Arrowsmith is a captivating novel that delves into the life and work of Martin Arrowsmith, a brilliant and idealistic scientist. From his days at medical school, he is deeply influenced by the remarkable and eccentric Dr. Gottlieb, whose sole motivation is science and the pursuit of truth. Gottlieb is highly critical of "commercial" medical practitioners and those scientists who are sycophantic and work merely for money and glory. This becomes the central struggle for Arrowsmith throughout his professional life.

Adding to the complexity, Martin falls in love not once, but twice. He eventually marries Leora, whose devotion to him is truly saintly. Martin, however, is only somewhat aware of how fortunate he is. It is through Leora that he makes certain choices and returns to his roots in the laboratory. During this time, he has a significant breakthrough with a substance he names "phage," which leads him to conduct field research and testing in the Caribbean during a bubonic plague outbreak. Tragically, Leora succumbs to the very disease that Martin is striving to cure.

Upon his return home, Martin finds himself thrust into upper society and marries a wealthy woman who gives birth to his only son and builds him an impressive laboratory at home. In exchange, he must attend dinner parties and engage in chit-chat with people he despises. Eventually, Martin decides that his work cannot be interrupted by the trappings of high society or family and moves into the woods with an old colleague. Later, when his wife and son come to him, he rejects them again. It is during this hermit phase that Martin claims he is finally truly working, but I believe he was happiest when he was working in the laboratory with Leora.

It seems that Sinclair Lewis wrote this novel as a social commentary on the changes in American medicine following the 1910 Flexner report, which recommended that medical schools only teach mainstream science. The novel takes Arrowsmith through various career paths, including small-town doctor, professor, researcher, and director. It makes glib references to incompetence, fraud, pseudo-professionalism, and other less-than-ideal aspects of the medical profession (or any profession, for that matter). In some ways, this book reminds me of Robin Williams' speech in Patch Adams about how some doctors are more concerned with their own reputation and a reverence bordering on religious piety than with the profession of humanity.

There were moments when I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Sinclair has a dry wit that, despite being nearly 100 years old, still holds true. However, not all of Arrowsmith's vernacular has aged well, and at times, the meanings are so outdated that the reader must make ignorant guesses. It took me a while to finish this book, and I eventually switched from the Kindle version to the Audible version. Nevertheless, I can't say I didn't enjoy it. I imagine it could be a fun book to read in school, perhaps especially for first-year medical students. In some respects, it even reminds me a bit of another satire, A Confederacy of Dunces.

Arrowsmith offers a thought-provoking exploration of the scientific and personal journey of its protagonist, highlighting the challenges and sacrifices that come with the pursuit of truth and the practice of medicine.

This is Sinclair Lewis' classic novel that delves into the conflict between "pure" scientific research and practical or commercial research.

I read it during my high school days and had almost forgotten everything about it. I find myself wondering if my 16/17-year-old self was able to grasp any of the satire within its pages. I did manage to get a couple of good chuckles from it, though.

Published in 1925, I am truly fascinated by the vivid depiction of the US in the early 20th century. The slang, prohibition, cultural divides, the "home front" during the Great War, and the modes of travel such as by train, ship, and auto all come to life.

Arrowsmith's struggle in St. Hugh during a plague epidemic, as he attempts to conduct an experiment that means some people will not receive his potentially life-saving treatment, still resonates today.

However, I have some issues with the portrayal of the women in the book. Leora is described as the best of Lewis' women! But why? Just because she tolerated being ignored and abandoned most of the time? Or because she was willing to sit and watch with adoring eyes while Arrowsmith worked? And then there's Joyce, who had been living her own life for some time but then tried to remake Arrowsmith to fit her ideal of a husband.

It makes me question the author's perception and understanding of women during that era.

Lewis ditches satire, comes up with clunker.

If an author aims to depict the difficulties and conflicts of interest within the medical profession to the world, a biography of a renowned surgeon or medical researcher could be the answer. However, if the goal is to pen a lasting and top-quality novel, I firmly believe that the only way is to develop one or several characters with utmost depth, delving into their very souls (as the classics put it!). Irving Stone-style fictionalized biographies are another possible approach, combining the two genres. What Sinclair Lewis created in ARROWSMITH is a sluggish piece of socialist realism. In this book, no character is truly accessible to us, resulting in a psychological void. The novel is more of a sociology of the American medical profession in the early decades of the 20th century, an uninspired expose of medical colleges, country doctors, pharmaceutical firms, big city surgeons, and top-level research institutions - a social catalogue populated with insipid characters lacking the zany yet convincing frenzy of Lewis' other works.

We follow Martin Arrowsmith's career from a small town to the university, to a North Dakota hick town, and beyond. It's not an easy ascent; it's no Hollywood story, that's for sure. There is an exotic interlude on a plague-stricken West Indian island to enliven the far reaches of the novel, but nothing can truly move you if you've persevered until then. The fundamental problem, as I've already stated, is that the characters take a backseat to the process. Who can forget Babbitt or Elmer Gantry? There are no such larger-than-life figures in ARROWSMITH. The protagonist's first wife is so thinly drawn as to be almost invisible, more like a cardboard cutout than a real woman. She conveniently yields to her husband's career. The characters tend to be stereotypical. A couple of characters from other novels - George Babbitt and Chum Frick - make brief appearances, and there is a Prof. Schlemihl (who, as Lewis satisfyingly mentioned, was quite overweight), but none of the main characters in ARROWSMITH will linger in your memory. Romantic interests are added sporadically, like salt to soup.

As I read, I felt that Lewis' true talent lay in caricature. When he wrote, with a touch of irony, about the "small town glories" of 1920s and `30s America and let his imagination run wild, he was unrivaled. However, when he restrained himself, attempting to be "serious" and "natural", he lost touch with that special genius. Written between four of his greatest novels - "Main Street" and "Babbitt" preceding and "Elmer Gantry" and "Dodsworth" following - I can only assume that Lewis' imagination wavered when he wrote ARROWSMITH. It reaches an unsatisfactory conclusion and is entirely forgettable.

What a truly superb novel this is! It vividly describes the life, passions, and anxieties of a person who is striving to be a true scientist.

Not only does it provide deep insights into scientific discoveries during the pre-antibiotic years of the early 20th century, but it also presents a fascinating and colorful picture of life, family, love, and emerging business at that time. Each of the figures in the novel comes alive.

Leora, Martin Arrowsmith's first wife and the love of his life, may be careless in her appearance, but she has the uncanny ability to accept people as they are, whether it's the crooked Cliff or Max Gottlieb, the scientist driven by pure and untainted discoveries. Martin himself is described with all his doubts, and we see how he develops and is shaped by all his changing environments, starting from medical school, to Leora's family, the public health department chief in Nautilus, the West Indies, and finally the rich life with his second wife.

Sinclair writes about the beginning of the 20th century in a way that is similar to how Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about the end of the century. It's a remarkable work that offers a unique perspective on a bygone era.

Sinclair Lewis was indeed the bard of American mediocrity. His meticulous attention to material detail, remarkable ability to render commonplace speech, and keen sense of the conflict between expectations and reality placed him in an excellent position to tell certain types of stories. Generally, these were stories about pathetic, mediocre people.

In "Main Street", the two principal characters, Carol and Will Kennicott, are both essentially pathetic. Carol has unrealistic dreams of transforming her sleepy adopted hometown into a beacon of culture and learning. Meanwhile, Will simply wants to get comfortably settled in this stodgy setting and for his wife to be content with it. However, they both also possess attractive features. Carol refuses to be content with the backwardness of Gopher Prairie, while Will has stolid practicality and reliability. The stakes they struggle over are relatively low, and no great tragedy directly mars their lives. They are mediocre people engaged in a mediocre tussle, which in itself reveals a great deal about small-town America and its inhabitants.

In "Babbitt", Babbitt himself is the epitome of mediocrity. Over the course of the novel, he becomes increasingly aware of the narrowness and worthlessness of the life he has molded himself to fit. It is a tragedy that he is ultimately unable to rebel against the expectations that keep him cossetted in his conventional life. But an even greater tragedy is that he himself is so wretched, having turned himself into a creature without the intellectual or moral means of freeing himself. His dreams are pathetically feeble, and the stakes are so low. This means that his ultimate failure and reversion to conformity are themselves pathetic and embarrassing rather than properly tragic.

"Arrowsmith" is in an odd position. Martin Arrowsmith himself is anything but mediocre as an individual. He is a brilliant research scientist, and the stakes are anything but commonplace. The lives of thousands or even millions might hinge on some of his decisions. He is a hero, despite his own self-perception. However, he is still a deeply flawed Lewis character. His mannerisms and surroundings are pathetically commonplace. The stumbling-blocks he faces on the way to success are generally stupid and mundane, often of his own creation, rather than being the occasion of epic struggles of conscience, even as the stakes rise to epic scale. Lewis's determination to place such a conflicted hero into such wretched, painfully realistic surroundings creates a very odd effect. It is difficult to thrill to Martin's successes or even to sympathize very deeply with most of his struggles. He is really just an ordinary guy in most ways, even if he is a guy who loses everything that matters to him except his work, and that work might save millions of lives.

The blurb on the back of my Signet copy of the novel, presumably written by Mark Schorer, a leading Lewis scholar, argues that the ultimate theme might be that genuine tragedy is impossible in a mundane, modern American setting. Perhaps he is right, though I think that assessment applies much more to "Babbitt". "Arrowsmith" is a much odder beast. Its treatment of scientific ideals and the conflict between pure science and society was groundbreaking at the time of publication. However, although he wrote the novel with the help of a scientist (Paul de Kruif), Lewis himself was not a scientist, and his conception of the manly, noble, eremitical scientist does not entirely ring true. It is presented in a way often indistinguishable from Carol Kennicott's or George Babbitt's desires to escape from modern American society.

As an aside, I increasingly find Lewis analogous to the later James A. Michener. They are both workmanlike novelists with a love of well-researched detail but who struggle to really bring their characters to life. Their characters too often function mechanically as stand-ins for the tastes and interests of an entire class of real people.

Sinclair Lewis was indeed a remarkable observer of human nature.

While Arrowsmith may not be as satirically biting as Babbitt, his characterizations are still deeply penetrating. He skillfully extracts the essential traits of recognizable types. Under his critical gaze, the honest fare the best, regardless of whether they are lazy, passionately obtuse, or otherwise not entirely praiseworthy. And he doesn't reduce his protagonists to mere two-dimensional figures. Martin Arrowsmith, for example, loves his wife Leora but often neglects her in favor of his work and even flirts with other women on occasion. He is an ideological serial monogamist, constantly picking up new ideas and passionately pursuing them until they burn out, until finally he follows his most abiding love: research. He loves his heroes in a similar way, with an enduring commitment only to his true mentor, Max Gottlieb.

The collaboration on this novel with Paul de Kruif must have been truly amazing. The science he writes about would have been at the cutting edge of its time, and they have done an excellent job of presenting it. Even more surprisingly, their descriptions of the social institutions that Arrowsmith is a part of - medical school, the health department, private practices, and the McGurk Institute - and his meandering and nonlinear path to success sound eerily modern.

In the end, it seems that research is a life for the obsessed.

As Martin Arrowsmith ponders, "Yes, does it really matter? Does truth matter - clear, cold, unfriendly truth, Max Gottlieb's truth?"

He preaches to himself the loyalty of dissent, the faith of being very doubtful, and the wisdom of admitting the probable ignorance of oneself and everyone else.

He still holds a fragment of his boyhood belief that congressmen are intelligent and important.

Pickerbaugh had enjoyed the possession of great power only because he never used it.

And as he reflects on what it means to be a scientist, he realizes that it is not just a job choice but a complex tangle of emotions, like mysticism or the desire to write poetry.

A scientist must be heartless, living in a cold, clear light, yet in private, he may not be as cold as the Professional Optimists.

To be a scientist is like being a Goethe, something that is born within you.

And as Gottlieb tells him, if he has this spark within him, there are only two things he must do: work twice as hard as he can and keep people from using him.

Tubbs comes in now and then, patting his shoulder and giving vague encouragement, while Gottlieb remains imperturbable, telling him to go ahead and sometimes inspiring him with his own notebooks and talk of his work.

It is a complex and fascinating world that Sinclair Lewis has created in Arrowsmith, one that continues to resonate with readers today.

First of all, let me state that I preferred Main Street. This book, however, was a disappointment, despite a promising start.

I do like the clever lines filled with sardonic humor. They initially caught my attention and made me smile. But as I continued reading, they began to wear thin. You really have to listen carefully to catch the implied criticism.

The book is simply too long and repetitive. The same message is delivered over and over again. The central focus is on those in the medical profession. The author is suggesting that many doctors are more interested in fame and fortune than in truly caring for their patients or, if they are involved in research, in their pursuit of new knowledge. It's a matter of where their hearts lie. But this message is drilled in so many times that it becomes tiresome.

Martin Arowsmith is a character who wavers. He doesn't know where his real interests lie - between being a practitioner or a research scientist. And the end? Well, I'm not going to spoil it for you, but it takes him a long time to figure out where \\n  his\\n true interests lie.

I'm someone who appreciates realism. Most people do make compromises in life. We have ideals, but we rarely follow them through to the end. I felt that the book portrayed the characters as caricatures, too one-sided - as if it was all black and white, good versus bad. I also felt that the book pushed the central question to an extreme.

On a positive note, the narration by John McDonough was superb. He read at a perfect speed, and you could really hear the humor in the text. It was a total pleasure to listen to. It's not his fault that I didn't fully appreciate the book's content.

It's interesting to note that Sinclair Lewis' parents and grandparents were physicians. This may have influenced his portrayal of the medical profession in the book.

Martin Arrowsmith, M.D. had a world of opportunities and yet, at the same time, a plethora of things to sort out. The intelligent and scientifically inclined Arrowsmith journeyed from a small Midwestern town to the upper reaches of the scientific community, encountering numerous obstacles along the way. Despite his great intellect, Martin lacked social skills and had no real desire to develop them. Instead, he began to understand that his true passion was for genuine scientific research, which was still in its infancy in mid-1920s America. Lewis placed him and his unfortunate yet dedicated wife in various situations (it almost seemed) to illustrate the state and prospects of medicine in the United States during that era and to tempt, distract, and deceive Arrowsmith with the allures of financial security, recognition, even wealth and power, away from his original plan to follow in the footsteps of his first mentor, Max Gottlieb, a brilliant but abrasive bacteriologist.

Although satirical and humorous, Arrowsmith also depicted many aspects of medical training, practice, and ethics, as well as scientific research, public health, and personal/professional conflicts that seemed as relevant today as they were then. I am neither a scientist nor a medical professional, and I definitely learned a great deal about both from this book. However, it seemed to me that it was not just a book meant to belittle their professions but rather to highlight the weaknesses inherent in all professions.

Highly recommended.

Lewis won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this 1925 novel, and it was certainly well-deserved, yet he declined the award. In a letter to the committee, he wrote:

I wish to acknowledge your choice of my novel Arrowsmith for the Pulitzer Prize. That prize I must refuse, and my refusal would be meaningless unless I explained the reasons.

All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards; they tend to write this, or timorously to avoid writing that, in order to tickle the prejudices of a haphazard committee. And the Pulitzer Prize for Novels is peculiarly objectionable because the terms of it have been constantly and grievously misrepresented.

Those terms are that the prize shall be given "for the American novel published during the year which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood." This phrase, if it means anything whatsoever, would appear to mean that the appraisal of the novels shall be made not according to their actual literary merit but in obedience to whatever code of Good Form may chance to be popular at the moment.

The New York Times reported that according to observers, the real reason was that Lewis was still upset that Main Street did not win the prize in 1921.

I say, give him the benefit of the doubt and take him at his word. Based on the stringent—even strident—integrity of his two main characters that I have met so far, there is every chance he meant what he wrote.

October 24, 2020: It is unusual for me to read back-to-back novels by the same author, and for good reason, because subsequent ones often don't fare well due to comparison fatigue. So I may or may not finish or like this one as much for that reason... We shall see. But right now I am so enamored of Mr. Lewis...

This is probably the best book I've ever had the pleasure of reading. From the moment I picked it up, I was completely engrossed in its pages. The story is captivating, the characters are well-developed and relatable, and the writing style is simply superb. I found myself unable to put the book down, eager to see what would happen next at every turn.

I cannot recommend this book more highly. It's a true gem that I believe will appeal to a wide range of readers. Whether you're a fan of fiction, non-fiction, or something in between, this book has something for everyone. It's a book that will make you laugh, cry, and think, and it's one that you'll want to read again and again.

If you're looking for a great book to add to your collection, look no further. This one is a must-read!

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Sinclair Lewis won his only Pulitzer for this remarkable work - a prize that, surprisingly, he chose to reject.

Whilst it may not be considered his ultimate masterpiece, it remains an utterly riveting read that captivates the audience from start to finish.

The story revolves around Martin Arrowsmith, a young and ambitious medical student. His remarkable ambitions and ground-breaking discoveries face numerous obstacles as they strive to be accepted by a snobbish and often close-minded society.

This novel offers a powerful and incisive look at the perils of bureaucracy and the dangers of scepticism. It is a thoroughly entertaining work that combines engaging characters, a compelling plot, and thought-provoking themes.

However, it must be noted that perhaps it lacks some of the profound depth and emotional pathos that are characteristic of Lewis's other notable works. Nevertheless, it still stands as a significant contribution to the literary canon.

Sinclair Lewis, a remarkable author, takes us on a captivating journey with a unique blend of compassion and humor.

He vividly chronicles the trials and triumphs of a medical doctor. This doctor's passion for research is truly extraordinary, but it is only equaled by his deep and abiding passion for Leona, his wife.

The story unfolds in a way that keeps us engaged from start to finish. We witness the doctor's struggles in the medical field, his不懈 efforts to make breakthroughs in research. At the same time, we also see the beautiful and complex relationship he has with Leona.

The combination of these elements makes this work a must-read. It is highly recommended for those who enjoy stories that are both touching and entertaining.

You will be drawn into the doctor's world and experience his joys and sorrows along with him. Sinclair Lewis has truly crafted a masterpiece that will leave a lasting impression on your heart and mind.