The introduction for the 2005 edition, rushed back into print to capitalize on the novel’s prescience, praises Sinclair Lewis’s achievement (of course) but only in spite of the book’s “loose melodramatic pot, flat and even corny characters, weak cliched dialogue, padded political discourse, awkward sentimentality, and heavy-handed satire.” All of these criticisms are true. I loved it.
Much like Philip Roth’s recent The Plot Against America, It Can’t Happen Here poses an alternate history in which the U.S. follows Germany and Italy into Fascism. I’m not generally into alternate histories; they make me impatient for the real story the way I’d rather watch a documentary over a fictionalization. What is so fascinating about Here is that it’s an alternate future. In 1934/35 when Lewis was writing, Hitler had just become Führer and the U.S. was five years away from entering World War II.
Most 21st century reviews of the book harp on its parallels to the Bush administration and the War on Terror. The Boston Globe breathlessly enthuses: “PICTURE THIS: A folksy, self-consciously plainspoken Southern politician rises to power during a period of profound unrest in America… the story line is actually that of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel.” Shocking! It’s true that many of the comparisons are bleakly funny: the president is a populist figurehead while the real power rests with the icy vice-president. The administration colludes with big business and a sympathetic press against a duped American public. A paramilitary group known as the Minute Men is dispatched to the Mexican border to inflame a fictitious conflict.
Nevertheless, I found the differences to be far more interesting. Lewis lived in a world where the Republicans, considered to be “the party of privilege,” were still the party of Lincoln. Many of the characters, including the protagonist, have living memories of the Civil War, and the primary opposition to the industrialist Republicans are the Dixiecrat Democrats. Lewis’s Fascism emerges directly out of Southern racism, which is not much of stretch considering the profound social and legal framework that sustained first slavery and then segregation. What isn’t different is who the good guys are: honest people educated enough to know that the Bill of Rights isn’t to be disposed of whenever it’s convenient. These people just vote down a different party line.
I was afraid (especially after the first few pages) that it would be deadly dull, strident satire — like Upton Sinclair without the interesting gore. It’s not. For one thing, Upton Sinclair is the butt of many jokes (Lewis had no love for Socialists and was probably annoyed that everyone mixes them up). Plus, the jokes are funny, especially the one-off turns of phrase:
“My name is Dimick–Mr. Dimick of Albany–Albany, New York. I wonder if I can interest you in a wonnerful new form of life insurance policy. Wonnerful!” But he didn’t sound as though he himself thought it was very wonnerful.
He was a pest.
One quirk of writing in 1935 is that Lewis gets away with some astoundingly dark humor:
Mr. Staubmeyer (author of Hitler and Other Poems of Passion–unpublished) automatically became a doctor.
There’s also a bit in which a Catholic priest complains that Catholics aren’t being persecuted as much as the Jews, women or Negroes. If you grew up Italian Catholic you’d laugh too.
It is completely true that the quality of the writing is wildly uneven, but it gets better as America gets worse. Towards the end I had completely forgotten that the book is seventy years old; it reads like a modern thriller. And while the 21st century parallels were not the heart of the story for me, I have to say it was more comforting to read it after the mid-term elections. On the other hand, there are still many places in the world where it is not anything like fiction.
Day on day he waited. So much of a revolution for so many people is nothing but waiting. That is one reason why tourists rarely see anything but contentment in a crushed population. Waiting, and its brother death, seem so contented.