Book Thoughts: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book came unto my radar through a couple random references I read to it when reading about the current 2016 election cycle, so I thought I'd give it a try, not having read anything by Sinclair Lewis since college (and never any of his books). While I mostly enjoyed the book, and "liked it" as the Goodreads review system goes, there were parts that were difficult.

In the book, Lewis presents the United States, initially, leading up to the 1936 election and the rise of a demagogue, Buzz Wintrip. Wintrip, as the introduction and afterword point out, seems based on infamous Louisiana politician Huey Long, and is the type of politician who seemingly spouts off any populist sounding theme to try and get himself elected as President. His ascension to the presidency, and the resultant establishment of a dictatorship similar to those occurring in Germany and Italy at that time, comes about despite the early protest claims of those in the book that such things "can't happen here."

The primary voice in the book belongs to Doremus Jessup, who is a small town newpaper editor in Vermont. He clearly states that such can happen, and his anger seems to grow and grow prior to the election. That anger, presumably a reflection of Lewis's own anger, results in the plot of the novel building very slowly. There's much time spent in establishing the alternate history, and Jessup's righteous responses to it, that the book sort of drags along until the election and resultant dictatorship occurs. Once that occurs, the novel flies along trying to combine two storylines - one of opposition and resistance, and one of internal unrest and governance by the dictatorship. Both have their interesting points, but as a reader I almost wish Lewis spent his time just focusing on one of those storylines and fleshing it out more, bringing a more comprehensive nature and flow to the novel.

That said, the book is worth a read - both from the historical perspective of understanding the climate in the 1930s, and understanding our climate today. No society is ever completely immune from a susceptibility to tyranny and dictatorship, and Lewis's novel reminds us, even today, that it is folly to think that it can't happen here.

View all my reviews