Word: planish
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Dates: during 1943-1943
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...bland tale of a polished but warm-hearted literary hack whose success cost him his self-respect. Upton Sinclair's Wide Is the Gate ($3), his 63rd book, carried his almost legendary Lanny Budd through the corrupt vicissitudes of Europe between wars. Sinclair Lewis' Gideon Planish ($2.50), a withering blast at phony philanthropists and do-gooders, awoke pale memories of Elmer Gantry. With The Forest and the Fort ($2.50), Anthony Adverse's Hervey Allen hewed out Vol. I of a projected six-volume epic novel about American life from Colonial days to the Civil War. In Thunderhead...
Little Gid Planish, aged ten, dreams of being something "rotund and oratorical." At college he concludes that virtue has to be organized. At 29 he is Dr. Gideon Planish, Professor of Rhetoric in Kinnikinick College, Iowa. He wears a small brown beard and is ready to jettison his too-provincial mistress. Already expert at self-deception and hypocrisy, he does not get rid of Teckla for his own good, but for hers. Thinks Gideon: "It wouldn't be fair to take her off to New York and Washington and face those snobs and intriguers...
...entry into the war moves Gideon, nearly shakes him loose from Marduc. Offered the presidency of Kinnikinick College, Gideon is nostalgically tempted. But Peony Planish keeps him in the field of big-league ballyhoo while she meets "honeybee" Gideon's best friend at the dreary Hex Hotel...
Murder by Research. Lewis' characters have as little inwardness as a fudge sundae. All the psychological conflicts have happened on minus Page One. How Gideon Planish gets as far as he does is a commentary on U.S. middle-class culture, but how Colonel Marduc managed to amass his pre-eminence only Lewis knows. In place of people, Lewis offers types, murderous research in the field of philanthropy, and a lambasting...
Says Lewis of his latest work: "This man Lewis is certainly going downhill fast. In each of his early books-Babbitt, Main Street, Elmer Gantry-there were one or two characters you could like. But in Gideon Planish everybody's a scoundrel...