Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here"
Over the last couple of weeks, I've been reading It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis's 1936 novel about a Fascist takeover of the US. The subject matter had obvious appeal given the current Bushization process taking place. Amy picked it up for 50c -- it's a yellowing, cracking 1960s paperback -- at the soon-to-close Brandeis Bookstall in Coolidge Corner just before we left.
Unfortunately, the book is crap. Utter crap. Lewis hasn't aged well at all; every page reeks of Lewis trying to show off his erudition, the story is over the top, and almost all of the characters have such preposterous names (Doremus Jessup, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, Shad Ledue, Buck Titus) that I am tempted to write a parody of the book.
Still, I'm halfway through the damned thing, and I might as well finish it.
posted by Max @ 3/30/2005 04:53:00 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Funny that you didn't like it. While I found the prose a bit dated, the story itself was a bit scary and rather prescient IMO - right down to the idiot president with an "Karl Rove" masterminding everything from behind the scenes. All in all the book made me glad that I'd already moved to Canada.
What erudition? To me, Lewis reads as a normal educated liberal of the 1930s, and a very fluent, very frightened, observer of his contemporary trends. He isn't a radical, but you don't have to be radical to fear fascism.
The second half of the book gets better, so I downgrade the severity of my initial judgment. And the Windrip/Bush Rove/Sarason parallels are indeed creepy. But I still think it's seriously dated.
I have to agree with the other respondents. I think it's a great book, well written and yes, somewhat dated in its prose, but it is easily read and remarkably prescient in its approximation of the direction taken by US administrations over the past couple of decades...
I read that book in high school twenty years ago. That may be why I adopted an anti-gwbush stance in 1999.
I think you may well be doing the book an injustice. Life may well be imitating art once again.
In 1968, Screen Gems ( a division of Columbia Pictures ) produced a made for tv movie called Shadow On The Land. It depicted a future where the President has become known as the leader, where his book, My Story is sold in airport gift shops & where the citizenry is made to carry id cards, have travel permits to travel by air, bus or train and where an Internal Security Force has almost Gestapo-like powers. A resistance movement is formed to defeat a Reichstag fire-type event which will give the ISF unlimited power. The film was notable for being the first tv movie appearance of Gene Hackman. IMDB lists the credits as novel by Sinclair Lewis.
At the time, the film was decried by both critics like Cleveland Amory of TV Guide and by sf fans as being totally unrealistic, as this being America the people would never allow the government to usurp the Constitution.
The film has never been shown since. Perhaps it should be.
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