Sinclair Lewis begins his famous novel Main Street about his hometown Sauk Centre. This is America a town of a few thousand in a region of Wheat and corn and Aries and little Groves. The town is in our tail called gopher Prairie Minnesota, but its main street is a continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois and not very differently. Would it be told up York state or in the Carolina Hills? Main Street is the climax of civilization? Recently a Sinclair Lewis interpretive Center opened in Sauk Centre evidence of continuing interest in this Minnesota writer who won both the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize. Dr. Roland dille professor of English and president of Morehead State College has made a study of Sin Cara Lewis. I ask doctor deal if the main street of Sinclair Lewis is still alive. Well Main Street, I think it's still alive and somewhat different forms since 1920, of course Rural America is decreasing population small towns gopher Prairie are perhaps less important in the whole scheme of things, but they are still small towns and they are still in many ways like gopher Prairie loose ends that paragraph of course by saying this is the climax of civilization which is kind of an introduction to his examination of a provincial pride in small towns, which he finds attractive. There's some of that still around 2. I think the values that he was criticizing in in Main Street the the boosterism perhaps of superficiality. Yeah, if you think that's still prevalent or is it perhaps been increased I suspect that boosterism in small towns in America in 1975 is a shade more defensive than it was in Lewis books list of characters almost never seemed to suggest that they were on the defensive. They were simply ignorant and that's why they boosted their Hometown. They thought it was a good as you can get that attitude. I don't think is prevalent in that kind of way. I just had the most people in small towns where they live in them because they chose to do it just because that's where they were born. That's where they work. Most people in small towns tend to brag about their small towns and terms that are Purple acceptable on this decade to a lot of people live in cities, but they do have something to offer that you don't you don't have the city in Lewis's books. What is boasted about our things that we don't have any small towns do they predict or pretend you have to have a small town. Very important and happened to coincide the things you have in large cities. You have great familiarity and some affection for small towns in Minnesota. What do you see as some of the virtues? Well, I suppose that based on my own experience growing up in a quite small town and living now in a quite small City that the important things are first of all a closeness to Nature. How closest to the soil which I don't understand the middle of Oppo which I think is kind of important to one's sense of oneself. I think otherwise, is that a of the way in which nature produces the Harvest in the difficulty want to has and guarding that Harvest is a lot more useful to one's understanding of his humanity and watching a factory at work. I also think that one of the things that Lewis attacks that is the kind of relationship self-satisfied relationship among Neighbors, which frequently turns into a kind of viciousness because people know so well what neighbors are doing the reverse side of that that one of those good things about living in a small town is that you know people and that, you know people in ways that are Probably more profound, you know where people came from you know, what they've been up to all their lives, you know about families this I think is more than simply interesting. Although it is interesting is what gospel is made of among other things. I do think it is a better introduction to human nature, then you can often find the in a busy City street or city neighborhood. What Louis is attacking courses in Main Street and especially in Babbitt when he attacks boosterism generally is a kind of back-slapping camaraderie that I insist that all men are equal in some kind of an important way. They all have the same thoughts. They all laugh at the same jokes. They have precisely the same attitudes towards poetry and art and politics and all the rest of it and a Christmas for this does is to Rob everyone of individuality there really are not people with an individual. Names of individual philosophies and Lewis. That's what he's attacking. That's what he finds. So Dreadful about the this camera battery. It doesn't allow for differences. It doesn't even anticipate the possibility of differences except as some sort of criminal deviation from the norm. We have this kind of 2 conflicting needs in the society one of the sense of nationhood. Which seems to be declining his people's confidence in the government in Washington declines and the large bureaucracies which seemed unable to respond very quickly or even effectively with what some of the people's concerns are and that need for Community a sense of uniqueness of place. Do you see you in without it becoming a romantic notion. Do you see some future for small towns this way in in providing an opportunity for a sense of identity for people are uniqueness of place. I think it's possible and it may even happen you say that we're losing our sense of nationhood. I was reading a review about book by Robert wiebe historian call the segment of society and we be claimed as that. We never really having a sense of nationhood that we have owed. Our first loyalty is to the segment of society to which we belong now that can be exposed to some extent economic class occupational but perhaps even basically geographical that is among the segments are those segments supplies, and that is that This kind of segmentation replace the old class system in Europe. We we attached to our segments are Community Drive from it our knowledge of who you are and I think of course that does something a community always does it. It sets up certain patterns. No one knows who he is because of a reinforcing or non reinforcing Community things that the patterns are set up a known it better move away from them. Carol Kennicott. Can't buy that and she finally has she not find it, but she does have to leave for quite a long time. I I think though that as one looks towards the future. If one can characterize what has been happening. To community or Society in the past few years. I guess I would say is that what we've lost really is a sense of community. And if you don't have the nation as a community. You are left with some way of deriving Community out of large urban areas that seem to be very difficult to do. As long as he's is a diminished to church congregations friend, since you let you know, he was one of the possibilities that the urban Society offer is there really isn't such a thing as neighborhood low-key. I think the governor's very many people. It's one of the things of course that people who want to change urban life altogether up against let's have the ghettos that isn't extraordinarily bad place for people. Because it's not maintained very well. There is a kind of General hopelessness and despair of individual is to do away with a ghetto ghetto to cover almost any after the area you do everything got home and community and some of the experiences I've had with large housing experiments have has Have shown that people simply don't want to live in high-rise buildings without the old neighbors. I think those people feel a lesser and lesser. Attraction to community feel as loyalty to community and we moved towards what is been. So, the last few years a kind of total Self Indulgence of that. We could destroy American Life. And I and I suspect that the human beings rather than the self-destruct are going to seek out other kinds of community that are wrong with Urban living for me. That is the speed of the noise and the heating all rest of it are not for you to live in the country. But I also suspect that if I live in the city unless I were in a kind of occupation in time that come in occupations where I would be working closely with a number of people who I enjoyed I done had for the territory. I really would get out of the territory and I know that I'm like Huck Finn, I would want to go to Lone Community radio implies. I like mindedness to a degree of of something faulty like talks about that need to affirm oneself. Out of non-being and also to relate to others one of the reasons that San Carlos was so angry perhaps and had such an sharp satiric edge in his writing was that he wasn't accepted in in Sauk Centre Minnesota. There was no one to affirm his self. Is there more diversity allowed and in small towns? Perhaps is a result of of Sinclair Lewis's writing you think he had an effect. It's hard to say if he had an effect. I once gave a speech that sucks Center in Carlos's birthday to the Sinclair Lewis foundation. And I made that point that the world is different from the world. Which Lewis grew up. One reason is different is because of Sinclair Lewis and people like him and that sucks under different for that reason. And afterwards I saw the whole world is changing clean socks and adapter is going to catch me and said, you know, it hasn't changed the bed. I doubt that. I wouldn't know what the change one could say is responsible to Sinclair Lewis. He wrote with a lot of other people whose main attack was on American provincialism. The the civilization United States by a collection of essays by Harold Stern. I think 19 20 points out that for any intelligent that supposed to get educated person life United States is intolerable. Absolutely impossible. The moral codes are restrictive for no part except convention. There is no cultural life. That's a point of view which is being raised by a lot of people in the early twenties still being charged by a few now. It's saying an elitist point of view. It's a point of view that I think he ignores you not the reality American lights on the possibilities American Life. I think that all of that that literary movement if I can call it that that looking to Europe I would have a great many changes that took place some for no good reason that there is greater diversity even in the Villages what you say about the need to affirm and to not relate to others. Sinclair Lewis's inability to reach out and touch anyone who like interests quizzes is kind of central to his book George Babbitt makes an effort to escape from Mom. They can find the influence of his friends think of to do list. I have an affair that is either break from convention that is worth something too. But the affair is read what's on his mind what's on his mind is the satisfaction with the the usual kinds of responses of people to people. I didn't find he doesn't find all the pleasure. He wants to find a life from unthinking responses to look for something else. This is an experience in Sauk Centre. It is Carol Kennicott experience. I am I wish I could you say is important because in the past we have belong to communities because that's where we were we had to belong to them and writers like Louis writers like Sherwood Anderson ugly matching a whole number of riders riding in the teens in the twenties and thirties have found that there was a a dehumanizing effect of having to identify with attitudes that you could not really feel to act in ways that were ordained by your neighbors and had nothing to do with your sense of what it meant to be a human being. I think that the pressures of the village are less strong than they once were. I don't know what that means in terms of of spiritual achievement or intellectual achievement of the fact that there is that drunkenness is not that frowned upon as I once was that illicit love is abused to say is no longer secret that they're all kinds of things that we do in self-indulgence. The people allowed to indulge yourself in that the kind of freedom, but I am afraid it's a kind of Freedom that in the end substitutes for the real pleasures of living the simple and even I'm afraid destructive Pleasures that has been available to men have been one way of Making people put up with life is not very satisfactory. When the center for San Carlos was dedicated a week ago or so. He said that he had affection for Sauk Centre. Do you think you did I don't suppose that anyone can live Young Manhood in any Community any small time without bringing with it a lot of memories a good thing. I think that Luis more than most people live in small towns left it angrily. I suspected as he became successful and as he Grew Older he became somewhat sentimental I was suspected anyone zanger is community. Is made up in part of a need to show the community and once you win a Nobel Prize when things are happy about that. They know about it back home. I spent all those things motivated Louis into writing is Adam occasion about his his memories his fight his good memories about Sauk Centre and I think my 1935 when he wrote it can't happen here where he in Dartmouth Jessup. Who is helping to lead the revolt against the fascists you've taken over the country and town which is certainly Sauk Centre and finds some kind of promise for a decent future. In the land and in the farmers and the merchants in Sauk Centre by 1935. I think you really felt that way really is a rather bad though. Very interesting book what is better pieces of writing and it must have come out of something. He really really felt but I'm afraid that not much love is for suckers shown in Main Street. I'm afraid that certain Humphrey was making a political statement. But haven't given a couple of speeches dedicating various Sinclair Lewis sites in Sauk Centre. I confess that I'm in a couple of political statements myself until the emphasize the end of it can't happen here rather than the beginning of Main Street. Yet the the Midwest has been out of place to nurture. A lot of very fine writers and politicians has not your Gene McCarthy the senator in Port grew up. Not far from Sauk Centre. Yes McCarthy. Is it in Stearns County group went to high school? There was educated there St. John's University and her tentatively religious vocation and Stearns County High School in Stearns County is almost altogether a product of Stearns County family and racial Heritage a product of a rigorous Catholic Education, but I really don't think that that Eugene McCarthy has altogether escaped from I Watkins I think he is he is partly a product of that and perhaps perhaps McCarthy's desire for Solitude meditation and poetry although a lot more to Watkins Stearns County than they do anything has happened to him since I think there are strengths that can come out of the small town experience. That will support one, you know all kinds of hard. What are some of the strengths? Last week I was driving down highway I-94 and I came to Freeport and I stopped there to eat. Freeport is a small town Catholic town and I noticed on the wall of the of the cafe. And add a poster advertising the annual Fourth of July celebration. He saw a couple of years ago by the parish priest and nautical appear in the New York Times. And what did you find out in that article was the way in which people related to one another in a community the way in which life went on in about to be quiet way people to have time to think he didn't say but what they thought about that time to think they were closer to some understanding of the rewards of nature life in Freeport has the priest told it was a pretty decent life. I think it is not I'm someone handicapped by getting out in the country only when I'm not working and finding it. They are really very creative kind of thing to walk through the countryside. That's all different from work in the fields all week. And a my memory of those days work in the fields, I think are are pretty clear, but they are endowed Lee nostalgic. And if I think that I never had as good as I did when I left to find 25 years ago, that's not true. I think that but it probably isn't true. I probably had a better since then lots of times but I I I do think that get bail to get away from people. or I being with people who put no great demands upon you these are what you can find in in Rural America still and he always could and I think those do give you Oh, I don't give you self confidence and Poise and sophistication and things like that, but they do give you some knowledge of yourself. It seems ironic that Sinclair Lewis was able to write so clearly. And forcefully about small-town life and express his own views and yet personally was really such a misfit in a way I wasn't able to relate closely with people believe related to his wife Dorothy Thompson really better by letter than he did in person. I guess is this part of the writers dilemma. Sometimes we find where there is chaos in the life, but order in the art. Well, I I suppose that half of the writers are worth reading Him Live chaotic lives and probably half a little chaotic lies were if you want to have around very much. But I suspect that has and have them has I can't regenerate. And I and I wouldn't be able to even give a top of top of the head judgement. I'm with her chaos is essential to the harmony of art. I do rather think though that a certain amount of unhappiness is probably required of the artist. And that is really what was Noah's so well when he attacks the Babbitt's of the world. That happiness turned out to be for them something so simple the so I'm thinking and so unfeeling that we wouldn't happiness at all but a kind of sauce that discovered life and so people know neither happiness nor unhappiness not knowing unhappiness. I didn't seek happiness not knowing chaos. They didn't see Harmony not looking to the the best that didn't raise their eyes, and I guess the unexamined life. Is not the life of the artist. We've been talking with dr. Roland dille professor of English and president of Morehead State College was made a study of Sinclair Lewis. I'm billeci meringue