Elmer Gantry is a 1927 satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis that presents aspects of the religious activity of the United States in fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s public toward it. Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, the protagonist, is attracted by drinking, chasing women, and making easy money (although eventually renouncing tobacco and alcohol). In the novel's fictional world, after various forays into smaller fringe churches, Gantry becomes a major moral and political force in the Methodist Church despite his hypocrisy and serial sexual indiscretions.

Elmer Gantry was published in the United States by Harcourt Trade Publishers in March 1927, dedicated by Lewis to the American journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken.

Background

Biographer Mark Schorer states that while researching the book, Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that, "He took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community." According to others, Lewis researched the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays.<!--CONTENT NOT IN SOURCES FOLLOWING.--> There, he first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger, pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church.<!--CONTENT NOT IN SOURCES EARLIER OR FOLLOWING.--> Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen,<!--CONTENT NOT IN SOURCES EARLIER OR FOLLOWING.--> thus Lewis engaged with Unitarian pastor L. M. Birkhead However, on its publication, it created a public furor—it was banned in Boston and in other cities, and denounced from pulpits across the United States.<!--The AU.com source does not say this (no "denounc$" or "pulpit$"), and only offers the examples fully stated (Billy Sunday, the cleric suggesting a prison sentence).--> Contemporary Sinclair Lewis biographer Mark Schorer notes that one cleric suggested Lewis be imprisoned for five years; others note that evangelist Billy Sunday threatened to beat him up and called him "Satan's cohort", and Lewis reportedly received an invitation to his own lynching. and won Brooks the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress for Lancaster and Jones, respectively.

  • A 1970 Broadway musical adaptation, titled Gantry, opened and closed on the same night, February 14, 1970.
  • A 1998 play adaptation by Richard Rossi was performed in Los Angeles and broadcast on TV October 24, 1998.
  • In November 2007, an opera, also titled Elmer Gantry, by Robert Aldridge and Herschel Garfein, premiered in the James K. Polk Theater in Nashville, Tennessee. Chaudhri sought investors for an initial $20 million budget, but after Chaudhri's death on May 10, 2005, Rossi then began writing his own story of an Elmer Gantry-ish evangelist in a contemporary setting, which became the film Canaan Land.

Citations

Further reading

Including audiovisual

Books

  • Blake, John Tyler. Sinclair Lewis's Kansas City Laboratory: The Genesis of Elmer Gantry. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1999.
  • Corder, Robert Gibson. Edward J. Pawley: Broadway's Elmer Gantry, Radio's Steve Wilson, and Hollywood's Perennial Bad Guy, Outskirts Press, 2006.
  • Hutchisson, James M. The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920–1930. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996.
  • Lingeman, Richard R. Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005, .

Chapters and articles

  • Blake, Nelson Manfred. "How to Learn History from Sinclair Lewis and Other Uncommon Sources", in American Character and Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-Century Perspectives. John A. Hague (ed.). Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979. 111–23.
  • Dixon, Wheeler. "Cinematic Adaptations of the Works of Sinclair Lewis", in Sinclair Lewis at 100: Papers Presented at a Centennial Conference, ed. Michael Connaughton. St. Cloud, MN: St. Cloud State University, 1985, pp.&nbsp;191–200.
  • Higgs, Robert J. "Religion and Sports: Three Muscular Christians in American Literature", in American Sport Culture: The Humanistic Dimensions Wiley Lee Umphlett (ed.). Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1985, pp.&nbsp;226–34.
  • Killough, George. "Elmer Gantry, Chaucer's Pardoner, and the Limits of Serious Words", in Sinclair Lewis: New Essays in Criticism. James M. Hutchisson (ed.). Troy, New York: Whitston, 1997. 162–74.
  • Martin, Edward A. "The Mimic as Artist: Sinclair Lewis", in H. L. Mencken and the Debunkers. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1984. 115–38.
  • Mayer, Gary H. "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge", in American Bypaths: Essays in Honor of E. Hudson Long. Ed. Robert G. Collmer and Jack W. Herring. Waco: Baylor University Press, 1980. 145–66.
  • Moore, James Benedict. "The Sources of Elmer Gantry", in The New Republic, 143 (8 August 1960): 17–18.
  • Piacentino, Edward J. "Babbittry Southern Style: T. S. Stribling's Unfinished Cathedral". Markham Review 10 (1981): 36–39.
  • Prioleau, Elizabeth S. "The Minister and the Seductress in American Fiction: The Adamic Myth Reduz", Journal of American Culture, 16.4 (1993): 1–6.
  • Schorer, Mark. "Afterword", in Elmer Gantry [Sinclair Lewis] Signet Books edition, 1970.
  • Shillito, Edward. "Elmer Gantry and the Church in America", in Nineteenth Century and After, 101 (1927): 739–48.