Elmer Gantry

When Elmer Gantry was published, author Sinclair Lewis received death threats, an ivitation to be lynched in Virginia, a warning to stay clear of New Hampshire or wind up in a prison cell. I wonder if he would still have the courage to write a similar book today, in the climate of religious fanaticism that prevails. Elmer Gantry is a portrayal of hypocrisy and opportunism among the Evangelical clergy of the early 20th Century. The title character is as hateful and fraudulent as the Bakkers, Swaggerts, and Blackguards of our era, with the same vices, most prominently sexual misbehavior and exploitation. In fact, Gantry is so thoroughly unappealing that the reader's only interest in him is waiting and hoping for his downfall. But the numerous other clergymen, deacons, and congregational leaders portrayed in the novel are none of them very appealing; they are all greedy hypocrites, timorous holders of sinecures, and/or weaklings unable to confront their own doubts about the sanctity of the clerical profession. I have to say that Sinclair Lewis seriously weakens his case by overstating the universality of corruption in the Christian leadership, and damages the literary interest of his book by making his principal character irredeemable. Yet as I survey the current fundamentalist eruption into politics, I also have to say that Lewis was remarkably prophetic. The anti-evolution, anti-science-in-general, anti-diversity rants that fill the pages of Elmer Gantry could be copied-and-pasted right here on our favorite web pages.

The chief woman character of the book, tent evangelist Sharon Falconer, is also portrayed as a power-hungry opportunist, half hypocrite and half delusional madwoman. That portrayal won Lewis no friends, particularly since most readers were certain that Falconer was a thinly disguised representation of Aimee Semple McPherson, one of the founders of modern millenialism, whose personal improprieties are well documented. Likewise, numerous critics supposed that the character of Gantry himself was at least partly a portrait of evangelist Billy Sunday.

We Minnesotans are proud of our Nobel Prize author, though we show our pride mostly by not reading him. Honestly, this is not an easy book to enjoy. The language is stiff and corny at times, the characters are too cartoon-like, and the first half of the book would be better if it were edited in half. Even so, it has intellectual integrity and profound historical relevance, and its unrelenting portrayal of moral shallowness builds enough momentum to make it a worthwhile classic.

In 1926, Sinclair Lewis wrote Elmer Gantry, a fictional novel about a minister who is a hypocrite. The book was ranked as the number one fictional bestseller in 1927. It was instantly condemned by the church and Billy Sunday called the author “Satan’s cohort.” In part because of the success of this book, Lewis became the first American author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930. The book was made into a movie in 1960 staring Burt Lancaster as Gantry and Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon Falconer.

The protagonist, Dr. Reverend Elmer Gantry is a shallow, egotistical, self-centered, hypocritical womanizer who accidentally stumbles into a ministry career. He is a college athlete who initially wants to be a lawyer, but after a false conversion encounter at a revival meeting (“he knew the rapture of salvation – yes, and of being the center of interest in the crowd”), decides to be a preacher instead. While he is at seminary, he is assigned to be the pastor of a small church. While he is there, he has sex with a young woman name Lulu Bains. Her father tries to force Elmer to marry the girl, but Elmer tricks another man into being caught in a compromising situation with her.

Elmer is offered the opportunity to preach on Easter morning for a big Baptist church with the possibility of becoming the pastor. On the train ride to the church, he meets a salesman and gets drunk. He misses his service and his opportunity, and is kicked out of seminary when he is discovered drinking.

He becomes a salesman for several years until he attends a revival meeting being conducted by a female evangelist named Sharon Falconer. She is loosely based on Aimee Semple McPherson, who founded the Foursquare Gospel Church. Elmer starts working with her and eventually becomes her devoted lover. She is a modern-day Joan of Arc, flamboyant and dramatic in her preaching. She is a phony huckster just like Gantry, but at the same time she truly believes she is a prophetess and hears from God. She convinces Elmer to give up his habits of drinking and smoking. Eventually, she dies when her tabernacle catches on fire.

Elmer tries to launch out into evangelism himself, but he fails. After a short stint teaching the New Age philosophies of New Thought, he is recruited into the Methodist church. He successfully pastors a church in a small town and marries the daughter of one of his deacons. He quickly tires of her when she proves to be sexually cool.

Elmer is promoted to a bigger church in the fictional city of Zenith. He becomes a crusader for morality and his church grows quickly. Elmer starts a radio show and becomes well known. Meanwhile, he strikes up an affair with his old flame Lulu. Then he dumps her for a secretary who tries to blackmail him after a short affair. At the end of the novel, Elmer launches out on the national stage with a campaign to make America moral again by announcing, “We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!”

Gantry is a Bible-thumping charlatan. He preaches against theft, but he is guilty of stealing from the offering plate. He preaches against sex, but he indulges in adultery in the study behind the platform. He preaches humility but he becomes addicted to the power religion gives him over others. Throughout the book, Elmer preaches the same sermon over and over again about how “love is the morning and the evening star.” But, even though Elmer preaches about love, he never demonstrates love for anyone. He is continually selfish and puts his own needs above the needs of others. He is always focused on money and he regularly gives in to the temptations of the flesh.

The characters in the book all demonstrate various elements of Christian hypocrisy. There is the liberal professor who no longer believes in the Bible. He causes a talented young preacher to question his faith. The man who converts Elmer is seen smoking even though he preaches against the vice. Elmer’s mother seems to be a true but simple minded Christian although her pride in her son and her hope for his future as a preacher is her blind spot. Elmer believes, “while you ought to teach the highest ideals, nobody could be expected to always and exactly live up to ‘em every day.”

Nothing has changed in America today. As an evangelist, I found it interesting that almost all of the problems that evangelists are concerned with today are mentioned in this book from ninety years ago. Some of these include:

1. Professors teaching higher criticism of the Bible that destroys faith in God’s word. In the book, Bruno Zechlin, Ph.D. “felt that it was as impossible to take literally the myths of Christianity as to take literally the myths of Buddhism. But for many years he had rationalized his heresies.”

2. Preachers having big egos: “Elmer assumed that he was the center of the universe and that the rest of the system was valuable only as it afforded him help and pleasure.”

3. Preachers wanting to be the center of attention. Elmer “desired popularity. He had it now – popularity, almost love, almost reverence, and he felt overpoweringly his role as leading man.” “The greatest urge in his memory of holding his audience, playing on them. To move people – Golly! He wanted to be addressing somebody on something right now, and being applauded.”

4. Preachers getting addicted to publicity. “Elmer went out to see the posters, His name was in lovely large letters” Elmer “advertised himself in the newspapers as though he were a cigarette or a brand of soap.”

5. Preachers lying about charity to get money. Sharon Falconer says, “There is, for example, the Old Ladies’ Home, which I keep up entirely-oh, I shan’y say anything about it, but if you could see those poor aged woman turning to me with such anxious faces -!” (Where that Old Ladies’ Hope was, Elmer never learned.)”

6. Preachers falling into sin. “Elmer followed the child-Jane Clark, she was-up to his room. As she frisked before him, she displayed six inches of ankle above her clumsy shoes, and Elmer was clutched by that familiar feeling, swifter than thought, more elaborate that the strategy of a whole war, which signified that here was a girl he was going to pursue.”

7. Preachers chasing after money. After failing as an evangelist, Elmer becomes a proponent of New Thought where his “greatest interest was given to the Prosperity Classes.” Elmer teaches his students to say positive confessions like “I am God’s child, God created all good things including wealth, and I will to inherit it.” Elmer “made one discovery superb in its simple genius-the best way to get money was to ask for it, hard enough and long enough.”

8. Preachers chasing after woman. Dr. Binch complains to Sharon, “Why is it that in such a high calling as ours there are so many rascals? Take Dr. Mortonby! Calling himself a cover-to-cover literalist, and then his relations to the young woman who sings for him-I would shock you, Sister Falconer, if I told you what I suspect.” Meanwhile, Sharon is committing adultery with Elmer.

9. Evangelists exaggerating the size of their meetings. “All the statistics of the personal work-so many souls invited to come to the altar, so many addresses to workmen over their lunch-pails, so many cottage prayers, with the length of each-were rather imaginatively entered by Elmer and the Director of Personal Work on the balance-sheet which Sharon used as a report after the meetings as a talking-point for the sale of future meetings.”

10. Evangelists exaggerating the number of people who get saved at their events. “Say, Dr. Binch,” said Elmer, “how to you count your converts? Some of the preachers in this last town accused us of lying about the number. On what basis do you count them?” “Why, I count every one (and we use a recording machine) that comes down to the front and shakes hands with me. What if some of them are merely old church members warmed over? Isn’t it worth just as much to give new spiritual life to those who’ve had it and lost it?”

11. Not every convert at a meeting stay saved. Some churchmen who opposed evangelism “…were publishing statistics which asserted that not ten per cent of the converts at emotional revival meetings remained church members.”

12. Evangelists collecting huge offerings while local pastors barely receive any salary. Pastors were “even so commercial as to inquire why a pastor with a salary of two thousand dollars a year – when he got it- should agonize over helping an evangelist to make ten thousand, forty thousand.”

13. Evangelists reporting false healings. “Elmer led the healed deaf woman aside and asked her name for the newspapers. It is true that she could not hear him, but he wrote out his questions, she wrote out her answers, and he got an excellent story for the papers…”

14. Evangelists faking conversions. “Elmer had to go out and hire half a dozen convincing converts.”
15. Evangelists using methods of marketing and organization in order to have successful meetings. Dr. Binch says, “My motto as a soul-saver, if I may venture to apply such a lofty title to myself, is that one should use every method that, in the vernacular, will sell the goods.” Sharon laments, “Oh, the world doesn’t appreciate evangelists. Think what we can do for a resident minister! Those preachers who talk about conducting their own revivals make me sick! They don’t know the right technique. Conducting revivals is a profession. One must know all the tricks. With all modesty, I figure that I know just what will bring in the converts.”

16. Evangelists becoming professional in their approach to church instead of serving God. “The gospel crew could never consider their converts as human beings, like waiters or manicurists or brakemen, but they had in them such a professional interest as surgeons take in patients, critics in an author, fishermen in trout.”

17. Preachers focusing on the size of crowds as an indication of their success. “The crowds do seem to be increasing steadily,” Elmer tells an associate. “We had over eleven hundred present on my last Sunday evening…and during the season we often have nearly eighteen hundred, in an auditorium that’s only supposed to seat sixteen hundred!”

18. Evangelists using emotional manipulation to get converts. “Elmer explained that prospects were more likely to be converted if they came to the meetings with a fair amount of fear…the real purpose of singing was to lead the audience to a state of mind where they would do as they were told. ”

19. The boredom of church. Frank Shallard, the earnest preacher turned atheist by his professor says, “My objection to the church isn't that the preachers are cruel, hypocritical, actually wicked, though some of them are that too.... My chief objection is that ninety-nine per cent of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly dull!"

The novel is a mocking satire of the professional Christian class in America. The writing reflects the state of evangelism and people’s perception of evangelists during the Roaring 20’s. D.L. Moody was dead and the influence of Billy Sunday was waning. Sunday had received lots of criticism over the large “love offerings” he received at the end of his campaigns. Many imitators of Sunday and Moody had arisen in America and while some of them were sincere, some of them were similar to the caricature of the evangelist presented in this book.

Elmer Gantry is a despicable little book with a horrid little point – that all Christians are hypocrites. As an evangelist, I resent the depiction of the various characters in this book. They ring too close to home. As a Christian, I am embarrassed by the accuracy of how some of the characters in this book are depicted. I have met many of these characters in real life. All too often, I see some aspect of their characters in myself. However, the book is one-sided. It depicts only the bad side of religion without believing in the good side of Christianity. The book reveals the sinfulness of man without an awareness of the goodness of God. Sinclair Lewis is lauded as a genius for accurately and bravely depicting the complexities of human nature and religious conviction in his novel about Elmer Gantry, but in reality, the exact same story has been told before, in the Bible, in the story of Samson.

Lewis’ book contributed to a time when the job of the evangelist fell into disrepute. For the next twenty years, there were no well-known, influential evangelists in America. It was only when Billy Graham came on the scene that the office of the evangelist came back into prominence. This happened in large part because Graham made a deliberate attempt to address the concerns raised in Lewis’ book in his own ministry. For example, Graham refused to be in a room with a woman who was not his wife. He put himself on a salary instead of receiving a love offering at his crusades. He was careful to accurately report the numbers of people who attended his events. Lewis’ book revealed the bad side of evangelism but thankfully Graham restored the integrity of the evangelist.

Over the past few weeks, I've enjoyed Sinclair Lewis' novel "Elmer Gantry" (as an audio book, beautifully read by Anthony Heald) and it took me a while to figure out why. Published in 1926, this is the story of a "professional good man", a preacher and pastor in those first decades of the 20th century before the Great Depression. In the book, Gantry rises to near-national fame as an evangelist exposing "vice" while being vicious himself throughout, desperately so. [Spoiler:] Though his hypocrisy comes close to being found out several times, he continues to escape and emerge each time more successful, while his antagonists and others who cross his path wither, vanish or perish altogether.

I wondered why I liked the book so much because Gantry, the protagonist, isn't someone to identify with: he's got very little going for him--he's not even evil. He's really just "a hog," as one colleague calls him in the book. He's so forgettable as a character that it seems writerly sin to assemble an entire novel around him. He does not undergo any growth of character, either in the positive or in the negative. Lewis continually repeats Gantry's phrases and thoughts to underline the repetitiveness and banality of the man and his miserable career - miserable not in terms of worldly success but in terms of meaning and merit. After a few pages I knew all there was to be known about Elmer Gantry--and yet, I felt compelled to finish the book, sighing a lot throughout, but fully engaged to the end.

Once again: why?

One reason is the writing itself: it makes you want to listen to Elmer and his shenanigans. Here is a short excerpt from the first third of the book, describing Elmer's first assignment as a baptist pastor. Behold the beautiful rhythm:

«Brother Gantry was shaking hands all around. His sanctifying ordination, or it might have been his summer of bouncing from pulpit to pulpit, had so elevated him that he could greet them as impressively and fraternally as a sewing-machine agent. He shook hands with a good grip, he looked at all the more aged sisters as though he were moved to give them a holy kiss, he said the right things about the weather, and by luck or inspiration it was to the most acidly devout man in Boone County that he quoted a homicidal text from Malachi.»

Elmer's wholesomeness is deceptive and here as in many other parts of the book, he manages to deceive himself as well, by elevation, as it were. The author's sarcasm is erudite, too: the Book of Malachi (I had to look it up, not being at all well-versed in the bible) contains a critique of the lax religious and social behavior of (Israelite) priests, hereby pointing at one of the issues of the plot: how can any full-blooded, able-bodied man take the religion as seriously as a preacher should? Baptised as a Catholic, I've always been equally fascinated by the rigor formally imprinted on the soft soul of god's men as by the creativity, anchored both in their personalities and in their organizations, with which they permit themselves breathing space despite the harsh moralistic scaffold. Harsh and boring, in fact:

"It's all so dull," Elmer cries more than once, and means the doctrine, the learning and the telling of the doctrine and its endless ramifications. Dull and entrancing at once, because dullness, when it drones on and on, has this muzak-like ability to put us into trance before it puts us to sleep. Elmer spends his whole life in that trance, which excuses many of his misdeeds.

The following section illustrates the trance both on the side of the protagonist, and on the side of the reader--it takes place about half way through the book where Elmer muses upon the sight of Sharon Falconer, his only true love and a professional traveling evangelist, very shortly before Sharon dies tragicomically:

«Elmer, sitting back listening, was moved as in his first adoration for her. He had become so tired of her poetizing that he almost admitted to himself that he was tired. But tonight he felt her strangeness again, and in it he was humble. He saw her straight back, shimmering in white satin, he saw her superb arms as she stretched them out to these thousands, and in hot secret pride he gloated that his beauty, beheld and worshipped of so many, belonged to him alone.»

The sequence also illustrates how Sinclair Lewis manipulates POV: he remains an `involved' narrator (Ursula Le Guin's term for what is often called "omniscient") while he at the same time leans deeply into the protagonist. He performs the same trick with other important characters, most notably with the sympathetic, ultimately terribly unlucky, preacher Frank Shallard, a one-time classmate of Gantry's. Lewis uses this technique whenever he wants to reflect without leaving the character, and especially when, as in the previous passage, he wishes to paint the picture of ambivalence, which, in this novel, is as deep as the Nile is long.

There is so much more to be said about this book, which is not without weaknesses. Many reviewers mention that it slackens a little in the middle and that the story loses its grip on the reader while following some of Elmer Gantry's less illuminating adventures in industry before he returns to the job of a preacher for good. This may well be--I appreciated this part as a breather and as necessary buildup of Gantry's character (of which there is so little). The pace in this middle section is distinctly different, but Lewis uses it to establish a network of relationships to secondary characters.

These secondary characters, not the antagonists, of which there are few if any, and all of them good men & women (apart from Hettie Dowler and her spouse) are the third secret of the book for me: there is an army of secondary characters, friends and foes of Gantry, representatives of the entire American nation really, and through their scenes (often without Gantry's presence), the world of the early twentieth century comes to life.

The one real weakness I see in the book is one which it shares with so many books that I wouldn't know where to begin counting, including most of recent literature: the female characters aren't so fully drawn as to really come to life (with the exception of Gantry's female counterpart, Sharon Falconer). For the modern reader, this is dissatisfying. From the modern female reader it may even bring a death sentence--I hope not, because like all great literature, the book as a whole rises above gender stereotypes by, paradoxically, describing stereotype, but oh-so beautifully rendered.

It's delightful to be filled to the brim by a book once again. It makes me feel young again, perhaps because it brings me back to days when I really just lived for and through books. Those days may be gone, but it is comforting to know that despite all that "stuff" between me and the land of fiction, including my own writing, I can still grow down and let myself be filled. And it's good, too, to step back now, bowing to a master, and analyze his technique and his special effects.

And now I'm off putting some of these principles to work and upgrading the Wikipedia entry on the novel, which is a little undernourished given the rank of this work by a writer, who said "bro­kenly many things beau­ti­ful in their common-ness." (Sin­clair Lewis)

--review from my website: marcusspeh [dot] com

Really awesome read. A nice trip through late 1800's, early 1900's in US history with this fiction novel. Elmer Gantry is a self-centered, arrogant and obnoxious character who never really reconciles his atheistic views with his religious perspective. Lewis paints a Gantry who is really a self-centered, money seeking, womanizer who manages to make a good living while fooling most of those around him to his real intentions. Elmer struggles with himself and his first roommate Jim Lefferts. Lefferts is the devil on Gantry's left shoulder while Gantry is the saint sitting on Gantry's right shoulder. If Elmer Gantry were alive today he'd be a Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Baker. Elmer spends the entire book convincing himself of the righteousness of his religious beliefs so he can go on preaching.

Sinclair Lewis is a marvelous writer, incredibly fresh and impeccable. It’s difficult to believe that he wrote 100 years ago. His topics are as cogent today as any modern literary genius. The movie based on Elmer Gantry, while fabulous, tells only half the story (one should see it anyway, to admire Burt Lancaster in his finest role). No one who is interested in the ways of humankind should miss this riveting expose of charlatans posing as the leaders of moral society. Fabulous.

Elmer Gantry starts off brilliantly, worthy of 6 stars then goes down hill from there.

Sinclair Lewis tells of the bad side of the church back in the 20th century through Elmer Gantry's ministry.

I don't mind anything being made fun of, if it can be told interestingly.

This story is not interesting. I struggled to finish but with the high ratings I was curious to find out why it rated so highly so I had to finish it. I do not recommend this book, save your money.

Elmer Gantry is the last of what have come to be Sinclair Lewis' four classic novels and is on par with the prior three: Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. Fans of those will certainly like it, and it is a great place for neophytes to start.

Lewis uses his signature documentary-style to bring alive yet another slice of Americana - Protestant fundamentalism, which was enjoying one of its periodic revivals as he was writing shortly before the Great Depression. Lewis did a vast amount of field research, and it shows; he brings a fictional world alive as only he can by focusing on just the right details and drawing them vividly. So well-executed was his technique, and so great his popularity, that many early readers said Lewis' fictional America was at least as real to them as most of the actual country outside their area. This is still true to a great degree; his portrayal is so painstakingly detailed that the descriptive sections often seem more like a history lesson than a novel. Such a statement is apt to scare many but is true in the best possible way; the book is never even remotely close to boring. It indeed pulls us in almost immediately, and our interest stays at an apex throughout most of the book; this was 1927's bestselling novel, and it is easy to see why. Lewis is the rare author who can write long expositions but make them fit the story, seeming to arise naturally rather than overwhelming it. Thus, though supremely entertaining, Elmer is an invaluable historical document for anyone interested in fundamentalism or the era.

However, most will still be drawn to what first made the book a sensation - its stunningly realistic and unrelentingly satiric fundamentalism expose. Lewis was the greatest American satirist since Mark Twain, and this may well be his most biting portrayal, which truly says much. He shows the hypocrisy, lies, and deceit at fundamentalism's heart, condemning it as a mass of self-indulgence. So hollow does he show it to be that it is incredible anyone ever followed it, and he certainly gives more than enough reasons for the curious to stay distant. He does so to a large extent by using traditional satirical methods to reduce religion to ridicule in the best tradition of Voltaire, Twain, and others. Like them, he makes us laugh almost in self-defense; the book indeed has many laughs, though the material could just as easily anger or sadden if presented differently, which is great satire's mark. However, he also criticizes religion on intellectual, philosophical, ethical, and historical grounds in ways that run somewhat deeper; this is again influenced by classic satirists but also takes into account philosophers' and scientists' non-literary work. Added to all this is his own absolute realism, which creates a portrait of his target so lifelike that it is a walking self-parody - so ridiculous that further attacks would be not only superfluous but near-cruel.

The novel predictably caused a firestorm of controversy; it was denounced in pulpits across the country and by traveling evangelists - doubtless because many recognized its truth and some suspected (or knew) they were direct inspiration - as well as numerous self-righteous ordinary people. Denounced as Satanic, immoral, and maliciously false, Lewis was threatened with jail and even death. All this of course only proved his point - and greatly increased sales. He was after all armed with a mass of facts, and anyone who thought the story hyperbolic had only to compare Jesus' message with reactions. This aspect is significantly less striking in today's far more secular era, though fundamentalism's continued existence ensures that the book can still strike a nerve; it remains unpopular with evangelicals and a favorite of religious opponents. However, it will remain relevant even if fundamentalism - nay, Christianity, or even religion altogether - is finally obliterated as a warning against human folly, gullibility, ignorance, and pure stupidity. Even aside from the religious angle, it is valuable as an unsparing document of hypocrisy and hedonism; human nature shows no sign of lessening in these regards, and the elemental critique of these unenviable and often fatal qualities transcends its immediate subject and will probably always be needed.

It is especially worthwhile in this regard because, unlike many satirists, Lewis takes care to not be overly didactic; the story may be an excuse for satire, but one would never know from reading. He makes sure to remain entertaining, which gains a larger audience and proves his points far more effectively. This is not to say he always succeeds; occasionally, as in Chapter XXVIII especially, he seems to forget he is writing a novel and lapses into the very sort of preaching he announces - though of course from the other side. Some will justify or at least extenuate this on the grounds that Christianity has had a near-unbroken monopoly on preaching in the Western world for a millennium and that the non-religious can surely be allowed a rant here and there. However, this is supposed to be a novel, and lack of dramatization is a conventional literary fault, however much one agrees with what is said. Such moments, though, are remarkably rare, which make the reading quick and engrossing.

Characterization is also a large part of what makes the book so readable and memorable. This was always one of Lewis' strong suits for the same reason that his settings seem so lifelike but is particularly notable here in that the characters are so interesting even though there is hardly a conventionally likable one. A few may arouse pity, but most bring contempt and scorn. The chief example is of course the title character, who may be Lewis' greatest creation - or would be if he were not so similar to several actual people. One of literature's most thoroughly loathsome personages, Gantry is despicable in almost every conceivable way: ignorant yet vain, hapless yet lucky, hypocritical yet self-righteous, repressive yet hedonistic - in short, the extreme example of what realists find so distasteful about fundamentalist preachers. Disgusting as he is, we cannot help being fascinated, if only to find what accomplishment he will stumble on next or whose life he will now ruin without conscience for his own gain. The novel focuses mostly on him, and the narration is often filtered through his perspective, giving tremendous insight into the mind of an American con man. It is thus sort of a reverse bildungsroman; Gantry makes a stunning rise from rural obscurity to national fame without really learning anything or changing fundamentally. That he does so without being exposed - nay, that he does so at all with nothing but good looks, a loud voice, and bold confidence - is a further testament to human naiveté, ignorance, and stupidity.

Many other characters are also strong, especially traveling female evangelist Sharon Falconer, who almost steals the proverbial show. She may be Lewis' most complex character and is surely his most fascinating; her depiction is significantly more nuanced than Gantry's, and we are far from sure if we can dismiss her as a charlatan like him, somewhat extenuate her as insane, or begrudgingly exalt her as an eccentric genius. Lewis himself perhaps did not know, but her inclusion is notable for showing that his fundamentalist dramatization is much less one-sided than is often claimed. Other characters mostly range from bad to worse to sickeningly evil, showing various aspects of humanity's rather large dark side. No one is championed, but a few ambivalent portraits add variety and show that Lewis held out a little hope for humanity if narrow-mindedness and mental slavery can ever be overcome.

Subject matter aside, Lewis' style is not for everyone; he has indeed been taken to task since his death so fully and often that his status has dropped significantly. In the 1920s he was at American literature's forefront, and he retained living legend status until his 1951 death though his popularity had long sagged. Now he is read seemingly ever less often, and his reputation as a major writer seems in danger of disappearing, though his four classics still have relative popularity and some critics and writers continue to champion his artistry. This is due almost entirely to realism dropping out of vogue. Those who champion more recent genres will have little patience for his episodic plots, arbitrary endings, linear narratives, traditional narration, and near absence of tropes. His writing in a way seems dated and not just because it focuses so specifically on a distinct era. It is easy for even his biggest admirers to see his work as period pieces, but this sells him rather short. Lewis is a master satirist, an insightful social critic, a keen observer of manners, and a historical writer in the best sense; his realism is almost unparalleled, and his characterization is superb. Anyone who values such things can only admire him, and Elmer is an exemplary work. Whatever our view of its subject or style, it is a consummate work of its kind and great enough to transcend any ostensible limitations. It is a true American classic and, though thankfully less sociopolitically relevant than when new, is destined to remain a much-needed dash of cold water as long as people continue to fall for outwardly appealing but inwardly empty shysters like Gantry and all he represents.

If you have seen the movie, ‘Elmer Gantry’ and think that’s all there is to it, you need to read the book. Gantry’s development as a clergyman and as a conman are fascinating to read. Against the backdrop of an America in turmoil, I think this book is worth picking up.

Lewis writes well and is at his best in showing Elmer Gantry having a false faith, and consciously ruining the lives of the others. The novel's reputation for controversy seems to be centered on the character of Gantry. Somehow it seems by exposing the duplicity of one minister, Lewis implicated theologically conservative Protestants in general. When actually reading the novel though, it's clear that Lewis attempts to undermine Christianity in general, which is probably why the novel sparked such controversy in its day. The character of Frank Shallard is portrayed as a heroic martyr with his denials of Christ's deity, his uncertainty about an afterlife, and various other denials and questionings of Christianity. In the end, the novel is less about hypocritical fundamentalism than about an argument in favor of a secular, anti-supernatural version of Christianity based on vague sentiments of love. This is precisely the type of Christianity today's secular elite sanctions.

After listening to a new recording of an opera, "Elmer Gantry" by Robert Aldridge with a libretto by Herschel Garfein. [[ASIN:B0052FG8BS Aldridge: Elmer Gantry]], I wanted to read the famous 1927 novel by Sinclair Lewis on which the opera was based. Composed in 2007, the opera receives an excellent performance from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Florentine Opera Company and a cast of distinguished singers.

The outlines of the Elmer Gantry story are familiar from the novel and from its well-known movie adaptation. Set in the American Midwest in the early 20th Century, the title character is a football-playing hard drinking young man who becomes a minister by virtue of his speaking voice. Gantry is an evangelist before becoming the pastor or a series of increasingly larger churches. Gantry is crude, a scoundrel, and a hypocrite. While making a name for himself as an uncompromising crusader against vice, he has a series of affairs before he is blackmailed by a pair of conniving criminals. He has a narrow escape. Gantry has become one of the stock hypocritical figures and villains of American literature.

It was valuable comparing the novel to the opera. The novel is lengthy and prolix. Although operatic liberettos most commonly are inartistic and subservient to the music, the libretto for "Elmer Gantry" is a outstanding example of compression and telescoping. The opera ends with the death of Sharon Falconer,the enigmatic and charismatic woman evangelist with whom Elmer has been having an affair. Sharon Falconer is easily the most fascinating character in both the opera and the novel. In the novel, she dies before the book's midpoint. Although she receives a masterly portrayal in both the novel and the opera, the opera makes her a more complex character than the book. In addition, the opera shows a great deal of sympathy for the midwest rural people who were the primary target of the revivalists. This sympathy is largely absent in Lewis.

In some ways, the opera improves upon Lewis' "Elmer Gantry"; but, as with a movie, it is no substitute for reading the book. The book has substantial strengths; I found myself gripped by it. While the opera drastically shortened the time frame of the story, the novel takes its course over a lengthy period, from 1902 to the mid-1920s'. The book is filled with extraordinary detail of harsh life in the American Midwest. In places the book reads more like a sociological description than an imaginative, dramatic work of fiction. When the reader meets Gantry, he is a senior at a small evangelical college. The book moves slowly through Gantry's "call" to the ministry, his seduction and manipulative abandonment of a young, naive woman, Lulu, and his education at the seminary. The key section of the book involves the portrayal of Sharon Falconer and Gantry's relationship to her. Following her death, Gantry becomes involved in New Thought. He then takes a series of Baptist pulpits, marries a woman he does not love to advance his career, has numerous affairs, and then nearly meets his downfall in a too-hastily written conclusion. For all its weaknesses, "Elmer Gantry" is a powerful novel with a strong cumulative effect.

The book has been described as "the noisiest novel in American literature, the most braying, guffawing, belching novel that we have." (Lewis' biographer Mark Schorer, as quoted in the liner notes to the opera.) Besides all the rattling, the deceit, and the melodrama, Lewis' novel includes a degree of thought. The novel makes reference (chapter XX, section 11) to the great American idealist philosopher, Josiah Royce, a thinker Gantry cannot begin to understand. Together with the hypocrites and timeservers, the novel includes two good, thoughtful characters, Gantry's college friend Jim Lefferts, and Gantry's fellow-student at the seminary, Frank Shallard, both of whom come to unfortunate ends. The book also includes several scenes among clerics in which issues of science, religion, faith, fundamentalism, morals, skepticism are discussed with some sensitivity. Some of these scenes detract from the pace of the story and result in a book that drags in places. But some rethinking of the nature of religion is occuring in the novel. In places, "Elmer Gantry" is not the simple burlesque stereotype of religion that some critics have found it.

The novel was the subject of strong and understandable criticism when it appeared due to its portrayal of both revivalist and more mainline Protestant ministers and for what was perceived as the book's mockery of religion. The book is one-sided on any account. (The opera is much less so.) But it is not the total, shrill anti-religious screed of some readers. For all its length, rambling, and flaws, "Elmer Gantry" held my interest and attention. The book also has more power to inspire thought than is sometimes realized. I greatly enjoyed the Aldridge-Garfein operatic version of "Elmer Gantry". They realized aptly that the book merited an artistic rendition in music. For all the virtues of the opera, I was glad to have the opportunity to think more about Elmer Gantry and about American religion by reading Lewis' classic American novel.

Robin Friedman