Work of Art
by
[Doubleday, Doran, $2.50]
THERE are two sides to Sinclair Lewis’s new novel, Work of Art. More than any of his recent novels, this is a study in black and white; its ever-insistent contrast produces an irony which is present in the title and on most of the pages that follow.
Work of Art is the story of two brothers, sons of a small-town hotel-keeper in Connecticut. Ora Weagle (and I must emphasize Mr. Lewis’s aptitude for ludicrous and Dickensian names)—Ora Weagle, the younger brother, is a lazy poseur with a treacherous temperament and an inclination toward poetry. Myron Weagle, the older brother, is one of those unsparing, self-driven mortals to whom hard work is the only fun in life. His youth and schooling are sacrificed for the sake of the cheap traveling-salesman hotel, which his parents own and which would certainly have closed its doors had it not been for Myron’s seventeen-hour day. But he loved the place and he admired the loud salesmen, one of whom kindles his ambition to be the greatest hotel manager in the country. The story opens with Ora. the poet, as if to suggest that somewhere in his temperamental career will emerge the Work of Art which the author had in mind. But on page 24 the emphasis shifts suddenly to Myron, and gradually it becomes clear that if there is to be any Work of Art in this book it will be the hotel on which Myron has set his heart.
Ora Weagle goes through life a sponger, a ghost-writer. a plagiarizing playwright - in short, a walking embodiment of all that Mr Lewis abominates in the literary racket. Myron, on the other hand, is scrupulous, persevering, and thorough—Oh my Lord, so thorough! In order to fortify his knowledge of hotels, he works as bell-hop, night clerk, meat cook, accountant, dietitian, greeter, manager the list is endless; and in every waking hour he studies literature on hotel-keeping, plans menus, learns to fold trick napkins, memorizes wine lists. In short. Myron is made to do exactly what Mr. Lewis himself had to do before he was competent to write a novel about the history of hotels in the United States. I have a profound respect for the industry with which Lewis absorbs the background of his stories, and as I read his account of the American drummer’s hotel in the early l900’s, of cheap summer boarding houses, of the madhouses built for the St. Louis Exposition, of the great city Ritzes, and of those curious illicit resorts which flourished under Prohibition, I recognize that I am being fed social history of singular interest. But social history is not necessarily good fiction.
No American novelist can be more effective than Mr. Lewis when he approaches a subject that appeals to him. The opening scenes of this story, in which we see the traveling salesmen playing poker, watch a pre-war bartender at his rites, hear Flossy Gifts, the waitress, intoning her romantic menu, smell and almost taste the plain, substantial fare which Mrs. Weagle cooks for the boarders — in such pages Mr. Lewis is at his superlative best, and the story moves with exuberance and warmth. But once the Weagle boys go out into the world, once Mr. Lewis begins to belabor the fact that Ora is a charlatan and Myron a patient idealist, the novel takes on the bold, lifeless tones of black and white. Here is a book which begins with vitality, amasses its momentum of social history, lunges into irony, descends to caricature, and slows down to a trick ending. The proportions may be bad and the flaws apparent, as can be said of Dickens, but there are in Mr. Lewis’s books, as in those of his Victorian progenitor, the stuff, the power, and the humor that compel you to read him.
EDWARD WEEKS