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In: Novels·American Literature·Nobel Prizes in Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #26610.
The book is a comic‑looking slice of early‑20th‑century Midwestern life, set in the fictional towns of Joralemon and Tamarack Lake. It opens with a group of young people perched on a porch, their conversations drifting from embarrassed flirtations to the mechanics of a creaking rocker, while Carl Ericson narrates his own awkward attempts at courtship, bicycle rides, and a sudden fascination with glider experiments in 1905. The narrative quickly moves from the domestic chatter of Mrs. Cowles and Gertie’s pompadoured hair to Carl’s restless imagination, which is sparked by a mechanics magazine that predicts the coming age of aviation. From there the story follows his summer of tinkering, telephone‑wire work, and a daring glider flight that ends in a spectacular crash, all framed by the everyday humor of small‑town gatherings, porch‑supper parties, and the occasional reference to contemporary philosophers and professors.
The voice is lively and colloquial, mixing detailed descriptions of prairie towns, bicycle clubs, and early aeronautical dreams with a self‑aware, almost theatrical humor. Sinclair Lewis’s early‑period prose captures the cadence of regional dialects and the optimism of a generation on the brink of modernity, while the comic tone keeps the narrative buoyant despite its occasional melancholy. Readers who enjoy witty portrayals of American small‑town life, historical glimpses of the pre‑airplane era, and a protagonist whose ambitions swing between romance, engineering, and youthful mischief will find this novel an engaging, if unconventional, read.
The opening · free to read
She took his hand. Her voice was crooning, "Are you going to kiss me terribly hard?"
He tried to be gracefully mocking: "Oh yes! Sure! I'm going to eat you alive."
She was waiting.
He wished that she would not hold his hand. Within he groaned, "Gee whiz! I feel foolish!" He croaked: "Do you feel better, now? You'll catch more cold in here, won't you? There's kind of a draught. Lemme look at this window."
Crossing to the obviously tight window, he ran his finger along the edge of the sash with infinite care. He trembled. In a second, now, he had to turn and make light of the lips which he would fain have approached with ceremony pompous and lingering.
Gertie flopped into a chair, laughing: "I believe you're afraid to kiss me! 'Fraid cat! You'll never be a squire of dames, like those actors are! All right for you!"
"I am not afraid!" he piped.... Even his prized semi-bass voice had deserted him.... He rushed to the back of her chair and leaned over, confused, determined. Hastily he kissed her. The kiss landed on the tip of her cold nose.
And the whole party was tumbling in, crying:
"Time 's up! You can't hug her all evening!"
"Did you see? He kissed her on the nose!"
"Did he? Ohhhhh!"
"Time 's up. Can't try it again."
Joe Jordan, in the van, was dancing fantastically, scraping his forefinger at Carl, in token of disgrace.
The riotous crowd, Gertie and Carl among them, flooded out again. To show that he had not minded the incident of the misplaced kiss, Carl had to be very loud and merry in the library for a few minutes; but when the game of "post-office" was over and Mrs. Cowles asked Ray to turn down the lamp in the sitting-room, Carl insisted:
"I'll do it, Mrs. Cowles; I'm nearer 'n Ray," and bolted.
He knew that he was wicked in not staying in the library and continuing his duties to the party. He had to crowd into a minute all his agonizing and be back at once.
It was beautiful in the stilly sitting-room, away from the noisy crowd, to hear love's heart beating. He darted to the chair where Gertie had sat and guiltily kissed its arm. He tiptoed to the table, blew out the lamp, remembered that he should only have turned down the wick, tried to raise the chimney, burnt his fingers, snatched his handkerchief, dropped it, groaned, picked up the handkerchief, raised the chimney, put it on the table, searched his pockets for a match, found it, dropped it, picked it up from the floor, dropped his knife from his pocket as he stooped, felt itchy about the scalp, picked up the knife, relighted the lamp, exquisitely adjusted the chimney--and again blew out the flame. And swore.
As darkness whirled into the room again the vision of Gertie came nearer. Then he understood his illness, and gasped: "Great jumping Jupiter on a high mountain! I guess--I'm--in--love! Me!"
The party was breaking up. Each boy, as he accompanied a girl from the yellow lamplight into the below-zero cold, shouted and scuffled the snow, to indicate that there was nothing serious in his attentions, and immediately tried to manoeuver his girl away from the others. Mrs. Cowles was standing in the hall--not hurrying the guests away, you understand, but perfectly resigned to accepting any farewells--when Gertie, moving gently among them with little sounds of pleasure, penned Carl in a corner and demanded:
"Are you going to see some one home? I suppose you'll forget poor me completely, now!"
"I will not!"
"I wanted to tell you what Ray and Mr. Griffin said about Plato and about being lawyers. Isn't it nice you'll know them when you go to Plato?"
"Yes, it 'll be great."
"Mr. Griffin 's going to be a lawyer and maybe Ray will, too, and why don't you think about being one? You can get to be a judge and know all the best people. It would be lovely.... Refining influences--they--that's----"
"I couldn't ever be a high-class lawyer like Griffin will," said Carl, his head on one side, much pleased.
"You silly boy, of course you could. I think you've got just as much brains as he has, and Ray says they all look up to him even in Plato. And I don't see why Plato isn't just as good--of course it isn't as large, but it's so select and the faculty can give you so much more individual attention, and I don't see why it isn't every bit as good as Yale and Michigan and all those Eastern colleges.... Howard--Mr. Griffin--he says that he wouldn't ever have thought of being a lawyer only a girl was such a good influence with him, and if you get to be a famous man, too, maybe I'll have been just a teeny-weeny bit of an influence, too, won't I?"
"Oh yes!"
"I must get back now and say good-by to my guests. Good night, Carl."
"I am going to study--you just watch me; and if I do get to go to Plato----Oh, gee! you always have been a good influence----" He noticed that Doris Carson was watching them. "Well, I gotta be going. I've had a peach of a time. Good night."
Doris Carson was expectantly waiting for one of the boys to "see her home," but Carl guiltily stole up to Ben Rusk and commanded:
"Le's hike, Fatty. Le's take a walk. Something big to tell you."
Carl kicked up the snow in moon-shot veils. The lake boomed. For all their woolen mittens, ribbed red-cotton wristlets, and plush caps with ear-laps, the cold seared them. Carl encouraged Ben to discourse of Gertie and the delights of a long and hopeless love. He discovered that, actually, Ben had suddenly fallen in love with Adelaide Benner. "Gee!" he exulted. "Maybe that gives me a chance with Gertie, then. But I won't let her know Ben ain't in love with her any more. Jiminy! ain't it lucky Gertie liked me just when Ben fell in love with somebody else! Funny the way things go; and her never knowing about Ben." He laid down his cards. While they plowed through the hard snow-drifts, swinging their arms against their chests like milkmen, he blurted out all his secret: that Gertie was the "slickest girl in town"; that no one appreciated her.
"Ho, ho!" jeered Ben.
"I thought you were crazy about her, and then you start kidding about her! A swell bunch of chivalry you got, you and your Galahad! You----"
"Don't you go jumping on Galahad, or I'll fight!"
"He was all right, but you ain't," said Carl. "You hadn't ought to ever sneer at love."
"Why, you said, just this afternoon----"
"You poor yahoo, I was only teasing you. No; about Gertie. It's like this: she was telling me a lot about how Griffin 's going to be a lawyer, about how much they make in cities, and I've about decided I'll be a lawyer."
"Thought you were going to be a mechanical engineer?"
"Well, can't a fellow change his mind? When you're an engineer you're always running around the country, and you never get shaved or anything, and there ain't any refining influences----"
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