Books: Laureate of the Boobolsie

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CASS TIMBERLANE—Sinclair Lewis—Random House ($2.75).

On Main Street one day last week George F. Babbitt, Booster, ran into Honest Jim Blausser, Hustler. Above them (in the words of their creator, Novelist Sinclair Lewis) "the towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist."

Said Honest Jim: "I certainly was astonished in the streets of our lovely little city, the other day—a knocker!"

"Who d'ya mean?"

"Harry S. Lewis from Gopher Prairie—I mean Sauk Centre—this writing fellow that calls himself Sinclair Lewis."

"Well now, Jim," said George Babbitt; "maybe you hadn't ought to be too hard on old Red Lewis. You don't want to forget he made me and you and. . . ."

"Sure, how can I forget it? And he made us and this Great Country the laughing stock of the whole world, didn't he?"

"Well, now, Jim, I don't know that you should look at it just that way. Say, did you hear that Lewis got nearly 500,000 smackers for this new book of his before it was even published?"

"Five hundred thousand bucks! You mean they gave him all that money just to write a book? Why, that's half a million dollars!"

"Yes, sir."

"That's Big Money. Why, with all that we made for him in those other books—if this socialistic income tax didn't take most of it away from him—he must be a millionaire. Why, he's Big Business."

"Yes, sir."

"Now the way I think, this Lewis kind of put you and me and this place on the map. He certainly is a funny bird, but it's like in sales-pulling letters, you can give the clients the lovey-dovey stuff or you can give 'em the old one-two. Red Lewis gives 'em the old one-two. So they give him $500,000. That's just sound business practice. Maybe Lewis wasn't so dumb after all. He certainly knew where the duck was going to fall."

"Say, George, I certainly am glad you put it that way, I might have gone around knocking this fellow Lewis. This writing certainly is a queer business, but I want to tell you, and it's just as sure as God made little apples, the thing that distinguishes our American commonwealth from the pikers and tinhorns in other countries is our Punch. You take a genu-wine, honest-to-God homo Americanibus and there ain't anything he's afraid to tackle. Snap and speed are his middle name! He'll put her across if he has to ride from hell to breakfast, and believe me I'm mighty good and sorry for the boob that's so unlucky as to get in his way, because that poor slob is going to wonder where he was at when old Red Lewis hit town! Do you suppose we could get old Red into Rotary some day?" "Wouldn't be surprised, it's a changing world," said George F. Babbitt wistfully.

Golden Horseshoe. The man whose literary killing was of such inflaming interest to George F. Babbitt and Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson was in Man hattan last week. He had breezed in from his newly acquired 15-room Tudor man sion on Duluth's lake front to:

¶ Haunt Manhattan's better taprooms in dismal abstinence (Lewis, once no mean tosspot, is under strict doctor's orders not to touch liquor).