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   Book Info

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If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis  
Author: Sinclair Lewis
ISBN: 0809321386
Format: Handover
Publish Date: June, 2005
 
     
     
   Book Review


The New York Times Book Review, Emily Barton
Deftly modulated and psychologically complex, these stories hold the reader's interest not merely as historical documents but as successful works of fiction in their own right, timely in any era.




If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Anthony Di Renzo makes available for the first time since their original publication some eighty years ago a collection of fifteen of Sinclair Lewis's early business stories.

Among Lewis's funniest satires, these stories introduce the characters, themes, and techniques that would evolve into Babbitt. Each selection reflects the commercial culture of Lewis's day, particularly Reason Why advertising, self-help manuals, and the business fiction of the Saturday Evening Post. The stories were published between October 1915 and May 1921 (nine in the Saturday Evening Post, four in Metropolitan Magazine, one in Harper's Magazine, and one in American Magazine).

Because some things have not changed in the American workplace since Lewis's day, these highly entertaining and unflinchingly accurate office satires will appeal to the fans of Dilbert and The Drew Carey Show. In a sense, they provide lay readers with an archaeology of white-collar angst and regimentation. The horror and absurdities of contemporary corporate downsizing already existed in the office of the Progressive Era. For an audience contemplating the death of the American middle class, Lewis's stories provide an important retrospective on earlier times and a preliminary autopsy on the American dream.

Appearing just in time to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Babbitt, this collection rescues Lewis's best early short fiction from obscurity, provides extensive information about his formative years in advertising and public relations, and analyzes both his genius for marketing and his carefully cultivated persona as the Great Salesman of American letters.

FROM THE CRITICS

James M. Hutchisson

Di Renzo's superbly written introduction...seamlessly integrates literary analysis with social-history research and impressive knowledge of marketing and advertising techniques of Lewis's times. [This is a] refreshing and entertaining group of satires that have much relevance in today's culture. -- James M. Hutchisson

     



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