It Can’t Happen Here (1935), the novel by Sinclair Lewis, who rejected the Pulitzer and accepted the Nobel, is an early, better known example of the authoritarianism in the USA genre. Michael Meyer, in his introduction, and Gary Scharnhorst, in his afterword, provide context and biographical information. Back then, during the Depression, a time of severe economic inequality and desperation, when extremists found large receptive audiences and fears grew about the rise of an American Mussolini or Hitler, it sold a lot and a stage adaptation, in one instance starring the writer himself, proved just as popular. Nearly a hundred years later, in the summer of 2024, here’s where we find ourselves: A recent Supreme Court decision shields the president from prosecution for official acts without defining precisely what that means, opening up the possibility that he or she could, say, target political enemies without any legal repercussions. It’s a deeply unpopular rightwing court with unelected judges who are appointed for life and obey no binding ethics standards, disregard precedent, and seize power without deigning to provide a halfway convincing argument for doing so. Right now, against the new presidential candidate, current vice president Kamala Harris, Trump is on the back foot. And it’s possible he’ll stay that way until November: Without Joe Biden in the race, attention has turned to his age and the signs of further dullness are unmistakable. Can’t visit a cemetery for fallen soldiers without generating embarrassing headlines for his stupidity and sleaziness and reminding people that he doesn’t think much of fallen soldiers at all. Still lies and moans and blathers relentlessly. Still a rapist, still a traitor, still an aspiring dictator who still claims the last election was stolen from him on no evidence. But he’s the (scowling, orange) face of the Republican Party, he has his financial backers, he isn’t far behind in the polls, and ya never know, there could be a nasty electoral surprise waiting for us again. After January 6th, one expects violence no matter the outcome. Worried readers have been searching out such books for years to see what the future holds, to find plausible solutions for a way out, to be consoled that someone got the hideousness right, and to read them while they can. I want there to be canonical warnings against authoritarianism. I don’t care if Sinclair Lewis predicted the date of Trump’s birth: the Signet Classics label notwithstanding, this novel isn’t one of them.
At times I momentarily forgot why I chose to read it, disgust for the forces of anti-democracy sapped by disbelief and amusement at the shoddiness of Lewis’s writing. He began the novel in May 1935. He finished in August 1935. He revised until September 1935. And it was published in October of the year 1935. Considering that timeline and the book’s length (close to 400 pages), one can guess without reading a single page that it’s going to exhibit all the problems of a rush job. This is the first time I’ve read Lewis. Usually, as an introduction, I seek what’s generally thought to be a writer’s best work, so if I choose to read something else of his or hers later and it turns out to be second- or third-rate, I always have the other book in mind to pull me through, as proof of what the writer is really capable of and as a comparison. A good first impression that lasts. Instead I chose a book that came after Lewis’s major period and, unfortunately, it’s made a rather bad first impression that’ll last just as long.
The story is told mainly from the perspective of Doremus Jessup, a journalist and publisher, who reports on the rise of Berzelius (“Buzz”) Windrip, a demagogue who’s widely despised but manages to win the presidency. Once in office, Windrip begins radically altering society: He seizes dictatorial power. He establishes a paramilitary force composed of thugs and criminals, the Minute Men, his version of the Blackshirts or Brownshirts, who enforce the new order with violence and intimidation. He takes over media outlets and persecutes journalists, judges, and anyone else who isn’t sufficiently loyal to the new president. He opens concentration camps.
Jessup and his family and friends try to survive these changes.
Lewis takes readers to events with and without Windrip, to the streets where his supporters roam, to quieter settings where the individual’s beliefs and background can be ascertained. To ensure that the reader gets to know what Windrip is about while following Jessup, he introduces several chapters with short passages from Windrip’s ghostwritten autobiography. One doesn’t get lost, nor is the novel overstuffed. It’s readable. But, with the exception of overall structure, it’s disappointing by every measure. Largely mirthless satire. Shaky, schematic presentation of the era’s most influential ideas, as if the writer were relying more on hearsay than serious engagement. Tepid scenes even when the intention is to evoke a sense of outrage. Inadequate navigation of emotional terrain, such as when a family hardly mourns the summary execution of a family member. Careless sentences, such as when the reader learns Jessup doesn’t like listening to kids talk and Lewis adds, with unintentional ambiguity: “Few males have, outside of Louisa May Alcott.” Superficial characters. Or, in the case of Jessup’s wife, Emma, an offensive character, nothing more than a dimwit house keeper Jessup sometimes fantasizes about murdering. (A strange marriage, as the narrator doesn’t acknowledge.) It’s Jessup’s daughter, Sissy, however, that has the worst of the book’s cruddy dialogue. As she expresses doubts about having kids in an authoritarian regime, her boyfriend responds with JD Vance-like thoughtfulness:
Julian boasted, in a manner quite as lover-like and naive as that of any suitor a hundred years ago, “Yes. But just the same, we’ll be having children.”
“Hell! I suppose so!” said the golden girl.
(When you put it that way!)
Jessup is clearly supposed to be the hero, an intellectual with decades of experience covering politics, despite his frequently uninspired opinions and even delusions: on the insuperable differences between the middle- and working-class, he says, “‘They want bread. We want - well, all right, I’ll say it, we want cake!’” Hundreds of pages into the novel, well into the Windrip administration, with countless depraved acts already observed or suggested, Jessup, the cake-eating intellectual, solemnly concludes: “It can happen here.” It would have been consistent with Lewis’s writing to punctuate that line with thunder and lightning.
I was able to finish mostly because I was that curious to see what he got right, what he got wrong, and where society would end up, in his estimation. There are more than a few resemblances between Windrip and Trump: Empty promises to the poor. Lies, racism, misogyny, crookedness. Effective public speaking despite obvious deficiencies (verbal blunders like saying “neologies” instead of “neologisms”). Exaggerated crowd sizes. Identification with the crowd (I am you). “Clownish swindlerism,” as Lewis aptly puts it, and a corresponding hatred of the press. Normalization of thuggery in politics. One scene that’s difficult to dismiss as unreasonable speculation is when Jessup goes to New York to report on a gathering of Minute Men at Madison Square Garden. Outside, supporters of Communism gather alongside another political group that isn’t aligned with Windrip, listening to speeches. A group of Minute Men confronts the Communists and starts throwing punches. The Communists, joined by the other group, fight back. What happens next put me in mind of the police officer who encouraged and gave water to Kyle Rittenhouse, a kid who’d taken it upon himself to monitor a protest armed with a rifle and minutes later wound up shooting and killing people: the police break up the melee to save the Minute Men and arrest their victims. One would prefer to think law enforcement would be fair in deciding who should be protected and who should be punished. But what’s the voter suppose to think when, in the first presidential election since January 6th, the National Association of Police Organizations, which represents hundreds of thousands of officers, has formally endorsed Trump? He’s a felon who has promised to free the criminals who attacked their fellow officers en masse because of an election theft lie, with Trump, the election theft liar behind a coup attempt, looking on and tweeting his approval, and has repeatedly threatened to use force to break up protests. (And a couple of years after the publication of It Can’t Happen Here, tens of thousands of Fascists would gather for an event at Madison Square Garden.) We’re agreed, too, on what would happen if the USA became an authoritarian regime: it’d be dysfunctional and, in the confusion, the forces of democracy, whether lying in wait inside the country or outside, could take advantage.
Even so…the relief I’ve derived from this novel is that no matter how dire the times, I can’t lower my standards and recommend it. I will, however, offer a line I’ve chosen to retain: “Russia forbade everything that made his toil worth enduring: privacy, the right to think and criticize as he freakishly pleased.”
Must we always reach for the caustic? Is there room for a movie that shows the messiness of the democratic process and uses humor to gently poke rather than clobber the USA? After watching Pawo Choyning Dorji’s The Monk and the Gun (2024), I’d say so. It takes place in 2006, in the insular country of Bhutan, during what must be one of the defining moments in its history: The King volunteers to step down and allow for the transition to democracy.
At the time, citizens were just connecting to the internet and accessing technology that’s common elsewhere in the world. In one scene, a man carries a television he’d traded livestock for through a village and finds himself at the head of a parade. The concept of democracy is so new to citizens that they must be taught what it is and how to vote. And while they’re reassured they’ve been given a gift by their King, hesitation and resistance to the change is widespread. (It doesn’t help that those working to inform the public don’t always have the best explanation for what they’re doing. One official is asked why they should embrace democracy and he says: it is modern, so therefore it is good.) This is one of Dorji’s primary subjects: how people are dealing with it in their everyday lives, from the stubborn traditionalists to the impassioned idealists.
Upon hearing the news of the transition, a Buddhist priest asks one of his followers to get a gun. Meanwhile, an American arrives who seeks a gun too, from a Bhutanese citizen who owns one dating back to the Civil War. This situation resolves with one of the best movie-length set-up/punch lines I’ve seen: a laugh and a prayer for democracies, young or old, free of political bloodshed.
Note: An earlier version of the piece failed to mention Michael Meyer and Gary Scharnhorst, who provide valuable information on the novel in writings accompanying the Signet Classics edition. Apologies for the omission. They enhance the experience! To the extent possible!
