In the novels of Sinclair Lewis the Middle West has made another contribution to American literature. He was born in 1885 in Minnesota. It was in this country that he located Gopher Prairie. His father was a physician like Kennicott, Carol’s husband in “Main Street.” Lewis holds a degree from Yale and did not forget academic life in his stories. He too made his début in journalism, where he had a chance to learn something about the advertising methods which he parodies in his books, at first hand. Then he became an enthusiastic motorist, traveling through the different States of the Union. In one of his first novels, “Free Air,” he recounts an automobile romance, lasting all the way from New York to Seattle. Many “slices of life” graphically reproduced and spiced with delightful humor, show already the hand of a master. The hero, Milton Daggett, is a typical Lewis character, sympathetic and full of an exuberant vitality. Milton owns a garage. On his way west he meets a beautiful heiress whom he escorts and, of course, finally marries. “Mantrap,” a more recent novel, is the story of a trip through the Canadian wilds. It shows much the same dynamism. The author, at that time, had not yet sacrificed the pleasure of telling a story to characterization and satire. However, he already showed himself a keen observer of men and women, when he published “Our Mr. Wrenn” in 1916. The book is intensely alive. It revealed Lewis’ talent to mimic people and make them talk as if we had overheard them.