THOUGH LEWIS was not exactly an errant youth who
suddenly repented of wasting his talents and decided to
tell the truth in his writing, it is undeniably true that he
made his name by attacking, in ways he had not done
before, the popular conceptions of the small town and the
up-and-coming city. That he altered these conceptions is a
matter of history. It has often been pointed out that, in
spite of a fairly lengthy tradition of realistic portrayal
before Main Street, the village still persisted in American
lore either as the abode of rustics who used expressions
like "I swan" or as the home of honest virtue, simplic-
ity, and friendliness. Indeed the classic statement by
Meredith Nicholson about everything being comfortable
and cheerful in Indiana, with lots of old-fashioned human
kindness flowing round, had been made as recently as
1912. ¹ While the opposing tradition received important
contributions within the next few years--the poems of

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