Sinclair Lewis

Broschiertes Buch

Free Air

Beschreibung

Free Air is a 1919 novel written by Sinclair Lewis. A silent film adaptation of the novel was also released on April 30, 1922. The film starred Tom Douglas as Milt Daggett and Marjorie Seaman as Claire Boltwood. "This cheerful little road novel, published in 1919, is about Claire Boltwood, who, in the early days of the 20th century, travels by automobile from New York City to the Pacific Northwest, where she falls in love with a nice, down-to-earth young man and gives up her snobbish Estate." (From the Book Stub) From a critical perspective, Free Air is consistent with Sinclair Lewis's lean towards egalitarian politics, which he displays in his other works (most notably in It Can't Happen Here). Examples of his politics in Free Air are found in Lewis's emphasis on the heroic role played by the book's protagonist, Milt Dagget, a working class everyman type. Conversely, Lewis presents nearly every upper-class character in Claire Boltwood's world (including her railroad-mogul father) as snobby elitists. The story also champions the democratic nature of the automobile versus the more aristocratic railroad travel. Lewis's emphasis on the freedom which automobiles would eventually give the working and middle classes bolsters the egalitarian, democratic aesthetic. Free Air is one of the first novels about the road trip, a subject around which the Beats (most notably Jack Kerouac) would build a cult following in the mid-20th century. Composer Ferde Grofe used the novel as the basis for the music to his adventurous composition Free Air. In the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, set initially in 1920, Jimmy and his girlfriend Pearl are reading Free Air. The 18-year-old Chicago prostitute Pearl hopes to head West like the heroine, along with Jimmy (wikipedia.org)

Autor

Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 - January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright and social-critic. He was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, a small town with a population of 2800, most of which was Swedish and Norwegian. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1908, he started working in publishing houses and newspapers. He published his first book Hike and the Aeroplane in 1912. He published five books before the commercial success of Main Street which was published on October 23, 1920. The book sold 180,000 copies instantly and surpassed the 2 million mark within a few years. Lewis followed up this first great success with Babbitt (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture and boosterism. His other publications are Arrowsmith (1925), Mantrap (1926), Elmer Gantry (1927), The Man Who Knew Coolidge (1928), and Dodsworth (1929). He wrote 24 novels, more than 70 short stories and several plays and poetry collections.Though the novel Main Street became a commercial success but did not win a Pulitzer Prize, which so disappointed Lewis that he declined the Pulitzer Prize when it was awarded to his novel Arrowsmith in 1925. Later in 1930 he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature and became the first American to receive the award.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bibliotech Press
• Seitenzahl: 206
• Erscheinungstermin: 31. Dezember 1999
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 12mm
• Gewicht: 343g
• ISBN-13: 9781636377216
• ISBN-10: 1636377211
• Artikelnr.: 62607990