Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis :: Sinclair Lewis Arrowsmith

"Arrowsmith", by Sinclair Lewis In the novel "Arrowsmith", by Sinclair Lewis, written in 1925, one can read of our world's lack of idealism in science, most often found in the medical profession (Encarta, 1). This book portrays the times in terms of scientific advancement not being idealistic, mostly in the medical field. Our scientists could not come up with their own ideas and our progress was going nowhere, fast. Although, today we are advancing so rapidly that we have no choice but to move and experiment, there is no time to slow down and copy old works. Sinclair Lewis also combines his life and the life of a graduating microbiologists, who he interviewed to help him write this book, into his main character, Dr. Martin Arrowsmith. All of this goes into the book "Arrowsmith". Sinclair lewis was born on the seventh of February, 1885, in the town of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to his warmhearted parents, Emma Kermont Lewis and Dr. Edwin J. Lewis. At a very young age Sinclair read widely in grade school and continued on in his studies for many years (Grebstein, 16). Lewis studied at Yale University form 1903 till 1906. There he studied literary writings and works to help him become a writer. His father had disagreed with his career choice, but he went on and did what he wanted to do most, write. At one time he was so disgusted with his father that he ran away and tried to join the Spanish-American War as a drummer boy (Cobletz, 248). He did not get far; his father caught him before he left town. Back to collage he went and even through collage Lewis still read many books. One professor was quoted as saying "He was drawing more books from the Yale library than, I believe, any undergraduates before or since." Lewis was known to read such books from authors Hardy, Meredith, James, Howells, Austen, Bronte, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, Gogol, Flaubert, Zola, Huneker, Pinero, Jones, Shaw, d'Annunzio, Sudermann, Yeats, George Moore, Nietzsche, Haeckel, Huxley, Moody, Marx, Gorky, Blake, Pater, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Rossetti, Swinburne, Clough, and Ibsen. All of these authors were influential to him, but none more than the famous H. G. Wells (Grebstein 24). He accomplished all this during college while keeping two or more jobs at one time and writing for several papers along with his own books that he wrote. In October of 1906 he left school for a few months and stayed with his brother in his utopian colony in New Jersey. A few months later he remembered the work ethics his father taught him and went back to school and got his degree in 1907.