Books: Like Father

About the most conventional thing a Harvard undergraduate of literary tastes can do is to write a novel about a Harvard undergraduate. The case of Wells Lewis, Harvard ’39, is complicated by the fact that his father Sinclair, Yale ’07, also writes novels.

Wells Lewis is Sinclair Lewis’ son by his first marriage—a grave, poised, sandy-haired young man of 21, studying history, absorbed in music, and certainly unlike the youthful monstrosities Sinclair Lewis satirized in The Prodigal Parents. Last year Son Wells began working on his novel in Harvard, continued it in Mexico while visiting his mother, incidentally bringing Mexico into the story, delivered it last week to his publishers, Farrar & Rinehart.

Through this long period Father Sinclair gave him no literary assistance, maintained that if Wells wanted to write novels it was his own business. But when the book was finished, turning into a story of an undergraduate’s adjustment to life which shows that college has not changed much since the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis weakened, handed over one of his best titles for his son’s first book: They Still Say No.