Books in Brief

Dorothy and Red, by Vincent Sheean (Houghton, $6.95). Using their letters and diaries and his own recollections, Vincent Sheean describes Sinclair Lewis’ marriage to Dorothy Thompson, which was a disaster. Lewis had deep feelings of inferiority because of his ugliness, and doubts about his sexual powers. As a novelist, he was fading. She was dynamic, successful, half masculine, and given to reflections of this sort: “The reason why modern women are so unhappy, and why they unconsciously hate men, is because they have gotten better and men have gotten worse. They will not let men swallow them up, because the swallowers aren’t good enough.” Inevitably, their marriage resembled that Thurber cartoon of the enormous woman and the tiny man, except that now and then Lewis would turn on her with devastating nastiness. Of course, he drank. The book contains some interesting side-lights: she, for example, played an important role in getting Willkie the nomination, but during the campaign (naturally) switched to Roosevelt. What one cannot possibly forget, however, are a few glimpses of Lewis himself that suggest both his pain and his power: “I saw a narrow, ravaged face, roughened, red, and scarred by repeated radium and electric needle burnings . . cavernously set, remarkably brilliant eyes, transparent as aquamarines … a small and narrow mouth . . . which in the course of a few minutes could smile a dozen ways. The face of a man who had walked through flame throwers.”

J. HART

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Dorothy and Red, by Vincent Sheean (Houghton, $6.95). Using their letters and diaries and his own recollections, Vincent Sheean describes Sinclair Lewis’ marriage to Dorothy Thompson, which was a disaster. Lewis had deep feelings of inferiority because of his ugliness, and doubts about his sexual powers. As a novelist, he was fading. She was dynamic, successful, half masculine, and given to reflections of this sort: “The reason why modern women are so unhappy, and why they unconsciously hate men, is because they have gotten better and men have gotten worse. They will not let men swallow them up, because the swallowers aren’t good enough.” Inevitably, their marriage resembled that Thurber cartoon of the enormous woman and the tiny man, except that now and then Lewis would turn on her with devastating nastiness. Of course, he drank. The book contains some interesting side-lights: she, for example, played an important role in getting Willkie the nomination, but during the campaign (naturally) switched to Roosevelt. What one cannot possibly forget, however, are a few glimpses of Lewis himself that suggest both his pain and his power: “I saw a narrow, ravaged face, roughened, red, and scarred by repeated radium and electric needle burnings . . cavernously set, remarkably brilliant eyes, transparent as aquamarines … a small and narrow mouth . . . which in the course of a few minutes could smile a dozen ways. The face of a man who had walked through flame throwers.”

J. HART