Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Source of book: I own this

 

This book was my beach read for a recent weekend camping trip to the beach. For obvious reasons, it was an ideal choice.

 

For this post, I really will be doing two different posts about this book. The first is about the book itself as a work of art - and it is a truly beautiful bit of writing. It will definitely resonate with a certain kind of person (me included) - one who is introverted, responsible, introspective, poetic, and a bit harried by modern life. For extroverts, the book might seem a bit odd. For those not as fond of poetry, it might seem a bit nebulous. And naturally, for those who do not feel the weight of social and family responsibility, it might seem unnecessary. Your mileage may vary. 

 

A more justifiable criticism of the book is that it, like so many other books in the “self care” genre, it tends to assume a certain level of affluence that is unavailable to many. It seems tone deaf to those for whom any vacation is out of reach, for example. And also, with its admonition to turn inward, it tends to exclude the kind of caring for those outside the immediate circle - at one point Anne advises the reader that caring too much about too much is more than any person can handle. A partial truth, but also an excuse to avoid facing one’s privilege and advocating for those outside one’s own socioeconomic circles. 

 

This, by the way, also relates to the second thing I want to discuss. The Lindberghs were complicated people, with Charles in particular being a pretty horrible person, and the main reason Anne had to work to repair their reputation after World War Two. She too said some fairly unsavory things, whether out of naivety or something darker is less clear than with Charles. So, I will attempt to unpack some of the context of the book in the second part. 

 

***

 

First, about the book itself. Gift From the Sea is a series of connected essays, arising from a vacation that Anne took by herself on a barrier island in Florida in the 1950s. She describes five different sea shells she collects, and relates them to her topics. She explores ideas of love and marriage, youth and age, solitude and responsibility, and particularly the difficulties facing women in finding the time and resources to replenish their own souls. These are timeless ideas, and Anne handles them with a lovely and thoughtful touch. 

 

The fact of the matter is that she had five surviving children to care for, a husband who had…let’s just say “issues,” and a lot of social expectations that she struggled to meet. For the introverted parent (and I say this from my own experience, as well as watching my more introverted wife), children can be exhausting, particularly when they are young and very needy. We men are socially expected to be away from our children regularly. Not just for our jobs - although those are definitely a chance to get away - but also for guys nights out and other activities. Society expects women to do the childcare to make all of that happen. 

 

Although the culture has shifted a lot, there is still a definite expectation that men do not have to do the same for the mothers of their children. Often, a woman is deemed “selfish” for wanting time by herself. Plus, even if she works, she is expected to do that “second shift” of childcare and housework. 

 

In my own marriage, we chose to do things differently. She worked nights part time; I worked days part time. We each had time away from the children, as well as time with them. For the past nearly ten years, I have taken the kids camping by myself, and given her the chance to take trips on her own, without the responsibility of family. We found ways to make sure that each of us have had chances to center ourselves, and refresh our souls. 

 

Anne Morrow Lindbergh reminds me a lot of my wife for these reasons. She was, by any reasonable standard, the more talented spouse (she flew with her husband, but wasn’t able to be the pioneer he was in that area due to her childcare responsibilities and general sexism.) Her writing has endured. 

 

So much in this book resonated with me. I too need my solitude, my introspection, and an more holistic connection with the universe.

 

Gift From the Sea is a short book, and I do not wish to try to summarize every idea in it. I will just hit a few highlights in the quotes. First is the introduction. 

 

I began these pages for myself, in order to think out my own particular pattern of living, my own individual balance of life, work and human relationships. And since I think best with a pencil in my hand, I started naturally to write. I had the feeling, when the thoughts first clarified on paper, that my experience was very different from other people’s. (Are we all under this illusion?) My situation had, in certain ways, more freedom than that of most people, and in certain other ways, much less.

Besides, I thought, not all women are searching for a new pattern of living, or want a contemplative corner of their own. Many women are content with their lives as they are. They manage amazingly well, far better than I, it seemed to me, looking at their lives from the outside. With envy and admiration, I observed the porcelain perfection of their smoothly ticking days,. Perhaps they had no problems, or had found the answers long ago. No, I decided, these discussions would have value and interest only for myself.

But as I went on writing and simultaneously talking with other women, young and old, with different lives and experiences - those who supported themselves, those who wished careers, those who were hard-working housewives and mothers, and those with more ease - I found that my point of view was not unique. I discovered that many women, and men, too, were grappling with essentially the same questions as I, and were hungry to discuss and argue and hammer out possible answers. Even those whose lives had appeared to be ticking imperturbably under their smiling clock-faces were often trying, like me, to evolve another rhythm with more creative pauses in it, more adjustment to their individual needs, and new and more alive relationships to themselves as well as others.

And so gradually, these chapters, fed by conversations, arguments and revelations from men and women of all groups, became more than my individual story, until I decided in the end to give them back to the people who had shared and stimulated many of these thoughts. Here, then, with my warm feelings of gratitude and companionship for those working along the same lines, I return my gift from the sea.

 

The first shell is abandoned by a hermit crab, and the author notes that this reminds her of herself. 

 

I too have run away, I realize, I have shed the shell of my life, for these few weeks of vacation. 

 

And what is she seeking? 

 

But I want first of all - in fact, as an end to these other desires - to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact - to borrow from the language of the saints - to live “in grace” as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony. 

 

Yeah, me too, Anne, me too. 

 

In a later chapter, she writes of something that has haunted me a lot as of late. 

 

For it is not physical solitude that actually separates one from other men, not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nore the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. 

 

Having over the last decade lost my sense of connection to my former religious tribe, as well as my parents (and for largely the same reasons), this makes sense. The loneliness of searching for water - the spiritual connection - in the hearts of others, and realizing that it simply isn’t there, that their minds and hearts have become deserts, devoid of what once nourished, has been devastating. I had naively assumed that “love your neighbor” and “do unto others” still resided there, but it has long since dried up, in favor of a vicious theopolitical ideology that views outsiders with hate and fear. Unfortunately, Anne’s prescription of knowing one’s self better can’t repair all. It has to be on both sides. 

 

Later in that chapter, she writes superbly about the struggles women face in finding solitude. 

 

Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day. How revolutionary that sounds and how impossible of attainment. To many women such a program seems quite out of reach. They have no extra income to spend on a vacation for themselves; no time left over from the weekly drudgery of housework for a day off; no energy after the daily cooking, cleaning and washing for even an hour of creative solitude. 

Is this then only an economic problem? I do not think so. Every paid worker, no matter where in the economic scale, expects a day off a week and a vacation a year. By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class. They rarely even complain of their lack, apparently not considering occasional time to themselves as a justifiable need. 

Herein lies one key to the problem. If women were convinced that a day off or an hour of solitude was a reasonable ambition, they would find a way of attaining it. As it is, they feel so unjustified in their demand that they rarely make the attempt.

 

Another chapter discusses the different periods of life, particularly as they relate to romantic relationships. I think there is a lot of truth here for good relationships, although I have to wonder how colored Anne’s thinking was by the problems her own marriage faced. Her basic point that change is the one universal, and that there is no relationship that does not change, and that therefore we should neither mourn changes in our relationships nor attempt to recapture a past version. 

 

It is true, of course, that the original relationship is very beautiful. Its self-enclosed perfection wears the freshness of a spring morning. Forgetting about the summer to come, one often feels one would like to prolong the spring of early love, when two people stand as individuals, without past or future, facing each other. One resents any change, even though one knows that transformation is natural and part of the process of life and its evolution. Like its parallel in physical passion, the early ecstatic stage of a relationship cannot continue always at the same pitch of intensity. It moves to another phase of growth which one should not dread, but welcome as one welcomes summer after spring. 

 

Anne also ties this in with the human tendency not just to want to be loved, but to be “loved alone” as Auden puts it. She quotes a stanza from Auden to that effect. 

 

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

 

It isn’t that it is wrong to want monogamy, for example - that is not the point at all. Rather, no person can exist loving only one, and living only for one. Any parent knows this. Our time and attention for our spouses are subdivided by our children. So, as Anne notes, we need those moments of “loved alone” when we can get them, but have to realize that they are just that - moments. And that does not make them invalid or valueless. 

 

She goes on in the next chapter to discuss marriage in more detail. The way that marriage starts out as a “double-sunrise” shell, but becomes more like an oyster, with its odd shapes and accommodations to circumstance. It also clings fast to its bed, because of the many threads of bond that are created. 

 

Here the bonds of marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion, and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of lack of language too; a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and mental. It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction. It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself.

 

Anne advocates for something which must have seemed shocking at the time: separate vacations for husband and wife. In some ways, this still seems shocking. My wife gets some interesting looks when she mentions that she goes on vacation without me - and that the kids and I go on vacation without her. (I’m more of a social vacationer - I get more solitude in other ways, plus I am less of an introvert.) But we have found that this really does work better for us. We take vacations together. And not together. 

 

I like the way that Anne envisions the ideal relationship of the future: one that is fully equal, a meeting of two fully developed and independent persons. She sees this as a potential future, after the kids are grown, and the couple has grown beyond youth. 

 

Is the golden fleece that awaits us some kind of new freedom for growth? And in this new freedom, is there any place for a relationship? I believe there is, after the oyster bed, an opportunity for the best relationship of all: not a limited, mutually exclusive one, like the sunrise shell; and not a functional, dependent one, as in the oyster bed; but the meeting of two whole fully developed people as persons. It would be, to borrow a definition of the Scottish philosopher, MacMurray, a fully personal relationship, that is, “a type of relationship into which people enter as persons with the whole of themselves.” “Personal relationships,” he goes on to explain, “...have no ulterior motive. They are not based on particular interests. They do not serve partial and limited ends. Their value lies entirely in themselves and for the same reason transcends all other values. And that is because they are relations of persons as persons.” This relationship of “persons as persons” was hinted at by the German poet, Rilke, almost fifty years ago. He foresaw a great change in the relationships between men and women, which he hoped in the future would no longer follow the traditional patterns of submission and domination or of possession and competition. He described a state in which there would be space and freedom for growth, and in which each partner would be the means of releasing the other. 

 

This is the relationship my wife and I have always aspired to. And it coexists with the others - mutual exclusivity, functional and dependent - but always “persons as persons,” not as gendered functions. 

 

Anne further notes that such relationships will not only be freeing for women, but also freeing for men, whose emotional range is hampered by social pressures. 

 

Must not man also become world to himself? Must he not also expand the neglected sides of his personality; the art of inward looking that he has seldom time for in his active outward-going life; the personal relationships which he has not had as much chance to enjoy; the so-called feminine qualities, aesthetic, emotional, cultural, and spiritual, which he has been too rushed to fully develop. Perhaps both men and women in America may hunger, in our material, outward, active, masculine culture, for the supposedly feminine qualities of heart, mind and spirit - qualities which are actually neither masculine nor feminine, but simply human qualities that have been neglected. It is growth along these lines that will make us whole, and will enable the individual to become world to himself.

 

The island sojourn, like everything, must come to an end, however, and Anne must return to her regular life. She notes that this too is part of the inevitable change that is part and parcel of existence. 

 

We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. 

 

I confess I struggle with this. I often fear during the ebb that things will never return. And maybe I am right about some things. But not everything. The only constant is change, and any chance of predicting, let alone controlling, the future is futile and a chasing after the wind. 

 

So, that gives some ideas, I hope. It truly is a beautiful and thoughtful book. I definitely recommend it.

 

***

 

Now, let’s turn to the problem of the Lindberghs. 

 

Charles Lindbergh is known to all of us for his transatlantic flight. We often remember this as the first transatlantic flight, but it wasn’t. Rather, it was the first solo transatlantic flight, and the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris. Accomplishments to be sure, but a shame to forget the other pioneers. 

 

A few of us remember the tragedy that came with fame for the Lindberghs. Their infant son was kidnapped from their home, held for ransom, and murdered. This trauma, plus the continuing death threats against their other children (people can be so horrid) caused them to flee to France, returning only at the outbreak of World War Two. 

 

And that’s where things got sideways. First, to be clear, there are things about the Lindbergh’s views and activities which have been unfairly characterized. They were hardly alone in being isolationist or advocating for the US to stay out of the war. And, honestly, they weren’t crazy or even wrong about this in the moral sense. It’s just that subsequent events - Hitler’s conquest of continental Europe, Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor - change the entire outlook of the war from the American perspective. To give a current example, the US is assisting Ukraine in defending against Russian invasion. Some today think we should stay completely out of it. Others think we should declare war on Russia. The mainstream view is like it was in 1941: supply weapons, but don’t directly fight. (Lend-lease all over again.) Will this be the best course of action? We do not know. Subsequent events will (maybe) reveal all. 

 

Had the Lindbergh’s simply been anti-war activists, I think we could have chalked it up to going against public sentiment and getting some things wrong. Unfortunately, there was worse. 

 

Charles in particular held some nasty views on race. Not that he was the only person of his time (or ours) to believe that white people - and northern Europeans in particular - were superior to everyone else. And not that he was the only person of his time (and ours) advocating for some form of eugenics. (In fact, that is the unspoken value system behind the economic policies of the GOP - thank you, Ayn Rand…) Charles’ views - which he loudly proclaimed - weren’t meaningfully different from those of Hitler and the KKK. Yeah, so problematic. 

 

To be fair to Charles, he seems (along with Anne) to have toned that rhetoric down a lot later in life, and in fact they became environmental advocates who noted the way colonialism and industrialism devastated indigenous communities. So, maybe some positive growth there. 

 

Anne didn’t go in for the racism the way Charles did, but she did say two troubling things. The first was a clear blunder that many others of the time made: she said in the 1930s that Hitler wasn’t interested in conquering Europe, and that he could be appeased. Yeah, that aged well. Just like the current right wing worship of Donald Trump is going to look really stupid in 20 years. Maybe sooner. 

 

The other was that she thought that both Fascism and Communism were, while imperfect, necessary and inevitable, seeing them as similar to the French Revolution, which was bloody and horrid, but necessary to end the monarchy. Again, of course, this was written before the war, and before Stalin’s purges, and so on. Hindsight exposed the foolishness of this opinion as well. 

 

Had these views been expressed in, say, 1910, they might have been forgotten or relegated to a footnote in the history books. But the Lindberghs had the bad timing to say them right before a world war that literally seemed to be good versus evil. And I myself believe that WWII was a highly unusual war in that it did have a moral clarity that few wars ever have. Hitler truly was unprecedented in his single-minded fanatical devotion to “aryan” supremacy, and his inability to act in his own or his country’s best interest. Following so closely on the heels of WWI, which was possibly the most nonsensical and pointless war ever, it was easier to believe that nobody could be so crazy and/or stupid as to do what Hitler did. And tried to do. 

 

So, as far as the political views go, I think it is fair to condemn the Lindberghs for the racism and “people like us first” attitude, even while acknowledging that they were hardly unique. But I think it is also important to grant them the fact that they did seem to grow in a positive direction after the war, rather than double down on their mistakes. 

 

A bit more personal stuff is worth mentioning. Anne was an accomplished pilot in her own right, and one wonders if, but for her marriage, she might have been as famous as Amelia Earhart. That she was also well educated, thoughtful, and a good writer is also true. She represented the shift that occurred in the 20th century: women gained in education, and education stopped being seen as a disadvantage for marriage and parenthood. Women like her paved the way for women like my wife, demonstrating that motherhood and personhood were not mutually exclusive, and that women had the right to expect men to participate in child care too. 

 

Now, let’s turn a bit to Charles, who, well, let’s just state it outright. Anne didn’t know it until Charles’ death, but Charles actually had four families he supported. He had children by two French sisters, as well as by a private secretary. He (and his mistresses) kept this a secret, although he sent money. The children of these liaisons didn’t even know who their father was until after his death. Now, before you feel too sorry for Anne, there is evidence that she had her own affair - and indeed, one wonders from Gift From the Sea if they had kind of an open marriage arrangement by that point. And there is also the question of just how unaffectionate Charles was - although they were in their own way devoted to each other. 

 

I think “complicated” is a good way to describe both of them. There is the good and the bad and the ugly. For myself, I read the book as a work of art - and it is indeed beautiful, even in its imperfections. For those of us who advocate for social justice (or, as the Bible calls it, justice), books like this can be a reminder that we need to care for our own psyches too. It is exhausting right now, with the forces of hate and hierarchy on the march, to continue to care. So we do need to take a step back, and, to a degree, embrace our lack of control, even as we continue to work for a better world. It is a balance. We look inward as we look outward. We care for ourselves as we care for others. And, as Anne dreamed of for the future, we build our mutual relationships between “persons as persons” - that communion of equal souls, each entire of itself yet deeply interconnected. 

The Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear

Source of book: I own this

 

My youngest enjoys poetry, particularly silly poetry, so it was natural to break out the Edward Lear to read along with our other books. 

 

The Book of Nonsense is a collection of silly limericks, accompanied by equally silly illustrations by the author. They generally fall into this pattern:

 

There was an [old/young] [man/woman/person] of [place]

Who [did or was something]

[Things happen]

[and happen]

That [silly/crazy/odd] [man/woman/person] of [place]

 

As usual for limericks, they are written primarily in anapests, with three feet in lines 1, 2, and 5; and two feet in lines 3 and 4. 

 

Lear’s poems are pure silliness - nonsense in every sense of the word. There is no deeper message, no profound depths. Just some laughs at the absurd. They are also not bawdy like the older poems of the form. (Google that at your own risk.) There are a few casually racist ones, unfortunately all too common for Victorian writing, but most are non-offensively silly. 

 

Edward Lear was an interesting character. As a child, he suffered from epilepsy and other ailments, which probably contributed to his struggles with depression. Oh, and he was gay, but the object of his love didn’t requite it. His was not the easiest life, one might say. But he did have a sense of humor, and left the world more laughter than it had without him. 

 

One of the things most notable about the experience of reading his poems to a kid is that Lear’s vocabulary is pretty advanced. I had to explain a number of words - which is increasingly rare since my kids read at an advanced level. I also had to explain where some of the places were - because some sound made up (although they are not.) 

 

I’ll quote a few to give the idea. 

 

There was an Old Man of Kilkenny,

Who never had more than a penny;

    He spent all that money

    In onions and honey,

That wayward Old Man of Kilkenny. 

 

And, these ones, with the illustrations:

The most famous from this collection is likely this one:

My kid enjoyed these so much that she wants to go on and read the second collection of silly limericks next. We will see - one of these days we should read another longer poem - maybe Idylls of the King or some Longfellow? 

 

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

Source of book: I own this

 

Elmer Gantry is my selection this year for Banned Books Week. This book was written in 1926, and was banned in Boston and other cities. Lewis was also physically threatened, and there were calls for his imprisonment. So what about this book drew the ire of book banners? And was it really as offensive as claimed?

 

Well, the answer is complicated. 

 

At the outset, let me mention that in my project of reading banned books, I have found they tend to fall into two categories. There are some that have clear issues that led to the ban. For example, Tropic of Cancer is pretty sex-soaked, and Strange Fruit depicts an interracial sexual relationship. But others seem pretty mild - Wild Swans is descriptive of reality, but hardly an anti-communist screed. 

 

Elmer Gantry to me seems to fall into that latter category. Yes, it is critical of religion in general - and Fundamentalist Evangelicalism specifically. But it also isn’t a screed, but just a story - and a rather nuanced story at that. There are admirable religious people throughout the book, pastors who sound like good men, parishioners who are genuine in their faith, and social reformers who wish to do good in the name of Christ. And even the titular anti-hero, as bad as he becomes by the end, is nowhere near the level of evil that characterizes modern religious celebrities from Bill Gothard to Mark Driscoll to so many others. 

 

I think the reasons that Elmer Gantry struck such a nerve are more subtle. Lewis put in hours and hours of time in churches, until he got the details and the subcultures right. Having spent the first 40 years of my own life in the Fundamentalist/Evangelical subculture myself, it was astonishing how well Lewis “got it.” And also fascinating to see how little has changed in the century since. I mean, I recognized all the hymns, the Christianese phrases, the emotional manipulations, the rhetoric - I mean, modern Fundamentalists are still trying to re-create the revival era in every detail today! 

 

Thus, Lewis infuriated them because he saw through them all too well. He wasn’t some “ivory tower liberal” who misunderstood and thus made idiotic mistakes in describing them. He knew…and yet refused to venerate them. 

 

The other issue that I think caused the book to be controversial is that Lewis makes it clear that the Elmer Gantrys of the world aren’t the problem. They are just a symptom of a greater disease in Fundamentalist religion. Gantry himself may be a hypocrite, but he isn’t a horrible person at first - he feels human and indeed sympathetic. But as he finds out, hypocrisy pays the bills. Appeals to hate pay the bills more than appeals to love. Screeds against the “sins” that other people commit sell, and sell big time. Going after alcohol and tobacco and dancing and evolution propel him to fame and fortune, while those pastors who work to improve the lives of the poor, accept immigrants, and encourage intellectual honesty are doomed to failure and obscurity. 

 

This hasn’t changed today. Gothard, to name one person who profoundly affected my own life, literally sold bigotry and cultural chauvinism as “godliness.” And it made him and his organization rich. Well, at least until it came out that he was a serial sexual predator. (Although, like Gantry, he was able to keep his sexual indiscretions secret for a long time.) The system still rewards narcissistic hypocrites, still rewards every turn toward legalistic moralism, still is obsessed with culture wars, and still protects the reputations of institutions rather than the victims. 

 

This was my first experience of Sinclair Lewis, although I remember getting his postage stamp as a kid - the first one I picked out myself. Apparently, most people start with Main Street, but a few friends have expressed a particular love for Elmer Gantry. What I would say, having read this book, is that Lewis writes with great subtlety, avoids caricatures, and understands that most humans exist in a grey area, neither wholly good nor wholly evil, and with motives which are mixed and obscure even to themselves. This is why I couldn’t truly hate Gantry. I was sorry at what he became eventually, but understood all too well how he got there. 

 

The plot is a pretty simple one, but the details are a lot of the fun. Elmer Gantry is a type we all know: the college jock who is a bit too good looking for his own good. And he has a sonorous voice, a way with the ladies, and a love for booze. You know the sort. 

 

At the beginning of the book, he intends to go into law. Influenced by his friend, he is non-religious, and a bit proud of his boozing and womanizing. But after an incident where he saves an aspiring preacher classmate from bullies, he realizes that he could use his natural talents in the field of religion, and make a real name and fortune for himself. Heck, it might even be worth cutting back on the drinking. 

 

He enters seminary, but is unable to complete it. While he survives a love affair, pawning the spurned woman off on a man who wants her, he manages to get drunk before a pulpit audition, and ends up out of the ministry. 

 

After working for a few years in sales, he runs into Sharon Falconer, an evangelist in the Pentecostal vein. He becomes her assistant, and appears well on his way to fame in his own right. Unfortunately, she dies in a fire that breaks out in her newly-built temple, and Elmer is never able to make a go of revival meetings by himself. 

 

Instead, he switches from the Baptists to the Methodists, and starts working his way up the chain, eventually becoming a mega-church pastor and anti-sin crusader. While he does manage to give up the booze, he never entirely stops chasing women. While neglecting his frigid wife, of course. (That is a whole story there - including a really great example of what NOT to do on the honeymoon if you have a virginal wife.) 

 

As I mentioned, along the way, Lewis paints a portrait of various branches of Christianity in turn-of-the-century America, the good the bad and the ugly. The combination of excellent writing, attention to detail, and a compelling story made this book a surprisingly quick read despite its more than 400 pages of small print. 

 

I ended up taking a lot of notes, and feel like I could have quoted dozens more lines. It was hard to pick and choose, because of how perceptive his descriptions and dialogue were. Any person who grew up in the uniquely American conservative religious subculture will find this book interesting and compelling, in my opinion. At least if they can avoid defensiveness. 

 

Here is a great description of Gantry, from the first page of the book:

 

He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously. 

 

And this one:

 

Elmer assumed that he was the center of the universe and that the rest of the system was valuable only as it afforded him help and pleasure.

 

These together perhaps illuminate everything that will follow. Elmer realizes that the perfect profession for a narcissist with a great voice is the ministry. It is tailor made for his personality - and he is correct. 

 

Eventually, Elmer converts. And, the thing is, it would be easy for Lewis to have made the conversion either wholly sincere or wholly insincere. Instead, the conversion is that very human combination of factors, some sincere, and others not. But it is difficult to fault Elmer for this. Or any of us whose relationship to religion and tribe and family is…complicated. 

 

They stood for the singing of “Shall We Gather at the River?” Elmer inarticulately began to feel his community with these humble, aspiring people - his own prairie tribe; this gaunt carpenter, a good fellow, full of friendly greetings; this farmwife, so courageous, channeled by pioneer labor; this classmate, an admirable basket-ball player, yet now changing beatifically, his head back, his eyes closed, his voice ringing. Elmer’s own people. Could he be a traitor to them, could he resist the current of their united belief and longing?

 

As many of us exvangelicals have realized, the sense of belonging is a hell of a drug. But when it wears off, the hangover is crushing. But that high is a real high, and Elmer feels it. 

 

He was certain that he would never again want to guzzle, to follow loose women, to blaspheme; he knew the rapture of salvation - yes, and of being the center of interest in the crowd.

 

Oh yes, he sees the possibilities too. 

 

“Wouldn’t be so bad to be a preacher if you had a big church and - Lot easier than digging out law-cases and having to put it over a jury and another lawyer maybe smarter than you are. 

“The crowd have to swallow what you tell ‘em in a pulpit and no back-talk or cross-examination allowed!”

 

The thing is, Elmer is right about one thing: preaching is one of the few professions where you can get away with incoherent logic, false statements of fact, and use of platitudes as if they were profound. As long as you put enough familiar stuff in to signal the unspoken tribal code. 

 

For all his slang, his cursing, his mauled plurals and singulars, Elmer had been compelled in college to read certain books, to hear certain lectures, all filled with flushed, florid polysyllables, with juicy sentiments about God, sunsets, the moral improvement inherent in a daily view of mountain scenery, angels, fishing for souls, ideals, patriotism, democracy, purity, the error of Providence in creating the female leg, courage, humility, justice, the agricultural methods of Palestine circ. 4 A.D., the beauty of domesticity, and preachers’ salaries. These blossoming words, these organ-like phrases, these profound notions, had been rammed home till they stuck in his brain, ready for use.

 

That’s pretty much American Civic Religion in a nutshell. And I have to laugh about “the error of Providence in creating the female leg.” 

 

Throughout the book, minor characters express varying degrees of doubt about religion, particularly the fundamentalist version. For example, here is a bit from the wife of the seminary dean:

 

“Why is it that it’s only in religion that the things you got to believe are agin all experience? Now drat it, don’t you go and quote that ‘I believe because it is impossible’ thing at me again! Believe because it’s impossible! Huh! Just like a minister!”

 

This is an ongoing problem for fundamentalist religion, and a significant reason why religion is in decline in the United States. Religion cannot survive in the long term if it is incompatible with experience. “Believing because it is impossible” is not a sustainable strategy. Sure, it will work for a generation. But the kids rarely are willing or able to continue to hold irrational beliefs. It certainly is a significant reason why I left Evangelicalism, and why my kids are not religious. 

 

Oh, and Lewis has no illusions about why there is a Southern Baptist Convention. 

 

There is a Northern and Southern convention of this distinguished denomination, because before the Civil War the Northern Baptists proved by the Bible, unanswerably, that slavery was wrong; and the Southern Baptists proved by the Bible, unanswerably, that slavery was the will of God.

 

As Mark Noll put it, theology proved entirely unable to resolve the single most important moral issue of the day - it ended up being resolved instead by a bloody war. Again, this still is the problem. Our theology seems incapable of definitively agreeing to love our neighbors, regardless of whether they are like us or not. Continuing today, Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism remain far more racist than the population at large. 

 

Lewis also hits a nerve with this observation about the clergy - another fact that remains relevant today. Interestingly, it is part of a discussion among future pastors, about denominational differences.

 

“Why is it that the clergy are so given to sex crimes?”

 

And the question of this fundamentally dishonest statement:

 

“[L]ong winded preachers always springing a bright new idea like ‘All the world needs to solve its problems is to get back to the gospel of Jesus Christ.’”

 

I’m sorry. I am so sick and tired of hearing this. As if some magical theology will by sanctified voodoo fix all the problems in this world. Hell, theology has made things worse, not better. Theology justified slavery. Theology justified Jim Crow. Theology continues to justify xenophobia and gross inequality. I’ll believe theology is a force for good once it starts acting like it, rather than spending its time justifying injustice that just happens to benefit those claiming the One True Theology™.

 

Or how about another issue that continues to plague consevative religion of all sorts? 

 

“Of all the fool Baptist egotisms, close communion is the worst! Nobody but people we consider saved to be allowed to take communion with us! Nobody can meet God unless we introduce ‘em! Self-appointed guardians of the blood and body of Jesus Christ!”

 

This is something to think about whenever you hear the latest screed by a conservative priest or pastor about why they want to deny eucharist or communion to people from the “wrong” (meaning not Republican) political party. 

 

I found the extended episode involving Sharon Falconer to be quite fascinating. She is not a fundamentalist, but a showman. Like Elmer, her personal life doesn’t match up with her “official” teaching either, although she makes her living on spectacle, not puritanism. When she takes Elmer on, she holds this weird ceremony that is very ecumenical. As in, it embraces a plethora of religious symbols from around the world, including, interestingly, a swastika. Remember, this was 1926. Hitler hadn’t yet appropriated the swastika (which was previously a symbol of good fortune), so Lewis included it with a number of other symbols which were then rather benign. Now, of course, the swastika means some very different things, none of them good. 

 

As part of Sharon’s troupe, Elmer comes to understand a lot more about how to emotionally manipulate people. He makes an observation that stunned me, and expressed a fundamental trauma from my church days.

 

Elmer saw that the real purpose of singing was to lead the audience to a state of mind where they would do as they were told. 

 

This really hurts. I was a good church musician. I could make people feel things, engage their emotions. But in retrospect, I was used. The system used people like me. We did what we believed was a good thing - we helped people gain a degree of wholeness between mind, body, and emotion. This is the power of music. But our talents were used by the system, not to bring people closer to the love of god and neighbor we intended, but as a means of control, to make them susceptible to believing horrible things. It served to unite a culture war, not further Christ-following. 

 

On a related note:

 

The gospel crew could never consider their converts as human beings, like waiters or manicurists or brakemen, but they had in them such a professional interest as surgeons take in patients, critics in an author, fishermen in trout.

 

This too resonates. My generation of fundies were looked on, not as fully human beings, with our own needs and desires and brains and emotions. Rather, we were pawns - foot soldiers in a fucked-up culture war that has culminated in a worship of Trump and an embrace of fascism. I strongly resent that, whether it was the “arrows in your parents’ quiver” thing from Gothard or the “generation Joshua” of fundie homeschooling. We did our best to believe it, but in the end, it all turned out to just be racism and misogyny in the end. With a strong side dish of homophobia. An “us versus them” scorched earth war against other humans. 

 

As I mentioned, Sharon isn’t a neo-puritan, but a Pentecostal, and that is a very different subculture from the Baptist one, or the formerly Methodist one - when Methodism was conservative denomination very different from the Episcopalians and Presbyterians they are now more associated with. This Pentecostalism manifested in part with an emphasis on healing. 

 

It was not her eloquence but her healing of the sick which raised Sharon to such eminence that she promised to become the most renowned evangelist in America. People were tired of eloquence; and the whole evangelist business was limited, since eve the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three or four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease.

 

Prior to my family’s foray into Gothard’s cult, my parents went from essentially Baptist to Pentecostal for a brief time. So I got a bit of the charismatic experience as well. Literally both John MacArthur (we attended his church when I was a kid) and John Wimber (attended some conferences, and I learned a lot of Vineyard songs.) This too is a true description by Lewis - the constant “healing” of the same person for the same problem. And always one which is difficult to medically verify. 

 

After Sharon dies - in part because she took her own theology too seriously and refused to flee the fire - Elmer dabbles for a while in “New Thought.” For those not familiar with it, this was arguably the first New Age movement, and came about in part because white Europeans came in contact with Eastern philosophy, many of them for the first time. I myself was surprised when reading classics like the Tao Te Ching, just how much seemingly disparate religions and philosophies have in common - there is a deeper universal human psychological and mystical language that we share. Some might call it our common spirituality, or that God speaks to all of us, not just white European theologians of a certain era. And also, that theological bullshit can be found in every tradition. And someone will turn a buck selling that bullshit. 

 

In any case, Elmer finds that New Thought actually suits him pretty well. He never truly believes any of the theologies he uses - they are just tools for what he really wants, which is attention and prestige and money. The problem with New Thought turns out to be that it doesn’t sell like he needs it to. But how about this description of it?

 

In some ways, he preferred New Thought to standard Protestantism. It was safer to play with. He had never been sure but that there might be something to the doctrines he had preached as an evangelist. Perhaps God really had dictated every word of the Bible. Perhaps there really was a hell of burning sulfur. Perhaps the Holy Ghost really was hovering around watching him and reporting. But he knew with serenity that all of his New Thoughts, his theosophical utterances, were pure and uncontaminated bunk. No one could deny his theories because none of his theories meant anything. It did not matter what he said, so long as he kept them listening; and he enjoyed the buoyancy of power as he bespelled his classes with long, involved, fruity sentences rhapsodic as perfume advertisements.

 

One of the secondary characters serves as a counterpart to Elmer. Frank Shallard is the son of a preacher, and is under tremendous pressure to follow the family profession. So he does. Unfortunately, he has his doubts, which conflict with his need to support his family. Probably the worst thing Elmer does in the book is throw Frank under the bus in his own pursuit of power. Frank is allowed to express the doubts that many of us have felt, and our own aspirations to actually do good in the world. There is too much to quote, but I was particularly struck by this one item listed in the things that Frank learned in seminary.

 

The theory that India and Africa have woes because they are not Christianized, but that Christianized Bangor and Des Moines have woes because the devil, a being obviously more potent than omnipotent God, sneaks around counteracting the work of Baptist preachers.

 

Tell me you haven’t heard that one a million times…

The book spends some time on social issues too - this was the era of the first union organizing and strikes and violence against strikers. Although Elmer occasionally takes the side of the workers when he things the winds of public sentiment are blowing that way, he mostly ends up palling around with the rich in his community. Here is a bit from Mr. Rigg. 

 

“We like religion; like the good old hymns - takes us back to the hick town we came from; and we believe religion is a fine thing to keep people in order - they think of higher things instead of all these strikes and big wages and the kind of hell-raising that’s throwing the industrial system all out of kilter.” 

 

It is Rigg who pushes Elmer in the direction of preaching “against vice” as a way of building popularity, and incidentally distracting people from social justice. The meeting of the town pastors is equally disturbing - although again totally familiar. They discuss how to increase attendance and giving, and what bells and whistles seem to work. And, thrown in there, a discussion about the “morality of violin solos.” Wait, what? I take offense at the implication there!

 

One of the issues on which I actually felt sorry for Elmer was in his need to navigate between the younger people, who [gasp] were okay with dancing, and the older set, who are described thus:

 

Elmer had, even in Zenith, to meet plenty of solemn and whiskery persons whose only pleasure aside from not doing agreeable things was keeping others from doing them. 

 

As with most obstacles, Elmer is able to navigate them in part because he has no core beliefs. He can “be all things to all people” because his only goal is his own aggrandizement. This also holds true for his skill at fundraising. 

 

He had made one discovery superb in its simple genius - the best way to get money was to ask for it, hard enough and often enough. 

 

This is, unfortunately, true. Elmer also joins various service groups. One of these is Rotary (generally a fine organization, by the way), and the episode involving that club is mostly good-natured humor. More problematic is the rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan - which was far too respectable back in the day. As Lewis puts it:

 

The new Ku Klux Klan, an organization of the fathers, younger brothers, and employees of the men who had succeeded and become Rotarians, had just become a political difficulty. Many of the most worthy Methodist and Baptist clergymen supported it and were supported by it; and personally Elmer admired its principle - to keep all foreigners, Jews, Catholics, and negroes in their place, which was no place at all, and let the country be led by native Protestants, like Elmer Gantry.

 

If it isn’t obvious, this describes our present day as well. MAGA is nothing more than the latest iteration of the KKK, and it is supported by, and supports many white clergymen. Also telling in this passage is that Elmer manages to “thread the needle” by talking about freedom in a way that appeals to everyone. At least everyone who is fine with the status quo. 

 

As Frank’s faith comes unraveled, one episode stood out. He is venting at another progressive preacher, and mentions an older woman who seems to resemble a few people I know. And might be related to. 

 

“Darn it, I can’t seem to go on being interested in the fact that old Mrs. Besom finds God such a comfort in her trials. Mrs. Besom’s daughter-in-law doesn’t find Mrs. Besom any comfort in her trials, let me tell you! And yet I don’t see how I can say to her after she’s been fluttering around among the angels and advertising how dead certain she is that Jesus loves her - I haven’t quite found the nerve to say, ‘Sister, you tight-fisted, poison-tongued, old hellcat - you go home and forget your popularity in Heaven and ask your son and his wife to forgive you for trying to make them your kind of saint, with acidity of the spiritual stomach!”

 

Yeah, it really is irritating to hear piety expressed like that, and the insistence that we become someone else’s kind of saint. I’ll also point out that later in this passage, the other preacher issues a pretty big diss to….Sinclair Lewis. Claiming he was bored to death by Main Street. Kind of a funny in-joke. (See below for Lewis’ acerbity over the book and its reception…) 

 

Elmer’s final soul-sale comes when he goes all-in on the rising neo-puritan movement - the culture war of its day, complete with the attempts to control government and force everyone else to agree. Check out this bit, about the organization that Elmer will eventually head up: 

 

It was at this time that the brisker conservative clergymen saw that their influence and oratory and incomes were threatened by any authentic learning. A few of them were so intelligent as to know that not only was biology dangerous to their positions, but also history - which gave no very sanctified reputation to the Christian church; astronomy - which found no convenient Heaven in the skies and snickered politely at the notion of making the sun stand still in order to win a Jewish border skirmish; psychology - which doubted the superiority of a Baptist preacher fresh from the farm to trained laboratory researchers; and all the other sciences of the modern university. They saw that a proper school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called “Fundamentalists.”

This perception the clergy and their most admired laymen expressed in quick action. They formed half a dozen competent and well-financed organizations to threaten rustic state legislators with political failure and bribe them with unctuous clerical praise, so that these back-street and backwoods Solons would forbid the teaching in all state-supported schools and colleges of anything which was not approved by the evangelists. 

 

Hey, the current jihad against “Critical Race Theory” (meaning any discussion of systemic racism) and acknowledgement of the existence of LGBTQ people, anyone? The attempts to teach “creationism” as an alternative to science? The whitewashing (in multiple senses of the word) of our national history? The hostility toward psychology and other disciplines? The disbelief in epidemiology during a pandemic? And, of course, the banning of books and topics in schools. 

 

This was 100 years ago. And it still hasn’t ended. I for one am tired of having to kiss fundamentalist asses, and I know my kids’ generation is even more tired of it. 

 

The last quote here is about what the neo-puritans wanted to attack back then. Many of these are the same, of course, although there are a few “vices” that seem quaint to us now. Elmer gets his vision to combine ALL of these into one great organization, and go after all cultural evil in one go. Under him of course - this is narcissistic aggrandizement, after all. 

 

He would combine in one association all the moral organizations in America - perhaps, later, in the entire world. He would be the executive of that combination; he would be the super-president of the United States, and someday the dictator of the world. 

Combine them all. The Anti-Saloon League, the W. C. T. U., and the other organizations fighting alcohol. The Napap and the other Vice Societies doing such magnificent work in censoring immoral novels and paintings and motion pictures and plays. The Anti-Cigarette League. The associations lobbying for anti-evolution laws in the state legislatures. The associations making so brave a fight against Sunday baseball, Sunday movies, Sunday golfing, Sunday motoring, and the other abominations whereby the Sabbath was desecrated and the preachers’ congregations and collections were lessened. The fraternities opposing Romanism. The societies which gallantly wanted to make it a crime to take the name of the Lord in vain or to use the nine Saxon physiological monosyllables. And all the rest. 

 

The thing is, the Fundamentalists did win for a while. They enacted Prohibition (which was a total fucking disaster, and led to both organized crime AND the over policing that plagues us today.) they suppressed knowledge about sex and contraception through the Comstock Laws. They banned books and tried to get evolution banned from schools. The KKK went mainstream. 

 

And yet.

 

Ultimately, the end of the story isn’t written. Despite the best efforts of fundamentalist religion, Civil Rights laws were enacted. Book bans were struck down (and the books sold well because of the bans.) My kids’ generation is arguably the best educated about sex of any in the history of the United States. Craft breweries are in most small towns in the US. There is no final answer, ever. Things change, and they change because people make them change and also because of forces people do not understand and cannot control and certainly cannot foresee. 

 

But I can say with certainty that I will not be on the side of the charlatans like Elmer Gantry, selling empty legalism while lining their own pockets. I’ve been there, done that, have the PTSD to show for it. 

 

I must say, I really enjoyed this book, and want to read more by Sinclair Lewis. I didn’t get a particularly great education in 20th Century literature, although that statement is relative. I know my Victorians a lot better, obviously, but I suspect few read Sinclair Lewis in high school. It has been fun to discover so many excellent writers of the past, who might be a bit out of style today, or considered “inaccessible,” or whatever. I think Lewis deserves his reputation as a fine writer. 

 

***

 

Note on Lewis and Main Street:

 

Ah, the Great American Novel™. Which doesn’t and probably cannot exist. No one book can encapsulate “America” in all its variety and contradictions. Main Street was quite obviously an attempt, though, and from what I have heard, it is a valiant one. The problem is that it is about small-town America. Which is a part of America - an important part. But it isn’t the whole. 

 

Lewis himself considered the book to be his best, and also the one that best fit the criteria for the Pulitzer Prize. 

 

Main Street did not win the Pulitzer. Arrowsmith did, however. And Lewis refused it. 

 

Officially, this was because he felt that Arrowsmith wasn’t enough about America and wholesomeness and other things that the Pulitzer was supposed to recognize. As it later came out, however, Lewis was pissed that Main Street hadn’t won, and intended his refusal as a pointed statement at the Pulitzer committee for that oversight. 

 

Now, of course, I want to read both Arrowsmith and Main Street. 

 

***

 

Want to see what other banned books I have read for Banned Books Week? Here is the list.