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Doremus Jessup is a nice guy: broadly liberal but a floating voter, the successful editor of a local newspaper, a good, pleasant family man and, for his small town, something of an intellectual. He’s a bit smug, a bit complacent, but he believes in progress and responsibility, and has the brains to see through lies. When dictators take power, men like him get killed.
Senator Buzz Windrip is a crass, self-obsessed psychopath. He has no real talents beyond telling lies: he’s not cultured or even very bright, and he doesn’t give a toss about anyone except himself. But Buzz wants power, and knows how to scare and dupe people into voting for him. First he will become president, and then dictator, and then the camps and the massacres will begin.
Shad LeDue is a scumbag: lazy, pig-ignorant and always two steps away from starting a fight. He works for Doremus, who thinks that maybe some good will rub off onto Shad. But there is nothing good in Shad at all. Men like Buzz need men like Shad to do their dirty work, and when Buzz comes to power, Shad turns his sadistic attentions to his fancy-pants employer and Doremus’ fine, juicy daughter.
Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here was written in 1935, as a warning to his fellow Americans not to be complacent in the fight against fascism. It has had something of a resurgence in recent years. Can't think why.
The opening of the novel is gentle, almost twee in its depiction of a small town in the rural US. It’s a bland wholesomeness, like a Norman Rockwell painting, even if some of the citizens show signs of being a little bit authoritarian (Lewis’ wife, the journalist Dorothy Thompson, wrote the famous article “Who Turns Nazi?”). In fact, I was reminded of the start of ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, with fascists in place of vampires. Lewis clearly has a lot of affection for sleepy places like Fort Beluah, Vermont.
Lewis isn’t a great prose stylist, but then, personally, I rather like the simple style that seems to have been popular between, say, 1930 and 1960. His dialogue is a bit clunky (or perhaps people did then speak in big, gushing paragraphs), and his sarcastic humour can get a bit tiresome (if Lewis calls someone “that splendid fellow”, he’s probably describing a half-witted thug).
Sometimes, Lewis gives Doremus Jessup soliloquies that feel too much like the author sticking his oar in. But by and large the writing flows well, the story is quite fast-paced, and the characters are believable but slightly caricatured “types”, which probably helps a book like this. One detail that surprised me – it’s revealed early on, and is no great spoiler – is that Doremus is having an affair with the lady who runs the local guest-house. Lewis doesn’t moralise over this, and the female characters are pretty well-drawn. The only gay character is a total villain, which I suspect is a satire of the suspect “manliness” of fascism (see also Ernst Rohm).
Lewis’ future state feels convincing: it’s not science fiction or pulp villainy. George Orwell once said that, if the Axis Powers won WW2, Britain would get a “slimy, Anglicised fascism”. One of the reasons that Nazis, like robots and orcs, make such good villains is that they’re alien-looking and blatantly evil: they’ve got skulls on their hats, after all. Lewis (and Windrip) is wise to this: Windrip’s version of the Sturm Abteilung thugs are called the Minute Men, and drape themselves in the Stars and Stripes while they beat people to death. Lewis realises that fascism, like a parasite, adapts itself to its host nation.
The slide from wholesome Americana to abject misery is well-done. There’s something terribly sad about Windrip’s predictable-but-inevitable rise to power, a sort of bleak ritual like watching a country sleepwalk to the gallows. The leftists bicker uselessly; the dictator forms a militia of criminals and sadists to “protect the nation”; women, blacks, Jews and dissenters lose their jobs, their rights and then their lives. The sort of people who fret about law and order get to indulge their authoritarian streak until there’s no law or order left. We can see it all coming and, to Lewis’ credit, he allows some of his characters to see it too (they’ve witnessed Hitler’s rise, but of course the Nazis are weird foreigners far away), but the majority of people are too dim, deluded or desperate to unite to stop this maniac until it is far, far too late. After all, it can’t happen here.
Would I recommend this book? It’s both a dated curio and extremely relevant. However, you already know its message. There are three options here: (1) you think people like Hitler could get into power in white, English-speaking countries and should be prevented from doing so, in which case you’ve already taken in its message; (2) you think that people like Hitler couldn’t get into power in white, English-speaking countries, in which case you’re a fool; or (3) or you’d like people like Hitler to get into power, in which case you’re a fascist.
So, as propaganda, It Can’t Happen Here is probably useless. Everyone’s already made their mind up. As a wake-up call to Americans of 1935, it was probably powerful stuff (the second half, with its murders, tortures and concentration camps, is surprisingly brutal). However, I’d recommend it as a sort of social horror novel. “Issues books” like 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale have to do something more than just preach: we have to wonder whether Offred will escape or Winston will be able to defeat the Party. In that regard, It Can’t Happen Here succeeds. How will the poor Jessop family escape being sent to a concentration camp? Will Buzz Windrip ever be ousted from power? Will Shad LeDue get what he’s got coming? Those small-scale questions are enough to make this a compelling, frightening read.
Senator Buzz Windrip is a crass, self-obsessed psychopath. He has no real talents beyond telling lies: he’s not cultured or even very bright, and he doesn’t give a toss about anyone except himself. But Buzz wants power, and knows how to scare and dupe people into voting for him. First he will become president, and then dictator, and then the camps and the massacres will begin.
Shad LeDue is a scumbag: lazy, pig-ignorant and always two steps away from starting a fight. He works for Doremus, who thinks that maybe some good will rub off onto Shad. But there is nothing good in Shad at all. Men like Buzz need men like Shad to do their dirty work, and when Buzz comes to power, Shad turns his sadistic attentions to his fancy-pants employer and Doremus’ fine, juicy daughter.
*
Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here was written in 1935, as a warning to his fellow Americans not to be complacent in the fight against fascism. It has had something of a resurgence in recent years. Can't think why.
The opening of the novel is gentle, almost twee in its depiction of a small town in the rural US. It’s a bland wholesomeness, like a Norman Rockwell painting, even if some of the citizens show signs of being a little bit authoritarian (Lewis’ wife, the journalist Dorothy Thompson, wrote the famous article “Who Turns Nazi?”). In fact, I was reminded of the start of ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, with fascists in place of vampires. Lewis clearly has a lot of affection for sleepy places like Fort Beluah, Vermont.
Lewis isn’t a great prose stylist, but then, personally, I rather like the simple style that seems to have been popular between, say, 1930 and 1960. His dialogue is a bit clunky (or perhaps people did then speak in big, gushing paragraphs), and his sarcastic humour can get a bit tiresome (if Lewis calls someone “that splendid fellow”, he’s probably describing a half-witted thug).
Sometimes, Lewis gives Doremus Jessup soliloquies that feel too much like the author sticking his oar in. But by and large the writing flows well, the story is quite fast-paced, and the characters are believable but slightly caricatured “types”, which probably helps a book like this. One detail that surprised me – it’s revealed early on, and is no great spoiler – is that Doremus is having an affair with the lady who runs the local guest-house. Lewis doesn’t moralise over this, and the female characters are pretty well-drawn. The only gay character is a total villain, which I suspect is a satire of the suspect “manliness” of fascism (see also Ernst Rohm).
Lewis’ future state feels convincing: it’s not science fiction or pulp villainy. George Orwell once said that, if the Axis Powers won WW2, Britain would get a “slimy, Anglicised fascism”. One of the reasons that Nazis, like robots and orcs, make such good villains is that they’re alien-looking and blatantly evil: they’ve got skulls on their hats, after all. Lewis (and Windrip) is wise to this: Windrip’s version of the Sturm Abteilung thugs are called the Minute Men, and drape themselves in the Stars and Stripes while they beat people to death. Lewis realises that fascism, like a parasite, adapts itself to its host nation.
The slide from wholesome Americana to abject misery is well-done. There’s something terribly sad about Windrip’s predictable-but-inevitable rise to power, a sort of bleak ritual like watching a country sleepwalk to the gallows. The leftists bicker uselessly; the dictator forms a militia of criminals and sadists to “protect the nation”; women, blacks, Jews and dissenters lose their jobs, their rights and then their lives. The sort of people who fret about law and order get to indulge their authoritarian streak until there’s no law or order left. We can see it all coming and, to Lewis’ credit, he allows some of his characters to see it too (they’ve witnessed Hitler’s rise, but of course the Nazis are weird foreigners far away), but the majority of people are too dim, deluded or desperate to unite to stop this maniac until it is far, far too late. After all, it can’t happen here.
*
Would I recommend this book? It’s both a dated curio and extremely relevant. However, you already know its message. There are three options here: (1) you think people like Hitler could get into power in white, English-speaking countries and should be prevented from doing so, in which case you’ve already taken in its message; (2) you think that people like Hitler couldn’t get into power in white, English-speaking countries, in which case you’re a fool; or (3) or you’d like people like Hitler to get into power, in which case you’re a fascist.
So, as propaganda, It Can’t Happen Here is probably useless. Everyone’s already made their mind up. As a wake-up call to Americans of 1935, it was probably powerful stuff (the second half, with its murders, tortures and concentration camps, is surprisingly brutal). However, I’d recommend it as a sort of social horror novel. “Issues books” like 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale have to do something more than just preach: we have to wonder whether Offred will escape or Winston will be able to defeat the Party. In that regard, It Can’t Happen Here succeeds. How will the poor Jessop family escape being sent to a concentration camp? Will Buzz Windrip ever be ousted from power? Will Shad LeDue get what he’s got coming? Those small-scale questions are enough to make this a compelling, frightening read.
