protomattr reviewed It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
Review of "It Can't Happen Here" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I have mixed feelings about this book. Lewis achieves occasional prophetic brilliance in his cautionary tale of how easily a free country can slip into fascism. His prose is often vivid and his characters decently (though not spectacularly) developed. However, I could not shake off the feeling of dusty datedness while reading it, a problem I don't normally have with older novels. Perhaps politics, like fashion, is affected too much by the whims of society and culture. But at its essence, "It Can't Happen Here" exhorts its readers to resist the temptations to foist their frustrations on some scapegoat and to give power to men, of any political flavor, who promise to "right these wrongs," and rather consider the big picture:
“But he saw now that he must remain alone, a ‘Liberal,’ scorned by all the noisier prophets for refusing to be a willing cat for the busy monkeys of …
I have mixed feelings about this book. Lewis achieves occasional prophetic brilliance in his cautionary tale of how easily a free country can slip into fascism. His prose is often vivid and his characters decently (though not spectacularly) developed. However, I could not shake off the feeling of dusty datedness while reading it, a problem I don't normally have with older novels. Perhaps politics, like fashion, is affected too much by the whims of society and culture. But at its essence, "It Can't Happen Here" exhorts its readers to resist the temptations to foist their frustrations on some scapegoat and to give power to men, of any political flavor, who promise to "right these wrongs," and rather consider the big picture:
“But he saw now that he must remain alone, a ‘Liberal,’ scorned by all the noisier prophets for refusing to be a willing cat for the busy monkeys of either side. But at worst, the Liberals, the Tolerant, might in the long run preserve some of the arts of civilization, no matter which brand of tyranny should finally dominate the world.
“‘More and more, as I think about history,’ he pondered, ‘I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.’”
