A Journey Through Literary America
by Thomas R. Hummel and Photography by Tamra L. Dempsey
Sinclair Lewis
Happy Birthday Sinclair Lewis!
On February 7, 2010 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, it is 18 degrees but “feels like 8 degrees” according to Weather.com. This is not so different from this day 125 years ago when Sinclair Lewis was born. It was bitter cold in that day in Sauk Centre (population 2,800). Ice glittered on the 30 lakes that dotted the landscape around the town. The wagon ruts down the mud of Main Street were frozen as solid as the iron-clad wheels that had made them, the ridges at the top brittle and crunchy like exceedingly stale chocolate. The steam from the locomotive of the Great Northern coming into town hung over the rails, too frigid to billow. On that day a baby named Harry Sinclair Lewis was born. No one knows where the Harry came from. Sinclair, the name he adopted as his nom de plume was the surname of a Wisconsin dentist who was a good friend of Lewis’s father. It had only been 24 years since the first white child was born in the former Indian territory. Harry Sinclair Lewis’ parents did not take his convulsive sobbing any more seriously than they would take any other baby’s. Infants find conditions to [...] Read More »
Midwest Book Review
Lives up to its title. Illustrated with full-color photography throughout, A Journey Through Literary America is a book for book lovers – surveying great American authors from Ralph Waldo Emerson to John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, E. Annie Proulx, and many more. Each author has a brief biographical profile combined with breathtaking photography of the places they lived or that inspired them to create masterpieces. A wondrous tour ideal for enriching any literary collection – and sure to appeal to armchair travelers as well, A Journey Through Literary America lives up to its title and is highly recommended. Read More »
The Significance of September 14
If you have not visited Steve King’s Today in Literature, by all means you should. Just click on this link. http://www.todayinliterature.com/ Today happens to be: 1) the day John Gardner, poet, novelist and teacher died at the age of 49. He was the teacher of Raymond Carver, who is featured in A Journey Through Literary America. (As a side dish, King serves up a droll story about Jay McInerney taking Carver’s short story writing class.) 2) The day Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt was published in 1922. Sinclair Lewis is also featured in A Journey. 3) The day James Fenimore Cooper passed away in 1851. Cooper is part of the first entry in the book, entitled “Beginnings.” 4) The day on which I received the first advance copy of the book. It looks fabulous. Pardon me for looking a bit awestruck. Read More »
July 31
July 31 Today we uploaded the files for the jacket and the endsheets. The only element that hasn’t been sent off to Toppan Printing is the layout for the foil stamping on the spine of the book. After two years and seven months of inspiration, travel, and toil, A JOURNEY THROUGH LITERARY AMERICA is on the verge of being fully realized. Only a slight sliver of foil remains. We have seen first and second proofs for the main part of the book. These are called “press proofs” or sometimes “wet proofs.” They are printed on the same paper that the book will eventually be printed on (Japanese Oji White A Matte), on proofing presses that aren’t as large as the behemoths that will print the book, but are still quite formidable pieces of equipment. So, what I am actually holding in my hand is about as good a facsimile of how the book will look when it is finally printed as one could get. Sadly, press proofs are on their way to becoming an obsolete technology, to be replaced by digital proofs. It still seems like magic to me how, using the bright inks of cyan, magenta and yellow—in shades [...] Read More »
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