bloviating. But then again you don't read this type of thing for laughs, do you? (That's not fair, there actually are some funny lines but they grow less frequent as the Fascism intensifies)
April 10, 2017
It can. It is.
This book is the Nostradamus of our political past, present and potential future.
Check out GoodReads' stats for It Can't Happen Here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/stats?...
If you're viewing those stats in the future, when the graph no longer covers as far back as 11/8/2016, you will have missed the HUGE spike in activity on this site for this book. Prior to themomentous astounding absolutely fucking unbelievable election of 11/9/2016, interest in this book was hauling in pedestrian numbers, being shelved as to-be-read around 8 to 12 times a day on average. The day Trump was elected it shot up to 174 and has remained in the dozens, if not hundreds, ever since.
Why? Because It Can't Happen Here, a book written in 1935, parallels almost precisely what is happening right now. At times it's eerily similar. Political tactics, attitudes, slogans, etc etc, so much of it mirrors what is being said and done here and now, on both sides of the left/right coin.
You know all about it already, so why read the book, right? I mean, after all you're living it. Well, perhaps your eyes aren't as open as you think they are. In fact, that's a big part of the problem. So, open them up and read this book...before it gets burned.
This book is the Nostradamus of our political past, present and potential future.
Check out GoodReads' stats for It Can't Happen Here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/stats?...
If you're viewing those stats in the future, when the graph no longer covers as far back as 11/8/2016, you will have missed the HUGE spike in activity on this site for this book. Prior to the
Why? Because It Can't Happen Here, a book written in 1935, parallels almost precisely what is happening right now. At times it's eerily similar. Political tactics, attitudes, slogans, etc etc, so much of it mirrors what is being said and done here and now, on both sides of the left/right coin.
You know all about it already, so why read the book, right? I mean, after all you're living it. Well, perhaps your eyes aren't as open as you think they are. In fact, that's a big part of the problem. So, open them up and read this book...before it gets burned.
Shelved as 'deferred'
July 27, 2018Yesterday I was having a coffee with a friend. I told him how the recent lynchings in India, the violence against authors and books, and the ghettoisation of Muslims closely parallel 1930's Nazi Germany.
He dismissed my concerns with an airy statement: "It can't happen here."
Well, apparently...
He dismissed my concerns with an airy statement: "It can't happen here."
Well, apparently...
February 21, 2020
Sinclair Lewis's polemic novel, 1935's IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, foresaw a dystopian 1936 when a demagogic New England politician, Berzelius ("Buzz") Windrip, seized control of the United States of America and ineluctably imposed a fascist-style dictatorship on the nation. To compose this 350-page playout on the theme of "Yes, it CAN happen here, and here's one way it could," Lewis put away the swift, raucous satirical style of his best-known and most commercially successful novels of the 1920s that had served him so well in BABBITT, ELMER GANTRY, ARROWSMITH and DODSWORTH -- in favor of a more traditional, yet as it turned out sometimes ponderous, character exposition and development.
Inside this suddenly-timely 350-page book is a 250-page novel struggling to get out. This probably accounts for the boredom-verging-on-disillusionment that some readers have felt in the novel’s first third, and may wonder about its flashfire emergence from the grab-bag of Great Depression ephemera. It’s almost unheard-of for an 82-year-old work of fiction to trigger an extra printing based on consumer demand beyond the modest needs of American Studies students and Lewis completionists and that alone, as they say, is news -- it was ordinary Americans suddenly confronted with “Could it happen here? Really, could it?”
So, how well does this book work as polemic? And to what extent can it be seen as an unwitting anticipation of 2016 campaign that brought Donald Trump to power? More than well enough to be notable, or so it seems to this observer at so many decades’ remove. "Buzz" Windrip was no city slicker, though: in this novel he bursts into national attention after obscure political beginnings in a politically insignificant backwater, which even casual Thirties readers immediately recognized as the story of Huey Long, transplanted by Lewis from redneck Northern Louisiana to the decaying mill country of inland New England. The methods Windrip used to secure the Presidency, the people who helped him, and the irresistible agglomeration of interest groups that brought him to victory, were deliberately ( but not exclusively) patterned after Twenties Italian Fascist and early-Thirties German NDSAP (Nazi-party). (Consider that such history is far from dust: the Nazis worked in such then-emergent, now “modern” techniques as targeting under-appreciated parts of the electorate to their eventual success.)
Windrip and his "Corpo" regime understand the distinction between persuasion and conviction in the solicitation of votes, know how to wheedle and threaten as occasion demanded, showing only when necessary the iron fist of thuggery inside the all-American velvet (cotton?) glove of populism, until he and his gang take power and the country slides irresistibly into totalitarianism. As Lewis’s hero/mouthpiece, Jessup is astute at unpacking Windrip’s pithy, yet ultimately meaningless slogans, though even Lewis can’t really surpass the rhythmic vapidity of Huey Long’s “Every man a king, but no man wears a crown.” Yet Windrip's appeal was undeniable, not least from the fact that he promised, once in office, to guarantee each American household five thousand dollars per year ($90,000 in 2017 money).
In poly-sci matters in this novel -- sheer well-informed background and logic and vote-counting -- Lewis was vivid and precise. Other, more “novelistic” concerns either didn’t work as well as in the Twenties or were jettisoned under the weighty necessity of making well-reasoned attacks against the apparent charm of a fascist-style takeover. As for nomenclature, the Dickensian fizz of George Babbitt's neighbor T. Cholmondeley Frink in the eponymous 1922 novel, who becomes "Chum Frink," poet for pay to the masses, works well. In this book, Berzelius ("Buzz") Windrip is a passable moniker for an evil man, but how can we hold up "Doremus Jessup," small-town liberal humanist, newspaper editor, to "Seth Buswell" in PEYTON PLACE or even "Gail Wynand" in THE FOUNTAINHEAD? We can't.
Clunky name or not, Jessup is a well-intentioned, well-educated and well-traveled member of the American middle class, New England (hence: fundamentally) small-town American, likable to a fault -- Lewis’s better version of himself. His character is well enough established, though it took Lewis a while: it took much more time than the one-dimensional object for satire of a George F. Babbitt, say or an Elmer Gantry. Not only does Lewis go on too long in this exposition, his mouthpiece Jessup goes on too long when he talks politics. Jessup's speechifying in the parlor and editorializing in print grind the action of this novel to a halt, a constant threat in even the most well-meant “novel of ideas.” Contemporary reviewers noted the threat of fatigue possible under Jessup’s (and to a limited extent, others’) recurrent attacks of logorrhea. Yet I stress it isn’t the ideas or language in this book that are difficult to comprehend, only that our patience is tried by their frequency and severity. What Jessup has to say makes perfect sense; his fellow New Englanders usually don't have the time to listen.
So, is IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE at times a tiresome book? Yes, but only for a while. An overstated book? Maybe. But the reader’s perseverance will be rewarded as the first third ripens into the violent middle third and the tragically inevitable final third as America slips into totalitarianism. In actual history, Franklin Roosevelt smoothly steamrollered nice-guy GOP moderate Alf Landon in the 1936 election. Of course, we cannot really know for sure what is going to happen in our country's near future, but Lewis’s novel for all its early awkwardness makes for a compelling “alt-history” and is well worth the time to read and discuss. Resistance may not be futile, but comparisons are inevitable.
**************
Inside this suddenly-timely 350-page book is a 250-page novel struggling to get out. This probably accounts for the boredom-verging-on-disillusionment that some readers have felt in the novel’s first third, and may wonder about its flashfire emergence from the grab-bag of Great Depression ephemera. It’s almost unheard-of for an 82-year-old work of fiction to trigger an extra printing based on consumer demand beyond the modest needs of American Studies students and Lewis completionists and that alone, as they say, is news -- it was ordinary Americans suddenly confronted with “Could it happen here? Really, could it?”
So, how well does this book work as polemic? And to what extent can it be seen as an unwitting anticipation of 2016 campaign that brought Donald Trump to power? More than well enough to be notable, or so it seems to this observer at so many decades’ remove. "Buzz" Windrip was no city slicker, though: in this novel he bursts into national attention after obscure political beginnings in a politically insignificant backwater, which even casual Thirties readers immediately recognized as the story of Huey Long, transplanted by Lewis from redneck Northern Louisiana to the decaying mill country of inland New England. The methods Windrip used to secure the Presidency, the people who helped him, and the irresistible agglomeration of interest groups that brought him to victory, were deliberately ( but not exclusively) patterned after Twenties Italian Fascist and early-Thirties German NDSAP (Nazi-party). (Consider that such history is far from dust: the Nazis worked in such then-emergent, now “modern” techniques as targeting under-appreciated parts of the electorate to their eventual success.)
Windrip and his "Corpo" regime understand the distinction between persuasion and conviction in the solicitation of votes, know how to wheedle and threaten as occasion demanded, showing only when necessary the iron fist of thuggery inside the all-American velvet (cotton?) glove of populism, until he and his gang take power and the country slides irresistibly into totalitarianism. As Lewis’s hero/mouthpiece, Jessup is astute at unpacking Windrip’s pithy, yet ultimately meaningless slogans, though even Lewis can’t really surpass the rhythmic vapidity of Huey Long’s “Every man a king, but no man wears a crown.” Yet Windrip's appeal was undeniable, not least from the fact that he promised, once in office, to guarantee each American household five thousand dollars per year ($90,000 in 2017 money).
In poly-sci matters in this novel -- sheer well-informed background and logic and vote-counting -- Lewis was vivid and precise. Other, more “novelistic” concerns either didn’t work as well as in the Twenties or were jettisoned under the weighty necessity of making well-reasoned attacks against the apparent charm of a fascist-style takeover. As for nomenclature, the Dickensian fizz of George Babbitt's neighbor T. Cholmondeley Frink in the eponymous 1922 novel, who becomes "Chum Frink," poet for pay to the masses, works well. In this book, Berzelius ("Buzz") Windrip is a passable moniker for an evil man, but how can we hold up "Doremus Jessup," small-town liberal humanist, newspaper editor, to "Seth Buswell" in PEYTON PLACE or even "Gail Wynand" in THE FOUNTAINHEAD? We can't.
Clunky name or not, Jessup is a well-intentioned, well-educated and well-traveled member of the American middle class, New England (hence: fundamentally) small-town American, likable to a fault -- Lewis’s better version of himself. His character is well enough established, though it took Lewis a while: it took much more time than the one-dimensional object for satire of a George F. Babbitt, say or an Elmer Gantry. Not only does Lewis go on too long in this exposition, his mouthpiece Jessup goes on too long when he talks politics. Jessup's speechifying in the parlor and editorializing in print grind the action of this novel to a halt, a constant threat in even the most well-meant “novel of ideas.” Contemporary reviewers noted the threat of fatigue possible under Jessup’s (and to a limited extent, others’) recurrent attacks of logorrhea. Yet I stress it isn’t the ideas or language in this book that are difficult to comprehend, only that our patience is tried by their frequency and severity. What Jessup has to say makes perfect sense; his fellow New Englanders usually don't have the time to listen.
So, is IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE at times a tiresome book? Yes, but only for a while. An overstated book? Maybe. But the reader’s perseverance will be rewarded as the first third ripens into the violent middle third and the tragically inevitable final third as America slips into totalitarianism. In actual history, Franklin Roosevelt smoothly steamrollered nice-guy GOP moderate Alf Landon in the 1936 election. Of course, we cannot really know for sure what is going to happen in our country's near future, but Lewis’s novel for all its early awkwardness makes for a compelling “alt-history” and is well worth the time to read and discuss. Resistance may not be futile, but comparisons are inevitable.
**************
April 7, 2017
This is a fitting fictional follow-up to the weighty nonfiction book The Origins of Totalitarianism which I've recently read. Written in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression and the volatile political situation taking place around the world which facilitated the rise of demagogues like Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Sinclair Lewis asks the question: CAN IT HAPPEN HERE IN AMERICA? And the answer he provides in this book is YES, IT CAN!
Set in Vermont beginning in the year 1936, the main character is Doremus Jessup, born in 1876, who is the owner/publisher of the local newspaper, The Informer. He warily watches as that year's presidential election unfolds. The most popular candidate is the folksy senator and consummate actor Berzelius (Buzz) Windrip who travels around the country with a group of marching men wearing old-fashioned, patriotic uniforms--he calls these his 'Minute Men.'
At the beginning of his campaign, he issues a proclamation: The Fifteen Points of Victory for the Forgotten Men, which includes the takeover of the banks and workers unions, freedom for Christian religions only, declaring Communism and Socialism high treason, setting a cap on annual income, taking away the rights of Negroes to vote and women to work, and giving every family $5o00 a year. That last one is probably what gets him elected, as so many people had been out of work for several years. "The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his 'ideas' almost idiotic."
Immediately upon winning the election, he arms his Minute Men militia (his Gestapo) while enlisting more recruits, who help him swiftly take over the entire government--including Congress and the court system.
Jessup has two choices--to either lay low or speak his mind about what is happening. When he decides to publish a scathing editorial about the government, he is arrested and taken to jail, where he is given 'a trial' before a judge appointed by the government. His son-in-law comes in to protest his treatment and is summarily taken out and shot. Jessup is allowed to go free on the condition that he allows his newspaper to be taken over by the Corpos, as they are known, and works with their representative to publish a government-friendly paper.
Jessup puts up with this humiliation for awhile but then quits and joins a new underground movement which helps dissidents escape to Canada, and he secretly publishes a protest newspaper called Vermont Vigilance with like-minded friends--which could land him in a concentration camp or worse, if caught.
Some 80 years later, this is still very much a book of warning about the dangers that threaten our democratic institutions if we are not ever vigilant. Although not great literature, it is filled with satire and irony and does put our current political situation into perspective. Hopefully, it can also inspire us as citizens to get more politically active and work for what we believe is right. Read it and be warned!
Set in Vermont beginning in the year 1936, the main character is Doremus Jessup, born in 1876, who is the owner/publisher of the local newspaper, The Informer. He warily watches as that year's presidential election unfolds. The most popular candidate is the folksy senator and consummate actor Berzelius (Buzz) Windrip who travels around the country with a group of marching men wearing old-fashioned, patriotic uniforms--he calls these his 'Minute Men.'
At the beginning of his campaign, he issues a proclamation: The Fifteen Points of Victory for the Forgotten Men, which includes the takeover of the banks and workers unions, freedom for Christian religions only, declaring Communism and Socialism high treason, setting a cap on annual income, taking away the rights of Negroes to vote and women to work, and giving every family $5o00 a year. That last one is probably what gets him elected, as so many people had been out of work for several years. "The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his 'ideas' almost idiotic."
Immediately upon winning the election, he arms his Minute Men militia (his Gestapo) while enlisting more recruits, who help him swiftly take over the entire government--including Congress and the court system.
Jessup has two choices--to either lay low or speak his mind about what is happening. When he decides to publish a scathing editorial about the government, he is arrested and taken to jail, where he is given 'a trial' before a judge appointed by the government. His son-in-law comes in to protest his treatment and is summarily taken out and shot. Jessup is allowed to go free on the condition that he allows his newspaper to be taken over by the Corpos, as they are known, and works with their representative to publish a government-friendly paper.
Jessup puts up with this humiliation for awhile but then quits and joins a new underground movement which helps dissidents escape to Canada, and he secretly publishes a protest newspaper called Vermont Vigilance with like-minded friends--which could land him in a concentration camp or worse, if caught.
Some 80 years later, this is still very much a book of warning about the dangers that threaten our democratic institutions if we are not ever vigilant. Although not great literature, it is filled with satire and irony and does put our current political situation into perspective. Hopefully, it can also inspire us as citizens to get more politically active and work for what we believe is right. Read it and be warned!
January 6, 2022
It *can* happen here, in the United States of America – and it very nearly *did* happen on January 6, 2021. Who can say what might have happened if the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol that day had seized members of the United States Congress? A gallows had been erected on the lawn outside the Capitol. Avid supporters of then-president Donald Trump had been whipped into a frenzy by Trump’s false claims that the election he lost had been “stolen” from him. The Capitol was actually breached by the rioters, and members of Congress were frantically attempting to find their way to safety.
What might we have seen, if the rioters had been more successful in their attempt to keep the results of the 2020 presidential election from being certified? Hangings of U.S. senators and representatives on the Capitol lawn? A declaration of martial law? A “do-over” of election results in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, closely overseen by Trump and his allies? A re-installation of Trump as president on January 20th? We might have seen all the rituals of a peaceful, democratic transition of power that day – the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court reading the prescribed oath of office, the President-Elect promising to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” – but with the realities of democracy quashed, perhaps permanently.
It all seemed all too possible on that grim January 6th – and while none of those things actually came to pass, American democracy certainly seemed, and seems, weaker than it was before. And it was amidst those reflections that I returned to Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here. I first read this novel decades ago, as a college undergraduate in Tidewater Virginia – and at that time, I read it as an interesting historical document, an illustration of American anxieties about pro-fascist sentiment in the United States in the 1930’s. This time, to my dismay, I found myself reading it as a possible illustration of the shape of things to come.
By the time he wrote It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis was already a leading light among American writers of the early 20th century. A perceptive and merciless social satirist of the U.S. scene, Lewis lampooned small-town closed-mindedness in Main Street (1920), civic boosterism in Babbitt (1922), empty public religiosity in Elmer Gantry (1927). He won a Pulitzer Prize (though he turned it down), and was the first American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Accordingly, when he dedicated an entire novel to his concerns about a rising tide of fascism in America, large numbers of readers would be apt to listen.
It Can’t Happen Here begins in the year 1936, and the novel’s protagonist is one Doremus Jessup, editor of the local newspaper in the small town of Fort Beulah, Vermont. Doremus, a formidably literate man, sets forth eloquently many of the things that were no doubt on Lewis’s own mind as he saw the growth of an anti-democratic far-right political fringe in the United States in the 1930’s. Doremus speaks for the believer in democracy generally – and his words and thoughts reflect what the reader is likely to be thinking, as the U.S.A. of this novel slides steadily down into fascist tyranny.
Doremus's status as both protagonist and choral figure is emphasized in a scene set during a social gathering at the home of leading businessman Francis Tasbrough. Tasbrough, who casually tosses off anti-Semitic and anti-unionist talk in a way that makes his political sympathies quite clear, nonetheless tries to dismiss Doremus’s concerns about the trajectory of American society by stating that a fascist dictatorship “couldn’t happen here in America, not possibly! We’re a country of freemen!” (p. 32)
In response to Tasbrough’s facile patriotic pieties, Doremus asks if Tasbrough can state where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!” (p. 33) In the process, Doremus brings up Father Charles Coughlin’s fascist and anti-Semitic radio broadcasts; the political corruption of Tammany Hall in New York City, and of Warren G. Harding's presidential administration in Washington, D.C.; organized-crime gang wars in Chicago; Ku Klux Klan night rides and lynchings across the South; and also Red scares, Prohibitionists, anti-Catholic agitation, and state laws against the teaching of evolutionary theory. The message is more than sufficiently clear: Tasbrough can insist as much as he likes that “it just can’t happen here in America” (p. 35) but indeed it can.
The dictator-in-the-wings of It Can’t Happen Here is one Berzelius Windrip (quite a name, that). A rabble-rousing blowhard, Windrip has issued his own Mein Kampf – a book called Zero Hour that sets forth a frankly unachievable program of lower taxes, a strengthened military, and improved services, all of it dripping with contempt for democratic norms, dollops of “good-old-days” nationalism, and double helpings of racism and anti-Semitism. Excerpts from Zero Hour introduce many of the chapters of It Can’t Happen Here, and a characteristic passage from Windrip’s book is one in which he calls for enhanced presidential powers: “The Executive has got to have a freer hand and be able to move quick in an emergency, and not be tied down by a lot of dumb shyster-lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates” (p. 45).
A description of Windrip from Doremus’ perspective is illuminating: “The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store” (p. 85). The immediate real-life inspiration for Windrip seems to have been the populist Louisiana governor Huey Long; and you can decide for yourself regarding the extent to which Lewis’s description of Windrip could also be applied to the man who called for the January 6th rally that morphed into an assault on the U.S. Capitol more than 80 years later.
Lewis takes pains to make clear that he is not accusing either of the major U.S. political parties of being more ripe for a fascist takeover than the other. The Republican Party candidate, Senator Trowbridge, is a respectable mainstream candidate – who, “suffering from the deficiency of being honest and disinclined to promise that he could work miracles, was insisting that we live in the United States of America and not on a golden highway to Utopia” (p. 48). Meanwhile, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (one of a number of real-life historical figures in the book) responds to Windrip’s takeover of the Democratic Party by forming his own third party, the Jeffersonian Party. But these attempts at preventing Windrip’s rise to power are unavailing: “The conspicuous fault of the Jeffersonian Party, like the personal fault of Senator Trowbridge, was that it represented integrity and reason, in a year when the electorate hungered for frisky emotions” (p. 99) -- an election year, in other words, much like 2016.
After a raucous campaign characterized by adept use of the latest communications media, constant deployment of American patriotic imagery, denunciation of racial and cultural minority groups, and violence against protesters at his rallies, all while his supporters loudly sing “God bless the U.S.A.” (sound familiar?), Windrip wins the 1936 election. The supporters of his movement are known as Corporatists, shortened to “Corpos,” as “National Socialists” in Germany quickly came to be known as Nazis. And Windrip has developed his own private army of “Minute Men”; dressed in blue uniforms rather like those of U.S. cavalrymen from the 1870’s, the “M.M.’s” (a clear enough allusion to Hitler’s SS) beat or kill anyone who expresses public opposition to Windrip or Corpoism. The horrific passages detailing the specifics of M.M. violence against anti-Corpo resisters are no doubt based upon real-life Nazi atrocities.
In short order, Windrip abolishes the states, forms a series of military districts run by his cronies, imprisons thousands of people in his concentration camps, and rents camp inmates out to industrialists as slave labor – a practice that throws more people out of work and in turn increases the population of the concentration camps! And yet, as the novel’s narrator glumly notes, millions of Americans made poor by Windrip and thrown into labor camps “took it, too, like Napoleon’s soldiers. And they had the Jews and the Negroes to look down on, more and more. The M.M.’s saw to that. Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on” (p. 170). The allusion to Huey Long’s campaign slogan of “Every Man a King” is no doubt deliberate.
Doremus joins the “New Underground” of anti-Corpo resistance, and is eventually arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp. While there, Doremus observes how his fellow inmate and former friend Karl Pascal – a committed Communist, but nonetheless a man whose life-loving humanism and good humor Doremus has always appreciated – has become more doctrinaire and closed-minded during his confinement, like a Corpo in reverse. Observing how Corpo intolerance has made Karl Pascal a more intolerant Communist, Doremus reflects upon the importance of holding on to the liberal spirit of free thought and free inquiry:
“More and more, as I think about history,” he pondered, “I am convinced that every thing that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.” (p. 368)
And as signs emerge of internal turmoil within the Corpo leadership, Doremus prepares for a decisive step that may give him new opportunities to resist Corpoism – if he survives.
It Can’t Happen Here, which seems to have been written in some haste, does not always rise to the same artistic heights as Main Street or Babbitt. The characters are not always drawn as memorably as they are in other Lewis novels, and it is not until late in the novel that Lewis begins giving readers more of a look inside the rotten inner circles of Windrip’s Corpo regime – a missed storytelling opportunity, I think. Yet as a novel of ideas, It Can’t Happen Here works beautifully, reminding the reader of dangers to democracy in Lewis’s time, and in ours.
What might we have seen, if the rioters had been more successful in their attempt to keep the results of the 2020 presidential election from being certified? Hangings of U.S. senators and representatives on the Capitol lawn? A declaration of martial law? A “do-over” of election results in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, closely overseen by Trump and his allies? A re-installation of Trump as president on January 20th? We might have seen all the rituals of a peaceful, democratic transition of power that day – the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court reading the prescribed oath of office, the President-Elect promising to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” – but with the realities of democracy quashed, perhaps permanently.
It all seemed all too possible on that grim January 6th – and while none of those things actually came to pass, American democracy certainly seemed, and seems, weaker than it was before. And it was amidst those reflections that I returned to Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here. I first read this novel decades ago, as a college undergraduate in Tidewater Virginia – and at that time, I read it as an interesting historical document, an illustration of American anxieties about pro-fascist sentiment in the United States in the 1930’s. This time, to my dismay, I found myself reading it as a possible illustration of the shape of things to come.
By the time he wrote It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis was already a leading light among American writers of the early 20th century. A perceptive and merciless social satirist of the U.S. scene, Lewis lampooned small-town closed-mindedness in Main Street (1920), civic boosterism in Babbitt (1922), empty public religiosity in Elmer Gantry (1927). He won a Pulitzer Prize (though he turned it down), and was the first American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Accordingly, when he dedicated an entire novel to his concerns about a rising tide of fascism in America, large numbers of readers would be apt to listen.
It Can’t Happen Here begins in the year 1936, and the novel’s protagonist is one Doremus Jessup, editor of the local newspaper in the small town of Fort Beulah, Vermont. Doremus, a formidably literate man, sets forth eloquently many of the things that were no doubt on Lewis’s own mind as he saw the growth of an anti-democratic far-right political fringe in the United States in the 1930’s. Doremus speaks for the believer in democracy generally – and his words and thoughts reflect what the reader is likely to be thinking, as the U.S.A. of this novel slides steadily down into fascist tyranny.
Doremus's status as both protagonist and choral figure is emphasized in a scene set during a social gathering at the home of leading businessman Francis Tasbrough. Tasbrough, who casually tosses off anti-Semitic and anti-unionist talk in a way that makes his political sympathies quite clear, nonetheless tries to dismiss Doremus’s concerns about the trajectory of American society by stating that a fascist dictatorship “couldn’t happen here in America, not possibly! We’re a country of freemen!” (p. 32)
In response to Tasbrough’s facile patriotic pieties, Doremus asks if Tasbrough can state where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!” (p. 33) In the process, Doremus brings up Father Charles Coughlin’s fascist and anti-Semitic radio broadcasts; the political corruption of Tammany Hall in New York City, and of Warren G. Harding's presidential administration in Washington, D.C.; organized-crime gang wars in Chicago; Ku Klux Klan night rides and lynchings across the South; and also Red scares, Prohibitionists, anti-Catholic agitation, and state laws against the teaching of evolutionary theory. The message is more than sufficiently clear: Tasbrough can insist as much as he likes that “it just can’t happen here in America” (p. 35) but indeed it can.
The dictator-in-the-wings of It Can’t Happen Here is one Berzelius Windrip (quite a name, that). A rabble-rousing blowhard, Windrip has issued his own Mein Kampf – a book called Zero Hour that sets forth a frankly unachievable program of lower taxes, a strengthened military, and improved services, all of it dripping with contempt for democratic norms, dollops of “good-old-days” nationalism, and double helpings of racism and anti-Semitism. Excerpts from Zero Hour introduce many of the chapters of It Can’t Happen Here, and a characteristic passage from Windrip’s book is one in which he calls for enhanced presidential powers: “The Executive has got to have a freer hand and be able to move quick in an emergency, and not be tied down by a lot of dumb shyster-lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates” (p. 45).
A description of Windrip from Doremus’ perspective is illuminating: “The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store” (p. 85). The immediate real-life inspiration for Windrip seems to have been the populist Louisiana governor Huey Long; and you can decide for yourself regarding the extent to which Lewis’s description of Windrip could also be applied to the man who called for the January 6th rally that morphed into an assault on the U.S. Capitol more than 80 years later.
Lewis takes pains to make clear that he is not accusing either of the major U.S. political parties of being more ripe for a fascist takeover than the other. The Republican Party candidate, Senator Trowbridge, is a respectable mainstream candidate – who, “suffering from the deficiency of being honest and disinclined to promise that he could work miracles, was insisting that we live in the United States of America and not on a golden highway to Utopia” (p. 48). Meanwhile, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (one of a number of real-life historical figures in the book) responds to Windrip’s takeover of the Democratic Party by forming his own third party, the Jeffersonian Party. But these attempts at preventing Windrip’s rise to power are unavailing: “The conspicuous fault of the Jeffersonian Party, like the personal fault of Senator Trowbridge, was that it represented integrity and reason, in a year when the electorate hungered for frisky emotions” (p. 99) -- an election year, in other words, much like 2016.
After a raucous campaign characterized by adept use of the latest communications media, constant deployment of American patriotic imagery, denunciation of racial and cultural minority groups, and violence against protesters at his rallies, all while his supporters loudly sing “God bless the U.S.A.” (sound familiar?), Windrip wins the 1936 election. The supporters of his movement are known as Corporatists, shortened to “Corpos,” as “National Socialists” in Germany quickly came to be known as Nazis. And Windrip has developed his own private army of “Minute Men”; dressed in blue uniforms rather like those of U.S. cavalrymen from the 1870’s, the “M.M.’s” (a clear enough allusion to Hitler’s SS) beat or kill anyone who expresses public opposition to Windrip or Corpoism. The horrific passages detailing the specifics of M.M. violence against anti-Corpo resisters are no doubt based upon real-life Nazi atrocities.
In short order, Windrip abolishes the states, forms a series of military districts run by his cronies, imprisons thousands of people in his concentration camps, and rents camp inmates out to industrialists as slave labor – a practice that throws more people out of work and in turn increases the population of the concentration camps! And yet, as the novel’s narrator glumly notes, millions of Americans made poor by Windrip and thrown into labor camps “took it, too, like Napoleon’s soldiers. And they had the Jews and the Negroes to look down on, more and more. The M.M.’s saw to that. Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on” (p. 170). The allusion to Huey Long’s campaign slogan of “Every Man a King” is no doubt deliberate.
Doremus joins the “New Underground” of anti-Corpo resistance, and is eventually arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp. While there, Doremus observes how his fellow inmate and former friend Karl Pascal – a committed Communist, but nonetheless a man whose life-loving humanism and good humor Doremus has always appreciated – has become more doctrinaire and closed-minded during his confinement, like a Corpo in reverse. Observing how Corpo intolerance has made Karl Pascal a more intolerant Communist, Doremus reflects upon the importance of holding on to the liberal spirit of free thought and free inquiry:
“More and more, as I think about history,” he pondered, “I am convinced that every thing that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.” (p. 368)
And as signs emerge of internal turmoil within the Corpo leadership, Doremus prepares for a decisive step that may give him new opportunities to resist Corpoism – if he survives.
It Can’t Happen Here, which seems to have been written in some haste, does not always rise to the same artistic heights as Main Street or Babbitt. The characters are not always drawn as memorably as they are in other Lewis novels, and it is not until late in the novel that Lewis begins giving readers more of a look inside the rotten inner circles of Windrip’s Corpo regime – a missed storytelling opportunity, I think. Yet as a novel of ideas, It Can’t Happen Here works beautifully, reminding the reader of dangers to democracy in Lewis’s time, and in ours.
April 6, 2023
Sadly, a tame thought-experiment...
--Firstly, it almost did happen here: Lewis's 1935 book is oblivious to the 1933 Business Plot where a group of US capitalists wanted to replace FDR (who pissed them off trying to save capitalism with a bit of welfare spending, i.e. the “New Deal”) with a fascist military coup. Unfortunately, they asked the wrong retired Major General to lead the coup, as Smedley Bulter later became an anti-war/anti-capitalist/anti-US empire activist: War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier.
--Secondly, Lewis’s book actually tries to derail the left-populist Huey Long’s 1936 presidential bid (although Long was assassinated right before publication). Long wanted to surpass FDR’s New Deal with more spending/redistribution in a “Share Our Wealth” program. After FDR won his second term, he indeed implemented much of Long’s proposals in the Second New Deal.
…I’m curious how much Lewis was actually bothered by Long’s:
a) political theatre antics, vs.
b) economic redistribution proposals (not to mention isolationist foreign policy that critiqued Standard Oil lobbying for dictators).
…Let’s not forget Western liberals will slap “authoritarian” on anyone the West cannot control, from actual fascists to anti-imperialists like Hugo Chavez/Castro.
--On redistribution, both FDR and Long offered symptomatic relief, revealing how defensive US power is to any challenge. For contrast, here’s a Marxist critique of Long: Huey Long – Workers’ Enemy: Share-the-Wealth Can Only Mean Share-the-Poverty as Long as the Capitalist System Endures
--Thirdly, liberals seem particularly oblivious to fascism. Liberalism is in many ways (i.e. globally imperialist, economically private-authoritarian) a right-wing ideology, so its susceptibility to Fascism (especially during economic crisis) should not be a shock. Liberalism’s economic foundation proclaims that one individual can be billions-of-times more "valuable" as a human than another. Consider:
1) Liberalism's driver is capitalism's endless wealth accumulation, including inheritance and money-growing-more-money (passive income), so it must culturally cherish wealth as social success.
2) Liberalism promotes a world where everything is commodified (buy/sell in markets), including peculiar markets (labour/land/money) with "fictitious commodities" since humans/nature/purchasing power are not actually produced for buying/selling in markets (Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails).
...These markets' abstract social relations and contradictions make them volatile (market speculators do not help!). During crises, society is particular vulnerable to right-wing scapegoating of visible minorities rather than abstract structures: And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
--What we are left with is an abstract, volatile system where everything has a visible price tag and a few individuals having billions more in purchasing power than the rest; such a system can only be justified with reactionary notions of human worth, social relations and social order. Stop and think about Liberalism’s myths/assumptions/omissions surrounding global poverty... disturbing: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
--As for the story, the scope of the ideological commentary is limited by national boundaries, whereas Western Liberalism has global economic/political reach. However, plenty of interesting thought-experiments throughout the plot.
--Lastly, Vijay Prashad (Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations) reiterated an insightful point regarding Fascism's connection with Imperialism. What connects the two ideologies is genocidal racism to expand "living space". Europeans may have been shocked by Fascism at home, but such genocidal practices were long practiced and perfected by European colonialism. Racism is fundamental, and this book does not address it; time to read Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism...
--Further reading on fascism/liberalism/capitalism/imperialism, in the real-world:
-Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
-American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News―From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror
-Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
-Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law
--Firstly, it almost did happen here: Lewis's 1935 book is oblivious to the 1933 Business Plot where a group of US capitalists wanted to replace FDR (who pissed them off trying to save capitalism with a bit of welfare spending, i.e. the “New Deal”) with a fascist military coup. Unfortunately, they asked the wrong retired Major General to lead the coup, as Smedley Bulter later became an anti-war/anti-capitalist/anti-US empire activist: War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier.
--Secondly, Lewis’s book actually tries to derail the left-populist Huey Long’s 1936 presidential bid (although Long was assassinated right before publication). Long wanted to surpass FDR’s New Deal with more spending/redistribution in a “Share Our Wealth” program. After FDR won his second term, he indeed implemented much of Long’s proposals in the Second New Deal.
…I’m curious how much Lewis was actually bothered by Long’s:
a) political theatre antics, vs.
b) economic redistribution proposals (not to mention isolationist foreign policy that critiqued Standard Oil lobbying for dictators).
…Let’s not forget Western liberals will slap “authoritarian” on anyone the West cannot control, from actual fascists to anti-imperialists like Hugo Chavez/Castro.
--On redistribution, both FDR and Long offered symptomatic relief, revealing how defensive US power is to any challenge. For contrast, here’s a Marxist critique of Long: Huey Long – Workers’ Enemy: Share-the-Wealth Can Only Mean Share-the-Poverty as Long as the Capitalist System Endures
--Thirdly, liberals seem particularly oblivious to fascism. Liberalism is in many ways (i.e. globally imperialist, economically private-authoritarian) a right-wing ideology, so its susceptibility to Fascism (especially during economic crisis) should not be a shock. Liberalism’s economic foundation proclaims that one individual can be billions-of-times more "valuable" as a human than another. Consider:
1) Liberalism's driver is capitalism's endless wealth accumulation, including inheritance and money-growing-more-money (passive income), so it must culturally cherish wealth as social success.
2) Liberalism promotes a world where everything is commodified (buy/sell in markets), including peculiar markets (labour/land/money) with "fictitious commodities" since humans/nature/purchasing power are not actually produced for buying/selling in markets (Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails).
...These markets' abstract social relations and contradictions make them volatile (market speculators do not help!). During crises, society is particular vulnerable to right-wing scapegoating of visible minorities rather than abstract structures: And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
--What we are left with is an abstract, volatile system where everything has a visible price tag and a few individuals having billions more in purchasing power than the rest; such a system can only be justified with reactionary notions of human worth, social relations and social order. Stop and think about Liberalism’s myths/assumptions/omissions surrounding global poverty... disturbing: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
--As for the story, the scope of the ideological commentary is limited by national boundaries, whereas Western Liberalism has global economic/political reach. However, plenty of interesting thought-experiments throughout the plot.
--Lastly, Vijay Prashad (Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations) reiterated an insightful point regarding Fascism's connection with Imperialism. What connects the two ideologies is genocidal racism to expand "living space". Europeans may have been shocked by Fascism at home, but such genocidal practices were long practiced and perfected by European colonialism. Racism is fundamental, and this book does not address it; time to read Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism...
--Further reading on fascism/liberalism/capitalism/imperialism, in the real-world:
-Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
-American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News―From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror
-Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
-Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law
June 10, 2019
Aside from presaging the reigns of terror under Hitler, Stalin, and the North Korean dynasties, Lewis’s frightening novel from 1935 captures the importance of journalistic resistance to totalitarian regimes, as summed up in the final line, “a Doremus Jessup can never die”, and the importance of retaining one’s humour and pluck in the face of meatheaded thuggeries and brainless violence. The disillusioned left-behinds, the Minute Men, are seen as willing to revert to torture and revenge overnight when the power shifts, another reminder that tyrannies succeed when politicians harness a directionless anger for their own ends. The spirit of Doremus Jessup is one that remains in all free media reporting from unbiased outlets across the world, and one that will always prevail in the face of faceless hatemongering asscockerels.
May 22, 2017
Describes our times and predicts a terrifying possibility...mix it with 1984 and it is right on target!
December 1, 2016
Given what's going on in American politics right now, this book wins my prize for most frightening read of 2016. Sorry if you don't like my use of the "p" word, but it is what it is.
To put the novel in its historical perspective, I turn to an article in the New Yorker written by Alexander Nazaryan (October 19th of this year) that says
"Sinclair Lewis published the novel as Adolf Hitler was making Germany great again, violating the Treaty of Versailles by establishing the Wehrmacht. Benito Mussolini invaded Ethopia. Things at home weren't much better: a race riot in Harlem, dust storms in the Midwest. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, but the promise of the New Deal remained unfulfilled for many. The Times, that November, reported on a meeting of the New Jersey Bankers Association, whose president offered a blunt assessment of the national mood: 'America is tired of adventure and anxious,' the man of industry said. The people wanted 'safety and conservatism again.' "
I'm not going to go into any detail here, but the man at the center of American politics in this story is Berzelius (Buzz) Windrip, a seemingly down-home sort of populist candidate who ran against FDR and won, due to his appeal to potential voters who are in agreement with his rhetoric about financial security and anti-immigrant nativism. Once in office, he begins to usher in
" a fascistic regime of suppression, terror, and totalitarianism -- all draped up in red, white, and blue bunting." (ix)
Standing against Windrip is (dare I say it?) the liberal media, here represented in the character of Doremus Jessup of Fort Beulah, Vermont. Jessup completely gets what's really going on and feels a deep need to channel his outrage into some sort of action. As things continue to get worse, as institutions designed to safeguard American democracy are shut down one by one, well, you get the drift.
The novel reveals how it can happen here, but much more interesting to me was watching one character in particular, Shad Ledue, Jessup's very unhappy former handyman, "the kind of vindictive peasant who sets fire to barns." Ledue is part of the working-class poor who feels he's not been given proper respect by his employer, so galvanized by Windrip's rhetoric, he throws in his lot with Windrip and the single political party the Corpos, and starts moving up the ladder of power with revenge against Jessup his number one priority.
Considering the huge number of page tabs I stuck in this book, I obviously I found plenty to think about here, and I could easily talk about this novel for hours. But I won't. I read this book through a day and an entire night -- no way was I going to put this one down before I finished. The knots in my stomach got tighter and tighter -- quite frankly, I had a full-blown, serious case of paralyzing fear reading this book, and when the election came and went, well, it all came back to me again, making things even worse. Even now, nearly a month after I finished it, it still has that same power. It continues to stay active in the back of my head, making it a book worthy of every second of reading time I put into it. Not many novels can do that, quite frankly.
Someone said to me some time before the election that if things went a certain way, reading this book would be "moot," to which I say pish-posh, you're wrong. Lewis wrote this novel as satire, and according to the introduction to this novel, It Can't Happen Here "gave shape" to a number of "anxieties" people faced during the 1930s, so it's very much a novel reflective of its time. And as I replied to said person, good literature is never moot. If a book written some eighty years ago can weigh so heavily on the mind because of what's happening in America right now, well, that's one hell of a story, and by no means moot.
July 28, 2024
“There is no solution! There will never be a state of society anything like perfect!”
Michael Meyer’s forward to the edition I happened to read suggested that Sinclair Lewis “found a ready-made plot in the nervous undercurrent that accompanied the volatile politics of the period. With the rise of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Europe and the alarming popularity of a variety of demagogues from both the left and right in the United States, there was widespread concern that the country could be taken over by a fascist dictatorship. Lewis placed these fears at the center of IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE”
Modern democracy is a frail entity that must be constantly guarded, nourished, and actively renewed. This novel, while less than scintillating in the sense of being a gripping thriller, is nonetheless deeply disturbing and stomach-churning in the accuracy of its prescience, its timelessness, its realism and credibility, and its universal application in a 21st century world flirting with far right neo-fascism.
It’s difficult to believe that this was written almost a century ago and that Sinclair Lewis didn’t have a crystal ball scrying over Trump’s shoulder and watching the USA as it flirts with self destruction and the creation of the Fourth Reich – an authoritarian, neo-Nazi theocracy that will inevitably shred the Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law if he is given the keys to the White House.
Consider:
“Remember when hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?”
What about Sinclair’s musing on Windrip, the eponymous demagogue who would be king?
“Yes. Nasty enough. But what I’ve got to keep remembering is that Windrip is only the lightest cork on the whirlpool. He didn’t plot all this thing. With all the justified discontent there is against the smart politicians and the Plush Horses of Plutocracy – oh, if it hadn’t been one Windrip, it’d been another … we had it coming.”
(Intelligent, thoughtful readers should apply this comment to today’s American culture and its misguided worship of wealth and capitalism and make a HUGE mental note that defeating Trump is not a panacea solution to the problems that currently plague the USA. It is only a necessary condition that happens to stand in first place on a lengthy list of must-dos. But I digress … )
On the nature of right-wing politics to decrease tolerance, to sew divisiveness, and to breed xenophobia:
“Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.”
And a reprise to the earlier observation, “We had it coming.”
“it becomes clear that the installation of a fascist government will not be a revolution or coup d’état; rather, the groundwork for fascism has already been constructed in the ideological worldviews of the majority of Americans. The riposte to the claim “It can’t happen here” is “It already has.” ”
I’ll close my brief opinion by agreeing wholeheartedly with the opinions, “ … a vigorous antifascist tract” even if it was “not much of a novel” and the New York Times Book Review comment, “ exciting reading, even if it does nothing to advance Mr Lewis’s art as a novelist” quoted in the afterword. IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE must be considered as mandatory reading for every American alive today. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt the world’s future if it had a wider reading in modern Europe as well.
Definitely recommended.
Paul Weiss
Michael Meyer’s forward to the edition I happened to read suggested that Sinclair Lewis “found a ready-made plot in the nervous undercurrent that accompanied the volatile politics of the period. With the rise of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Europe and the alarming popularity of a variety of demagogues from both the left and right in the United States, there was widespread concern that the country could be taken over by a fascist dictatorship. Lewis placed these fears at the center of IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE”
Modern democracy is a frail entity that must be constantly guarded, nourished, and actively renewed. This novel, while less than scintillating in the sense of being a gripping thriller, is nonetheless deeply disturbing and stomach-churning in the accuracy of its prescience, its timelessness, its realism and credibility, and its universal application in a 21st century world flirting with far right neo-fascism.
It’s difficult to believe that this was written almost a century ago and that Sinclair Lewis didn’t have a crystal ball scrying over Trump’s shoulder and watching the USA as it flirts with self destruction and the creation of the Fourth Reich – an authoritarian, neo-Nazi theocracy that will inevitably shred the Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law if he is given the keys to the White House.
Consider:
“Remember when hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?”
What about Sinclair’s musing on Windrip, the eponymous demagogue who would be king?
“Yes. Nasty enough. But what I’ve got to keep remembering is that Windrip is only the lightest cork on the whirlpool. He didn’t plot all this thing. With all the justified discontent there is against the smart politicians and the Plush Horses of Plutocracy – oh, if it hadn’t been one Windrip, it’d been another … we had it coming.”
(Intelligent, thoughtful readers should apply this comment to today’s American culture and its misguided worship of wealth and capitalism and make a HUGE mental note that defeating Trump is not a panacea solution to the problems that currently plague the USA. It is only a necessary condition that happens to stand in first place on a lengthy list of must-dos. But I digress … )
On the nature of right-wing politics to decrease tolerance, to sew divisiveness, and to breed xenophobia:
“Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.”
And a reprise to the earlier observation, “We had it coming.”
“it becomes clear that the installation of a fascist government will not be a revolution or coup d’état; rather, the groundwork for fascism has already been constructed in the ideological worldviews of the majority of Americans. The riposte to the claim “It can’t happen here” is “It already has.” ”
I’ll close my brief opinion by agreeing wholeheartedly with the opinions, “ … a vigorous antifascist tract” even if it was “not much of a novel” and the New York Times Book Review comment, “ exciting reading, even if it does nothing to advance Mr Lewis’s art as a novelist” quoted in the afterword. IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE must be considered as mandatory reading for every American alive today. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt the world’s future if it had a wider reading in modern Europe as well.
Definitely recommended.
Paul Weiss
Read
August 2, 2019Ο Σίνκλερ Λιούις ήταν ο πρώτος Αμερικανός συγγραφέας που κέρδισε το βραβείο Νόμπελ Λογοτεχνίας (1930) αλλά λίγο πριν την προεκλογική περίοδο του κυρίου Τραμπ, ήταν άγνωστος στους περισσότερους από εμάς.
Με το εκλογή του κυρίου Τραμπ ως προέδρου των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών οι πωλήσεις αυτού του βιβλίου εκτοξεύθηκαν στα ύψη.
Πολλοί λένε ότι αυτό το βιβλίο προέβλεψε την προεδρία του κυρίου Τραμπ.
Δεν γίνονται αυτά εδώ έλεγαν πολλοί, ανάμεσα τους κι εγώ.
-Αποκλείεται να βγει πρόεδρος ένας τύπος που τον είδα να χτυπιέται με άλλους σε ρινγκ στο WWE. Και όμως βγήκε.
Τα ίδια έλεγε και ο πρωταγωνιστής του βιβλίου Ντορέμους Τζέσαπ: ότι αποκλείεται να βγει πρόεδρος ένας λαϊκιστής, δημαγωγός, ρατσιστής, όπως ο Μπερζέλιους Γουίντριπ.
Αλλά όμως βγήκε:
Διαβάστε τη συνέχεια στο μπλογκ μου ΒιβλιοΑλχημείες
December 28, 2016
I give this five stars, not because it is particularly well-written, but because it is such an important book that really everyone who is concerned about present current world affairs should read. Apparently, before sitting down to write the book, which he did in less than five months in 1935, Lewis did a lot of intense research on how facism rises and works once it is established. Parts of the book may seem tedious to today's reader, because his fictional political characters are almost all surrogates of then real politicians, the majority of whom we are no longer familiar with. The main characters are almost caricatures, but in fact when you look at our last election, the candidates do seem like caricatures, too. There is almost a surreal quality about, in particular, the president elect.
What sends ice water through your veins with this book are the parallels you see if you simply substitute the Republican candidate's name with "Trump" and the Democatic's with "Clinton."
One might accuse Lewis of grossly exaggerating in this book. And yet, if you look at the historical outcome of facistic regimes, then you have to admit, he actually foresaw a lot that was to come.
Lewis does a good job of explaining what facism is and how it can come from the left or the right. He also does a good job of illustrating the ideology of the then American Communist Party and why large swaths of the population became zealous supporters of the authoritarian cum facist leader.
Today this book would probably be edited so that it would shrink by about a third; I did do quite a bit of speed-reading through certain parts that were repetitive or getting bogged down, but in general I would say it is a good read with a good story line. "It Can't Happen Here" was also made into a theater production. It was set to be made into a movie, but was stopped at the last minute because the producers feared a backlash from countries or politicians who might be irritated by it.
What sends ice water through your veins with this book are the parallels you see if you simply substitute the Republican candidate's name with "Trump" and the Democatic's with "Clinton."
One might accuse Lewis of grossly exaggerating in this book. And yet, if you look at the historical outcome of facistic regimes, then you have to admit, he actually foresaw a lot that was to come.
Lewis does a good job of explaining what facism is and how it can come from the left or the right. He also does a good job of illustrating the ideology of the then American Communist Party and why large swaths of the population became zealous supporters of the authoritarian cum facist leader.
Today this book would probably be edited so that it would shrink by about a third; I did do quite a bit of speed-reading through certain parts that were repetitive or getting bogged down, but in general I would say it is a good read with a good story line. "It Can't Happen Here" was also made into a theater production. It was set to be made into a movie, but was stopped at the last minute because the producers feared a backlash from countries or politicians who might be irritated by it.
May 6, 2019
My guess at Amazon sale positions say a couple years ago: **
#25,000 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Classics
#5,000 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Political
#50,000 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics
- - - - - - - - - -
I guess my rating can stand in for a review at this distance in time since I read it. Anyway, we all understand that the book has achieved a new topicality.
Currently (June 2 '17) on Amazon:
#2 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Classics
#12 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Political (up 5 in last few days)
#48 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics (up 18 in last few days)
** Estimates based on numbers for William Faulkner's The Hamlet - comparable writers, books far less popular than their best - plus the assumption that the "political genre" rating would have been higher than the other two.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Previous review: Ender's Game sci-fi
Next review: What if? SERIOUS SCIENTIFIC ANSWERS to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Older review: Eaarth Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Previous library review: Riders of the Purple Sage Zane Gray
Next library review: Arrowsmith Lewis
#25,000 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Classics
#5,000 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Political
#50,000 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics
- - - - - - - - - -
I guess my rating can stand in for a review at this distance in time since I read it. Anyway, we all understand that the book has achieved a new topicality.
Currently (June 2 '17) on Amazon:
#2 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Classics
#12 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Political (up 5 in last few days)
#48 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics (up 18 in last few days)
** Estimates based on numbers for William Faulkner's The Hamlet - comparable writers, books far less popular than their best - plus the assumption that the "political genre" rating would have been higher than the other two.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Previous review: Ender's Game sci-fi
Next review: What if? SERIOUS SCIENTIFIC ANSWERS to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Older review: Eaarth Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Previous library review: Riders of the Purple Sage Zane Gray
Next library review: Arrowsmith Lewis
February 14, 2017
"Για πολλούς ανθρώπους η μόνη τους επανάσταση εξαντλείται στην αναμονή."
"Σ' το λέω, κανείς δεν έχει τόσους φίλους όσους ο επαναστάτης. Ούτε και τόσους εχθρούς!"
"Σ' το λέω, κανείς δεν έχει τόσους φίλους όσους ο επαναστάτης. Ούτε και τόσους εχθρούς!"
November 7, 2020
EDIT due to current events: It seems like warning people how these things happen holds not much power anymore: Again, a large amount of voters have decided to actively support a demagogue and enemy of democracy although they absolutely know all this might happen, and maybe they even want it to happen because they think they might profit from it (in most cases, they won't).
Original review from 2017:
To read this novel in the light of the current political situation in the States (but also thinking about the rise of some right-wing parties in the EU) creates a strange effect: When the novel was published in 1935, Lewis warned people that they should not be complacent when facing authoritarian threats, as there would be very real consequences when dictators managed to attain power. Lewis anticipated what might happen and was partly already happening in Europe, and he was convinced that something similar might occur in the States if people did not critically question politics and actively fight any authoritarian tendencies.
Lewis wrote his book partly as a cautionary tale because he was concerned Louisiana governor and populist Huey Long would run in the 1936 election (which did not happen, as Long was assassinated in 1935, just prior to the publication of the book). Long was apparently the inspiration for one of the novel's main characters, President Buzz Windrip. Windrip's appeal is described by his antagonist, newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, as follows: "(He) was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic." Sounds familar? Brace yourselves, Jessup goes on by saying that Windrip wins his audience over by convincing them that "he was telling them the truths, the imperious and dangerous facts, that had been hidden from them." Oh yeah, and Windrip has written a book that he constantly refers to, he shuts down the press, shames, ridicules and finally detains dissidents, and he is of course a racist.
All this brings us to the really shocking fact here: Reading "It Can't Happen Here", I constantly thought: "Of course all this can happen, it partly already did happen, it reflects classic mechanisms of fascism and right-wing nationalism enabled by just as classic human traits like cowardice and complacency." In 2017, Lewis tells us nothing new, because his predictions in 1935 were pretty good. This sad insight lies at the core of reading "It Can't Happen Here" today. Add Roth`s "The Plot Against America" (which in my opinion is a far better and more complex book), and welcome to the eye of our tornado.
I am not a pessimist, and I am firmly convinced that the States are far better than Trump, France is far better than LePen, and Germany is far better than Petry. But reading this book is frustrating because today, its insights seem so unoriginal, and nevertheless, some people still fall for right-wing nationalism, racism, and Ayn Rand's philosophy of self-serving BS. Maybe this is what today's reader should get out of this. I was not particularly intrigued though.
Original review from 2017:
To read this novel in the light of the current political situation in the States (but also thinking about the rise of some right-wing parties in the EU) creates a strange effect: When the novel was published in 1935, Lewis warned people that they should not be complacent when facing authoritarian threats, as there would be very real consequences when dictators managed to attain power. Lewis anticipated what might happen and was partly already happening in Europe, and he was convinced that something similar might occur in the States if people did not critically question politics and actively fight any authoritarian tendencies.
Lewis wrote his book partly as a cautionary tale because he was concerned Louisiana governor and populist Huey Long would run in the 1936 election (which did not happen, as Long was assassinated in 1935, just prior to the publication of the book). Long was apparently the inspiration for one of the novel's main characters, President Buzz Windrip. Windrip's appeal is described by his antagonist, newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, as follows: "(He) was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic." Sounds familar? Brace yourselves, Jessup goes on by saying that Windrip wins his audience over by convincing them that "he was telling them the truths, the imperious and dangerous facts, that had been hidden from them." Oh yeah, and Windrip has written a book that he constantly refers to, he shuts down the press, shames, ridicules and finally detains dissidents, and he is of course a racist.
All this brings us to the really shocking fact here: Reading "It Can't Happen Here", I constantly thought: "Of course all this can happen, it partly already did happen, it reflects classic mechanisms of fascism and right-wing nationalism enabled by just as classic human traits like cowardice and complacency." In 2017, Lewis tells us nothing new, because his predictions in 1935 were pretty good. This sad insight lies at the core of reading "It Can't Happen Here" today. Add Roth`s "The Plot Against America" (which in my opinion is a far better and more complex book), and welcome to the eye of our tornado.
I am not a pessimist, and I am firmly convinced that the States are far better than Trump, France is far better than LePen, and Germany is far better than Petry. But reading this book is frustrating because today, its insights seem so unoriginal, and nevertheless, some people still fall for right-wing nationalism, racism, and Ayn Rand's philosophy of self-serving BS. Maybe this is what today's reader should get out of this. I was not particularly intrigued though.
June 17, 2023
"...no, that couldn't happen in *America*! Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours?"
The October 2021 selection for my in-person book club was IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE by Sinclair Lewis, 1935.
We discussed last night at the library, and as usual, I left the meeting with lots to mull over and further threads of inquiry to research.
The book is an alternate history leading to the 1936 US presidential election, and a rapid rise of totalitarianism from the point of view of an "everyman" character, the editor of a small Vermont newspaper plus a central cast of characters.
Won't rehash the plot here, but it's a drip... drip... gush... catastrophic flood effect that can scare the living daylights out of you.
The writing is folksy, but weighty. Not didactic, but the reader is easily able to assess Sinclair Lewis' stance. Only a small handful of things - related to gender roles - haven't aged as well in the ~90 years. But overall, I'm really glad I read it, and had the opportunity to discuss.
What intrigued me so much is the prescience of this novel. Sinclair Lewis' frame of reference at 1935 writing was Mussolini, Franco, a nascent Hitler, the Depression, but a modern reader undoubtedly sees WWII, neocolonialism, and growing authoritarianism all over the globe, in the text.
It's quite astonishing in concept. Yet also a reminder that history DOES repeat itself in various forms, and that pendulum sways hard.
Random inquiries and threads of thought after reading/discussion:
▪️Sinclair Lewis was the 1st American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. Why is he not remembered the same way as so many of his contemporaries?
▪️Lewis was married to Dorothy Thompson for many years, one of the woman pioneers of American journalism, AND she interviewed Adolf Hitler in 1931 and was the 1st US journalist expelled from Nazi Germany. She also interviewed Huey Long, the Louisiana populist governor who was assassinated right as this book went to press. Lewis used these two men, and his wife's journalism as a template for his imagined Berzelius Windrip.
The October 2021 selection for my in-person book club was IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE by Sinclair Lewis, 1935.
We discussed last night at the library, and as usual, I left the meeting with lots to mull over and further threads of inquiry to research.
The book is an alternate history leading to the 1936 US presidential election, and a rapid rise of totalitarianism from the point of view of an "everyman" character, the editor of a small Vermont newspaper plus a central cast of characters.
Won't rehash the plot here, but it's a drip... drip... gush... catastrophic flood effect that can scare the living daylights out of you.
The writing is folksy, but weighty. Not didactic, but the reader is easily able to assess Sinclair Lewis' stance. Only a small handful of things - related to gender roles - haven't aged as well in the ~90 years. But overall, I'm really glad I read it, and had the opportunity to discuss.
What intrigued me so much is the prescience of this novel. Sinclair Lewis' frame of reference at 1935 writing was Mussolini, Franco, a nascent Hitler, the Depression, but a modern reader undoubtedly sees WWII, neocolonialism, and growing authoritarianism all over the globe, in the text.
It's quite astonishing in concept. Yet also a reminder that history DOES repeat itself in various forms, and that pendulum sways hard.
Random inquiries and threads of thought after reading/discussion:
▪️Sinclair Lewis was the 1st American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. Why is he not remembered the same way as so many of his contemporaries?
▪️Lewis was married to Dorothy Thompson for many years, one of the woman pioneers of American journalism, AND she interviewed Adolf Hitler in 1931 and was the 1st US journalist expelled from Nazi Germany. She also interviewed Huey Long, the Louisiana populist governor who was assassinated right as this book went to press. Lewis used these two men, and his wife's journalism as a template for his imagined Berzelius Windrip.
March 11, 2021
Written and set in the 1930s, this was brilliant satire, terrifying in its accuracy. A dictator is elected by gullible people based on promises of upholding good old American values, liberty, strength, protecting US interests and giving everyone (excluding negroes of course) $5000. During his campaign he would "...coldly and almost contemptuously jab his audience with figures and facts, figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect."
After the despot's election, his cabinet is filled with rich cronies. The government sets up work camps and jails newspaper reporters and anyone else deemed a threat to the regime. However, the $5000 never materializes. There is a plot to start a war with Mexico to distract the masses and provide medals for the soldiers supporting the regime.
I was hoping that the author, who was so prescient in predicting the problem, also had a solution. Unfortunately, getting rid of a dictator is not that easy. I'm also afraid that this book could provide handy hints for those seeking to consolidate their power (assuming that they read).
I would have found this book much more amusing if I had read it a few years ago.
After the despot's election, his cabinet is filled with rich cronies. The government sets up work camps and jails newspaper reporters and anyone else deemed a threat to the regime. However, the $5000 never materializes. There is a plot to start a war with Mexico to distract the masses and provide medals for the soldiers supporting the regime.
I was hoping that the author, who was so prescient in predicting the problem, also had a solution. Unfortunately, getting rid of a dictator is not that easy. I'm also afraid that this book could provide handy hints for those seeking to consolidate their power (assuming that they read).
I would have found this book much more amusing if I had read it a few years ago.
May 28, 2024
I can see why people compared the rise of Donald Trump to the rise of Buzz Windrip in It Can't Happen Here. The similarities, especially in the earlier chapters, are almost comical. What isn't funny, is the very convincing way Lewis shows how fascism could easily grow in a country like America, with a demagogue slipping in and fanning the flames of bigotry amongst a poor people looking for answers to their problems.
Despite being anything but, Buzz Windrip positions himself as an everyman and gains favour by constantly preaching what he does not practice. For example, he earns votes from the Anti-Saloon League because:
I only gave it three stars because, while I watched his rise intently and incredulously, I thought the endless exposition of Buzz's policies quickly grew tiresome. It explores an idea, but doesn't tell all that much of a tale, and Buzz himself is the single memorable character in the book (quite literally I have already forgotten the names of everyone else).
Despite being anything but, Buzz Windrip positions himself as an everyman and gains favour by constantly preaching what he does not practice. For example, he earns votes from the Anti-Saloon League because:
“it was known that, though he drank a lot, Senator Windrip also praised teetotalism a lot, while his rival, Walt Trowbridge, though he drank but little, said nothing at all in support of the Messiahs of Prohibition.”
I only gave it three stars because, while I watched his rise intently and incredulously, I thought the endless exposition of Buzz's policies quickly grew tiresome. It explores an idea, but doesn't tell all that much of a tale, and Buzz himself is the single memorable character in the book (quite literally I have already forgotten the names of everyone else).
April 3, 2023
Title in English: It Can't Happen Here.
It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis would have been hilariously funny if it hadn't been so precise in depicting the legal ways a dictator can usurp power in a democratic country. Buzz Windrip is a caricature of Adolf Hitler, an adventurer whose political program promised everything to everybody: money to the poor, capital increase to the rich, and Jews and black Americans as scapegoats for all failures. Later in the story, another facade of Hitler, cold-hearted Lee Sarason, organizes a coup d'etat with the help of his army, Minute Men, and forces Windrip to leave the country. Then the third dictator, Dewey Haik, kills Sarason.
The book is simultaneously a caricature of fascism and communism since both political systems are characterized by the suppression of free speech, appeal to traditional values, and the overall atmosphere of fear. Through Carl Pascal's views, the author explains the difference between the two systems: the Soviet Union, for devoted communists, seems like the promised land God created as a self-sufficient paradise. Carl Pascal doesn't need facts about Russia; he believes blindly.
As in other Sinclair Lewis's books (and this I know, thanks to my Goodreads friends), characters are symbols rather than three-dimensional, deep personages. Windrip is ridiculous, Lorinda Pike is a progressive feminist and fighter, and Doremus Jessup represents the intelligentsia that, with its policy of non-intervention, allows Windrip to come to power.
It Can't Happen Here has aged graciously, and its examples can be applied to current politics as well. Sarason's weaknesses, among others, were unbridled sexual appetite and homosexuality (not accepted so willingly in 1935). Attributing sexual deviations to one's opponents has always been a way to mock political enemies.
If to compare with Arrowsmith, which I read earlier, It Can't Happen Here caught me from the first pages. It wasn't hard to predict the paths of Windrip or Doremus, yet, the book made me laugh and think simultaneously.
It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis would have been hilariously funny if it hadn't been so precise in depicting the legal ways a dictator can usurp power in a democratic country. Buzz Windrip is a caricature of Adolf Hitler, an adventurer whose political program promised everything to everybody: money to the poor, capital increase to the rich, and Jews and black Americans as scapegoats for all failures. Later in the story, another facade of Hitler, cold-hearted Lee Sarason, organizes a coup d'etat with the help of his army, Minute Men, and forces Windrip to leave the country. Then the third dictator, Dewey Haik, kills Sarason.
The book is simultaneously a caricature of fascism and communism since both political systems are characterized by the suppression of free speech, appeal to traditional values, and the overall atmosphere of fear. Through Carl Pascal's views, the author explains the difference between the two systems: the Soviet Union, for devoted communists, seems like the promised land God created as a self-sufficient paradise. Carl Pascal doesn't need facts about Russia; he believes blindly.
As in other Sinclair Lewis's books (and this I know, thanks to my Goodreads friends), characters are symbols rather than three-dimensional, deep personages. Windrip is ridiculous, Lorinda Pike is a progressive feminist and fighter, and Doremus Jessup represents the intelligentsia that, with its policy of non-intervention, allows Windrip to come to power.
It Can't Happen Here has aged graciously, and its examples can be applied to current politics as well. Sarason's weaknesses, among others, were unbridled sexual appetite and homosexuality (not accepted so willingly in 1935). Attributing sexual deviations to one's opponents has always been a way to mock political enemies.
If to compare with Arrowsmith, which I read earlier, It Can't Happen Here caught me from the first pages. It wasn't hard to predict the paths of Windrip or Doremus, yet, the book made me laugh and think simultaneously.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,270 reviews