Elmer Gantry
Sinclair Lawis
1927
This satirical novel rocked America in the late 1920s, and the name Elmer Gantry is still a byword for people who do not practice what they preach. It tells the story of a failed minister (Gantry) who becomes a traveling salesman in America’s Midwest. When he meets Sister Sharon Falconer, a touring evangelist, he falls for her and becomes an integral part of her sermons, acting the part of a traveling salesman who finds God. The ultimate hypocrite, Gantry goes on to make a fortune preaching a faith he does not believe in and attacking all the vices he does possess-adultery, alcohol, and avarice.
When Elmer Gantry came out in 1927, ministers called for it to be banned. The well-known evangelist Billy Sunday (who had appeared in one of Lewis’s other novels as the Reverend Monday) called Lewis “Satan’s cohort.” The book was banned in Boston; Kansas City, Missouri; and elsewhere, and a copy was burned in Ohio. News of the bans fueled sales and the book became America’s best-selling novel of the year.
