EXILING REFORMERS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 38, 14 February 1931, Page 23

EXILING REFORMERS

Sinclair Lewis thinks this is a fine time to be alive, even if reformers ride the world, and sometimes include himself among their number (says the "New York Times"). "But I'm no reformer," he declared, as he reached Berlin from Stockholm, where ho received the Nobel Prize in literature. "Oh, no; I'm a critic, that's what I am. .If I had my way I would exile from America all reformers and everybody convicted of trying to make reforms. "Beform in general is all right. Individual reformers are all h . The world ia suffering from too many reformers, and I've said some nasty things about it. Sometimes people havo accused me of being a reformer, but they would have a hard time proving that against me." Mr. Lewis has put behind him all the formality lie had to endure in Sweden. He and Mrs. Lewis, who came to Berlin, with him, meant to "play around" a few weeks and then;

i move on to Copenhagen and London, i "Whenever I get to a country that's new to mo, like Sweden," he said, "I i discover how little we Americans know about its literature. Maybe we know , Europe better by travel than Europeans , know us, but when it comes to literary l currents or general knowledge of poli- j 1 tics the Europeans have it on us. ': "What do we know about Erik Axel , Karlfeldt, the great lyric poet? llo's doing great things in Sweden, but most • Americans never heard of him. Yet I i found the Swedish surprisingly familiar ■ with American literature. "This is an extremely productive age. | iln Sweden as elsewhere there is a ; struggle between the old and the new, ; between the romanticists and the realists. ! "What am I going to do?" ho repeat- . Ed the question of one of his audience. "I'm going to write some short stories. i For the time being I don't contemplate more ambitioue."