Sinclair Lewis blew me away with It Can’t Happen Here. He wrote this spookily modern novel almost 100 years ago and not to be dramatic, but oh how I wish it weren’t so relevant.
Lewis is my kind of author: smart, witty, observant and incisive. He’s a legend – the man won a Pulitzer AND a Nobel and had the audacity to refuse the Pulitzer because he thought they should’ve chosen another of his novels. Lewis had principles and so does his main character, Doremus Jessup, in this eerie tale of what could be.
Doremus is a newspaper editor and the heart of It Can’t Happen Here. We follow him and his wife, daughter, and lover as the novel goes from ‘it can’t happen’ to ‘it did happen.’ Doremus is the story’s steadfast voice of reason in a world gone absolutely mad.
I think you should listen to It Can’t Happen Here instead of reading the physical book. Narrator Grover Gardner has the perfect voice, tone and cadence to make the story come alive. Gardner also expertly narrated The Stand and The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich and I immediately recognized his crisp voice and distinct delivery. He’s one of the best and I think Sinclair Lewis would have been pleased with his reading.
It Can’t Happen Here describes an America in 1936, caught up in a wave of fascism and violence. It’s a land where nothing makes sense, where idiots gain power through brute force and fearmongering. I laughed, I cried, I was shaken to my American core. The novel is outrageous, but so was storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
Dictatorship? Better come into the office and let me examine your heads. Why America’s the only free nation on earth! Besides, country’s too big for a revolution. No, no, couldn’t happen here.
The parallels to the USA’s current state of being are undeniable. Take ‘The ‘League of Forgotten Men,’ the organization led by a bombastic radio host. He had 27 million disgruntled and grudge-filled men under his spell and it’s impossible not to compare them to Trump’s followers.
It’s seriously uncanny. Imagine a new president making President “Buzz” Windrip’s speech: “I am addressing my own boys, the Minute Men (M.M.), everywhere in America. To you and you only I look for help to make America a proud rich land again, You have been scorned, they thought you were the lowest classes…Boys, I need you. Help me. Help me to help you. Stand fast. Anybody tries to block you, give the swine the point of your bayonet.”
Actually, it’s easy to imagine. Remember “Stand back and stand by”? Is this novel a twisted MAGA playbook?
By the way, the bayonet reference wasn’t hyperbole; by Chapter 15 things begin to get real. The hour by hour, day by day account of the regime’s first days is shocking and features armed Minute Men, martial law and 100 arrested congressmen. The bloodbath literally begins with shots to the front and bayonets to the back – the M.M.s have no problem knifing someone in the back.
Other similarities to America in 2024 abound, including using Jewish people as a scapegoat. Lies don’t matter if they get the point across (where have I heard that before). Here’s drunken Secretary Macgoblin (great name): “Hey Rabbi, how ’bout some whiskey, lil scotch + soda…Or maybe a lil shot of Christian children’s sacrificial blood, hee hee hee just a joke, Rabbi. I know these Protocols of the Elders of Zion are all the bunk but awful handy in propaganda just the same.”
He gets even more drunk and attacks: “You highbrows–you stinking intellectuals! You, you Kike, with your lush luzurious library.” (‘lush luxurious library’ ha. Goals.)
Speaking of propaganda, this sentence sent a chill through me and I’ll never look at the evening lineup on Fox News the same way again. It comes from Senator-turned-President Windrip’s autobiography, Zero Hour; he’s talking about the best time of day to win people over:
And one seemingly small but all-mighty important point he learns if he does much speechifying, is you can win over folks to your point of view much better in the evening, when they are tired out from work and not so likely to resist you, than at any other time of day.
Buzz comes to power with the help of his henchman, Lee Sarason, a Stephen Miller type*. Among other things his platform includes planks “that condemned the Negros, since nothing so elevates a dispossessed farmer or a factory worker on relief as to have some race, any race, on which he can look down.” (Cue Trump and Vance’s vermin immigrants and pet-eating Haitians.)
Lewis has such a way with words. His descriptions of the family dog, Foolish, cracked me up, from “a reliable combo of English Setter, Airedale, Cocker Spaniel, wistful doe and rearing hyena” to how he “was aimless as an old dog on Sunday afternoon with the family away.” His knife-edge humor is so sharp and subtly sarcastic that it often takes a moment to realize the joke.
He’s also a list maker, a literary element I adore. The description of Duremus’ home study went on for three minutes and made me smile with its detailed picture of a cozy, messy, private haven. Here’s a taste:
It was the only room in the house that Mrs. Candy… was never allowed to clean. It was an endearing mess of novels…chewed stubs of pencils, a shaky portable typewriter, fishing tackle…two comfortable old leather chairs…the complete works of Thomas Jefferson…a microscope and a collection of Vermont butterflies, Indian arrowheads…the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon…poetry…a shotgun and a .22 repeating rifle…five fountain pens of which two would work…odd pairs of horn-rimmed spectacles and of rimless eyeglasses…assorted yellow scratch pads…six cigarette cartons…and an old cast-iron Franklin stove.
I can’t recommend It Can’t Happen Here strongly enough. Read this for the writing, for the humor, for the small triumphs and the unmistakable warning. It can’t happen here? Oh yes it can.
bookthrasher 
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