Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist and playwright. His novel, Main Street, was to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. The Columbia University Board of Trustees overturned the jury’s decision. Five years later, Lewis again was awarded with the Pulitzer, this time for his novel Arrowsmith. Lewis refused. In 1930, Lewis became the first American author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Insightful and critical, satirical, and sympathetic– It Can’t Happen Here is Lewis’ last great work. This speculative novel warns that political movements akin to fascism can come to power in countries such as the United States when people blindly support their leaders.

It has been misattributed to Lewis that he writes in this book, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” And while the particular quote was never written, the sentiment behind it permeates much of the language. New American Library recently reprinted this novel in 2005 and I picked it up as my next book in part due to the the power I perceive in the quote coupled with the impact of the recent documentaries, Jesus Camp and The Corporation, and the non-fiction books, State of Fear and Fast Food Nation.

Michael Meyer wrote a new introduction to the 2005 printing. He concludes his introduction with:

[Lewis] believed that dissent– even a cranky, erratic, eccentric, old-fashioned version of it– was not disloyalty but at the heart of an American democratic identity. Engulfed in the complexities and vulnerabilities of our post-September 11 world, Americans of nearly all political persuasions are likely to find that It Can’t Happen Here, though firmly anchored in the politics of the 1930s, surfaces as a revealing and disturbing read.

The book’s back cover reads:

It Can’t Happen Here is the only one of Sinclair Lewis’ later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a President who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, rampant promiscuity, crime and a liberal press.

Sound familiar?

Sherman Alexie wrote The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Toughest Indian in the World. He adapted parts of the first book into the screenplay for the 1998 feature film Smoke Signals. Flight is Alexie’s first novel in a decade. Using wit and eulogy, satire and sentimentality Alexie tells the story of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time searching for his true identity. The book’s jacket states:

The journey for Flight‘s young hero begins as he’s about to commit a massive act of violence. At the moment of decision, he finds himself shot back through time to resurface in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, where he sees why “Hell is Red River, Idaho, in the 1970s.” Red River is only the first stop in an eye-opening trip through moments in American history. He will continue to travel back to inhabit the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Bighorn and then ride with an Indian tracker in the nineteenth century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. During these furious travels through time, his refrain grows: “Who’s to judge?” and “I don’t understand humans.” When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own life, he is mightily transformed by all he has seen.

I am a fan of all of Alexie’s previous work I have come across. I hope that this modern-day vision quest proves out as compellingly as it seems to promise. I suspect it will.