Elmer Gantry
is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 and published by Harcourt in March 1927.
|
ELMER GANTRY TICKETS
|
Background
Lewis did research for the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays. He first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger (not Burris Jenkins), pastor of the Linwood Boulevard
Methodist Episcopal Church in
Kansas City, Missouri. Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, among them the Reverend L.M. Birkhead, a
Unitarian and an
agnostic. Lewis preferred the liberal Birkhead to the conservative Stidger, and on his second visit to Kansas City Lewis chose Birkhead as his guide. Other KC ministers Lewis interviewed included Burris Jenkins, Earl Blackman, I. M. Hargett, and Bert Fiske.
The character of Sharon Falconer was based on elements in the career of
Aimee Semple McPherson, an American evangelist who founded the
Pentecostal Christian denomination known as the
International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1927. (Lingeman, p. 283)
Synopsis
The novel tells the story of a young,
narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer to pursue the power, prestige, and easy money of a Christian evangelist. One of Lewis's least likeable protagonists, Gantry pursues his "religious" ambitions with relish through the support and encouragement of college faculty and representatives. He is initially ordained as a
Baptist minister, briefly acts as a “New Thought” evangelist, and eventually becomes a
Methodist minister. He acts as manager for Sharon Falconer, a successful itinerant evangelist. Gantry becomes her lover but loses both her and his position when she is killed in a fire at her new tabernacle.
During his career, Gantry contributes to the downfall, physical injury, and even death, of key people around him, including a competing minister Frank Shallard. Ultimately Gantry marries well and obtains a large congregation in Lewis's imaginary Midwestern city of Zenith.
Throughout his life, Gantry continues to womanize, is often exposed as a fraud, and frequently faces complete downfall. Despite his faults, he is never fully discredited and always manages to emerge triumphant and at ever greater heights of social standing.
Critical and other reaction
Mark Schorer, then of the
University of California, Berkeley, notes that "the forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in Elmer Gantry are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality." Schorer also says that, while researching the book, Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that "he took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community." The result is a novel that satirically represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s toward it. Elmer Gantry also appears in another, lesser known Lewis novel,
Gideon Planish
.
On publication in 1927,
Elmer Gantry
created a public furor. The book was
banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the USA. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. The famous evangelist
Billy Sunday called Lewis "
Satan’s cohort". The novel remains unpopular with many
evangelical Christians.
"Elmer Gantry" ranked as the number one fiction bestseller of 1927, according to "Publisher's Weekly."
Shortly after the publication of
Elmer Gantry
,
H. G. Wells published a widely-syndicated newspaper article called "The New American People", in which he largely based his observations of American culture on Lewis' novels.
Adaptations
- A Broadway play by Patrick Kearney opened on August 7, 1928 at the Playhouse Theatre, where it ran for 48 performances. The cast included Edward J. Pawley (later of Big Town
fame) as Elmer Gantry and Vera Allen as Sister Sharon Falconer.
- The 1960 film of the same name starred Burt Lancaster as Gantry and Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon Falconer.
- A 1970 Broadway musical adaptation titled Gantry
opened and closed on the same night.
- In November 2007, an opera by Robert Aldridge and Herschel Garfein premiered in the James K. Polk Theater in Nashville.
See also
Christian evangelist scandals
References