Volume 1, Number 10 · January 9, 1964
American Gothic
By Steven Marcus
Dorothy and Red
by Vincent Sheean
Houghton, Mifflin, 416 pp., $6.95
One of the oddest things about Mark Schorer's biography of Sinclair Lewis was that its hero's name was Dorothy Thompson. She gave Mr. Schorer full access to her papers, he reported, and permission to use any of them as he pleased; and before she died in 1961, Mr. Schorer was in return able to offer her an uncorrected copy of the typescript of his immense biography. Mr. Schorer tells us that 'she read it with approval and finished it in tears.' She had reason to, since the story of her marriage to Sinclair Lewis was recounted essentially from her point of view. It isn't difficult to understand why this should have been so. The chief characteristic of Sinclair Lewis's life was its incoherence, its want of form, direction, or even idea. In comparison to the pitiful and self-destructive chaos into which his life at length dissolved, Dorothy Thompson's appeared to have been a model of shapeliness, order, and proper self-preserving self-regard. She was at any rate anything but incoherent.
Review, 3643 words
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