EXILING REFORMERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21264, 19 February 1931, Page 16

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 he 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. “Reform in general is all right. Individual reformers are all h . The world is suffering from too many reformers, and I’ve said some nasty things about it. Sometimes people have 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 he had to endure in Sweden. He and Mrs Lewis, who came to Berlin with him, meant to “ play around ” a few weeks and then move on to Copenhagen and London. “Whenever I get to a country that’s new to me, like Sweden,” he said, “ I discover how little we Americans know about its literature. Maybe we know Europe better by travel than Europeans know ue, but when it comes to literary currents or general knowledge of politics the Europeans have it on us. “What do we know about Erik Axel Karlfeldt, the great lyric poet? He’s doing great things in Sweden, but most Americans never heard of him. Yet I found the Swedish surprisingly familiar with American literature, “ This is an extremely productive age. In 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? he repented the question of one of his audience. “ I’m going to write some short stories. For the time being I don’t contemplate anything more ambitious.”