Yes, the prose is just as overwrought as the cover art. Arrowsmith is written in that odd, jaunty, jolly 1920′s style that makes every emotion seem false and nothing seem to matter. I encountered the style previously while reading Oil! by Upton Sinclair. Unless you love exclamatory sentences and 20′s slang, be warned. Arrowsmith did teach me the word “pelf,” meaning riches, sometimes ill-gotten, and “weal,” meaning the common good, and related to wealth, as in “Commonwealth of Nations.”
Those two words, and their nearly opposite meanings, emblemize the central conflict in Arrowsmith – Should Martin Arrowsmith (called Sandy by his first wife) become a private practice physician who treats his patients in such a way as to take a great deal of their money – (pelf), or a researcher or public health worker – (weal)? Arrowsmith tries a little of each, but eventually settles on Public Health and research.
Once again, as in All the King’s Men, the conflict in Arrowsmith echoes the debate over health care today. The wealthy doctors in the book refer to Public Health Departments as “socialist” and are worried about government clinics taking their business. They have no real concern about public health, lower case p, lower case h. Simply substitute greedy insurance companies and the public option, and voila, it’s 2009! It seems that anytime people try to help those less fortunate, others, who think only of their own well being, cry “socialism.”
Martin eventually gives in to his most pure impulses and begins doing research for the weal of society and actually develops a vaccine/cure for bubonic plague. He goes to the West Indies, at risk to his own safety, with his beloved wife, Leora, as his helper. While Martin is off saving lives in a particularly risky village, Leora forgets to inject her medication and dies. Arrowsmith is, we think, bereft. Here the prose style truly seems to mask the true emotion. Although he expresses his deep love for his wife throughout, when she dies, he seems anything but inconsolable and we’re on to the next jaunty adventure in the flip of a page or two!
Martin eventually marries again, this time into High Society. He and his second wife have a child, a boy, and Arrowsmith summarily deserts them when he realizes that he is not cut out for the society life. He feels that he must join a colleague, who has escaped civilization in his woodlands home where he produces serum to support himself while primarily doing research. Arrowsmith’s abandonment seems not to be particularly earth shattering. Arrowsmith tells his wife, “Send the boy to me when he’s ten!” Again, the times, or the style of the writing, seem to belie what we sense is actually happening. Is Arrowsmith not filled with sorrow and remorse? Is his wife not furious? We can’t tell! Martin’s desertion is treated as if it is simply a case of, “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”
Arrowsmith, the novel, is long and crammed with tedious laboratory science, while simultaneously managing to be a little misogynistic, and stylistically off-putting. It provides an interesting contrast to So Big, which was written in the same era and which is extremely readable and enjoyable, and packed with authentic emotion. Arrowsmith is not terrible, and on some levels, I enjoyed it a bit. However I can’t recommend it unless you find yourself on the same quest as I.
RogerRater Score (1-5) 3.4
Tags: Arrowsmith, bacteria, pelf, phage, plague, Public Health, research, Sinclair Lewis, weal, West Indies
February 4, 2010 at 10:44 pm |
I think we reached the same attitudes towards the book, though I’d say that I think its real weakness is Sinclair Lewis’s patronizing/condescending attitude towards pretty much every single character in the book. I go into this a bit in my review on my blog, but basically I think he forgets that the function of satire is to not only tear down, but to nod in some direction towards hope. Maybe a bitter or unreachable hope. But the book lacked for me any sense that any human action or attitude could lift someone out of this morass of self-centeredness and pompous self-regard that seemed to suffuse every society and gathering of human beings. In the end, I recognized Lewis’s talent, but thought there was little purpose to the book, and no driving force for the plot other than his desire to create a new situation in which to reveal how lousy people really are.
February 9, 2010 at 11:34 am |
I almost agree! I think sometimes the purpose of art is to show how bad things can be so that we stop short of becoming that. In particular 1984 comes to mind as well as A Clockwork Orange. They are more overtly cautionary, but Lewis certainly had that in mind in his work as well. He is pretty cynical, however.