Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis

Kingsblood Royal Reviews

• 
  Andy

  
  Some writers go out with a fizzle, writing pap until they sputter out to die, and other writers go out with a bang, and damn it doesn't get more explosive than Sinclair Lewis' "Kingsblood Royal". Written with the help of Walter White, President of the NAACP as technical consultant, Kingsblood Royal meets American racism head on and doesn't let up until the 349th page.
  
  A well-to-do young white couple from small town America treat their black maid like a thief and name their dog "Nigger". They're as deliriously ignorant and racist as their friends and neighbors. This stupidity comes to a dead halt, when at the behest of Neil Kingsblood's father-in-law, he looks up his ancestry, thinking he came from British royalty, and instead discovers his ancestor was a black frontiersman.
  
  The key word to this book is "discover". Every thing that happens to Neil Kingsblood is a discovery.
  
  Kingsblood, who's white as snow with curly red hair (already carrying the stigma of a "red headed stepchild"...dig the irony), upon learning he's from black ancestry, wants to tell the world, starting with the pig ignorant townies he hobnobs with.
  
  Well meaning but acting more like a lamb ready for slaughter, he spends tons of quality time confessing his discovery to the town blacks, all shoved over on Mayo Street, far away from the "clean" white neighborhoods. What follows are dialogues from blacks about their experiences, some militant, some tolerant and even some Uncle Tom-style submission. He even makes peace with the maid he once fired after he admits his guilt for behaving stupidly. It's to Lewis' credit that the black Americans in Kingsblood Royal are never depicted as one-dimensional in the novel.
  
  Kingsblood blows his stack at a club dinner after hearing a lot of racist drivel by confessing to the attendees that he's Gonna Shout It Loud, He's Black And He's Proud. In doing so, his friends, neighbors and even his family ostracize him, beginning with losing his executive job at the bank, getting kicked out of the Executive's Club, followed by endless coercions degenerating into threats to move the hell out of his own fully-paid house.
  
  Kingsblood Royal wasn't terribly successful when it came out - America, after spending six years fighting the most racist monsters of the 20th Century, wasn't ready to read about how racist they themselves were. According to Wikipedia only Ebony Magazine gave the book a positive review.
  
  The book ends with a race riot stand-off which still rings fresh today as it did when it was published in 1947. Yes, 19-47. Endlessly outrageous and brutal, this book still has bite!!!!! Highly recommended.
• 
  Greg Brozeit

  Neil Kingsblood is an affluent white male who recently returned to the mythical town of Grand Republic, Minnesota after being wounded in World War II. After he settles into his predictable life of a rising bank executive, he is asked by his father, who believes that they have distant relatives in the English royal family, to research his genealogy. Instead Neil learns that his ancestor, thought to be a French voyager, was actually Black, which makes him 1/32 Black. He keeps the news from his family as he strives to learn more about the black society in his community, something completely alien to his upbringing and worldview. Thus begins an unpredictable life journey that changes his family, community and future.
  
  Lewis’s depictions—as it was written in 1947—of Negro culture, white (and Black) racism and the interaction between the races is as relevant today as it was then. Indeed, in the conversations Neil has with his new Black friends, within his white social circle and his family are probably among the most honest I’ve ever read. The gradations of white racism that Lewis sums up in Chapter 31 are masterful highlights.
  
  The writing reveals idiosyncratic northern and southern racial stereotypes that hadn’t (and haven’t) changed much since the writing of Mark Twain’s classic Pudd’nhead Wilson. Considering the time since novel was written more than 75 years ago and taken together with the recent resurgence of vocal bigotry and racism in the U.S., an apt subtitle for it today might be: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
  
  Lewis has created some of the most iconic fictional figures in American literature—Carol Kennicott, George Babbitt, Martin Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Sam Dodsworth. Neil Kingsblood is less-known, but deserves his place alongside them. This great book is convincingly constructed on a foundation of moral clarity and human tension.
• 
  lyle

  I had an English teacher in high school who spoke highly of this book in the late 60's, explaining that it was far ahead of its time in understanding race relations and anticipating their deterioration. I read it years afterward and agreed with her entirely. Lewis, who understood and portrayed the shallow materialism of American culture, also had insights into racial problems, which are sharply dramatized in Kingsblood Royal. There is fine use of irony throughout, starting from the title.
• 
  Julie

  Well, published in 1947 by a well known and respected author. I can see why it started a furor and then took a nose-dive into obscurity. I imagine that most Americans of the time (and now) can find themselves in this book and they probably won't like what they see! Waaaaaaay ahead of its time. But, it really shouldn't have been...
  
  Even though the theme is pretty heavy, Lewis writes with light hand and injects humor. I loved Neil's search for who he was, at first just a surface search, and by the end, a very deep and meaningful search. I also love that the ancestor Neil discovered who started this deeper journey was a man of strenghth and adventure, love and steadiness, who anyone would be delighted to find in their gene pool....if he hadn't been Black... LOL
• 
  ALLEN

  A comfortable Minnesota middle-class family is shaken to its roots -- literally -- when it turns out one of its members has an African-American forebear. Lewis's late-forties novel is a little preachy, but sets out a plausible, if rather strained, scenario. Devotees of Sinclair Lewis will like this novel, and it speaks directly to racial topics and racism that are still very much with us. Not one of his best, though.
• 
  Jen Hagan

  As unnerving and uncomfortable and even sometimes totally exasperated as this book made me feel, I enjoyed every minute of it! Kingsblood Royal is superb satire and even though published in 1947, it is still so relevant. Read it if you dare.
• 
  M.K. Hobson

  I have often cited Sinclair Lewis as one of my favorite writers, and a huge influence on my own work. Reading "Kingsblood Royal" has helped me get a better handle on what, exactly, I find so admirable about his writing. Not that I think this is his most admirable book; this one is just easier to dissect because it's one of his later works, and by this point he knows what his best tricks are (always some variation on giving the pompous the rope they need to hang themselves with) and he fields them effortlessly, if somewhat predictably. This book is Sinclair Lewis distilled right down to his essence. Broad, unsubtle, overdone. If he has a point to make, he makes it, and it stays made. No plot-twist goes unforeshadowed, no peccadillo goes unamplified.
  
  But, for all that, he is still a writer of incredible subtlety and sensitivity. Somehow, he balances all that boistersome satire with beautiful quiet moments. His characters never feel *real*, precisely, but they feel *relevant*. They feel timeless. They may be silly and vain and their dialogue is often *appalling* (Lewis' rendering of female dialogue always comes across as stilted, and I thought Sophie was particularly bad in this book) but when he's good (as with Neil Kingsblood's internalized angsting, which goes on for most of the first 3/4 of the book) he's great.
  
  I generally read Lewis more for the craft than the content, but I did think that in "Kingsblood Royal" Lewis handled some very difficult material with quite a bit of grace. Contrived? Yes. A bit silly in places? Sure. But still, very well done overall.
• 
  Jeanne

  Neil Kingsblood has been told that his family may have “royal” blood. As a favor to his father, Neil researches his family’s origins. What he learns is quite the opposite of what was expected: Neil has Negro blood.
  
  What follows Neil’s discovery is pure Sinclair Lewis: Neil announces his Negro status to everyone in town. And, as one might imagine, this is neither a popular nor a positive announcement. In fact, this leads to a shunning of Neil and his family.
  
  It is wildly humorous that his fellow residents in Grand Republic, Minnesota accept his newly discovered Negro status without question, but do not accept him anymore. They have known him to be an upstanding citizen in town for his entire life, but this little drop of Negro blood has tainted their opinion of him.
  
  It is an eye-opening experience for Neil and his wife. And very painful, too. Neil could stand to lose everything simply due to the race of one of his ancestors.
  
  Funny, dark, and quite before its time, Kingsblood Royal rings as true today as it did when it was published in 1947. Sadly, not everything in America, particularly Middle America, has changed.
  
• 
  Apryl Anderson

  This was an utterly painful read! I thought that Mr Lewis would never bring us to a happy ending; it seemed as if the antagonism and insults would go on forever! And unfortunately, take away some people's excuse to hate, and they'll come up with another. I remember hearing some of these same pathetic arguments for bigotry when I was growing up, and now it's no longer (primarily) African blood, today's target is sexual preference. That just gets OLD! I'm so tired of the fearfulness disguised as hatred! Grow up, people!
  
  Lewis' timing was impeccable; just as I said ENOUGH! the enlightened Bavarian arrives on the scene. What a lovely touch immediately after Lewis unveils the similarity between the militant whites and the Nazi party! Beauty is more than skin deep.
  
  p.s. I couldn't help but notice a hint of Lewis in J.K. Rowlings' maturing style...
• 
  Shane

  "Prejudice is the most precious birthright of the ignorant."
  
  My students often like to discuss hypothetical situations in class. "Would you have been an abolitionist?" or "Would you have hidden Jews in your home?" It's fun to have these conversations, but ultimately not very revelatory; everyone believes that they would do the right thing. Even so, I have been wondering, "What if I were Neil Kingsblood?"
  
  Neil Kingsblood, in the era of Jim Crow, has to reckon with the discovery that he has an African ancestor. Here in 2021, this would be a trivial discovery, but in the 1940s it could alter your fortune. Once Neil decides to embrace his lineage, he quickly faces the consequences.
  
  It is thrilling to read Lewis when he is pulling no punches. I wish I had the opportunity, talent, and courage to excoriate an evil as pervasive as racism in America. Sinclair Lewis clearly wasn't afraid to step on toes and inflame passions with this book, that was probably his intention.
• 
  Murray

  Sinclair Lewis has quickly become one of my favorite American writers of the 20th century. His gift was the ability to not only identify hypocricy and its effects on families and society, but to masterfully place it within a compelling narrative. In Kingsblood Royal, Neil Kingsblood essentially learns in post-World War II Minnesota that he is not the white man he thought he was; that he has Negro blood. In today's society, this would barely be an issue, but at the time the book was written, it was not uncommon for those of 'mixed blood' to be ostracized by the white population that he had grown up with -- including his family. Lewis pulls no punches showing the racism, brutality and cruelty within Kingsblood's community. He lifts the veil and shows two reactions: either outright overnight hatred toward Kingsblood or those pretending to want to help him with very self-serving solutions to Kingsblood's new 'problem'. The dialog and motives of his friends and family is outright racist. Lewis wants the reader to squirm, feel uncomfortable, and face off against their own racisim similar to the way Kingsblood feels it. The novel ironically begins with arc depicting the Kingsblood family with similar racist views toward their African American housekeeper. Nonetheless, despite Neil's early racism, Lewis still manages to evoke some sympathy toward him as he earns his comeuppance.
  
  This book is an amazing read from a very different time in our history. While the lessons from the 1940s are somewhat different today, there are still some essential morals that still hold true. Lewis is as gutsy here as he was in "Main Street" and "Elmer Gantry", with both hard hitting prose and clever turns of phrase that call out the idiocy of some of this characters. This book is not for everyone, but its tale is very memorable.
• 
  Kathryn Mattern

  I've never read any Sinclair Lewis before, and this book convinced me that the man is an artistic genius. The book is set in a city in Minnesota at the end of the second world war, where a thirty-something white banker is mustered out early due to a leg wound received in Europe. He returns to his job at the bank, his lovely wife and little girl, but his friends are all still away at the front, so his father suggests that to fill his spare time he do some genealogical research into how the family came to have the surname 'Kingsblood' - there are rumors of royal descent, and Dad thinks Junior might uncover some evidence if he traces the line. Neil takes Dad up on it, out a sense of duty more than anything else, discovers nothing of interest, and decides to take a peek at Mom's line, where he uncovers a Black ancestor. This is during the old days of strict segregation based on the one-drop rule: one 'drop' of 'negro blood' means you're a negro. So, this sets up a conflict for Neil, who begins to explore the colored community in his city, mostly out of curiosity, but soon discovers that he likes the people he's meeting. The book goes on from there, but I have to tell you, this book was like poetry, polemic, compendium of every angle (or nearly every angle) to racism you could ever hope to encounter between the two covers of one book! I absolutely loved it, but of course, I grew up in an environment where this kind of racism - where even people who looked completely white were supposed to be 'colored' - was a day-to-day reality, and a completely crazy-making reality, I might add - so for me, to see it all in print as told by an artist of Mr. Sinclair's caliber was insightful and healing. I can't recommend this book too highly!
• 
  Sally

  This is at least the third time I've read this novel and each time I'm blown away by how insightful Lewis about race relations in America. Sadly his insightfulness exposes how ugly things were in 1947 and how many correlations there are to today. Neil Kingsblood, a veteran of WWII, returns home to Grand Republic, Minnesota after the war, and because he was wounded and now has a slight limp, his father suggests that he should do some family genealogy since he now can't play sports. His father thinks maybe the family is related to royalty. Neil discovers instead that a great great grandfather was a black fur trapper. Although he tries to deny it, he eventually owns this part of his heritage and lets other people know about it. The reaction, from family, friends, and the public at large is nasty and condescending. He makes friends among the black community and learns that much of what he had thought about African Americans is false and simple minded. Not to give too much away, but his education as a black man in a racist society is frightening. Every American should read this. Walter White, who had a similar racial heritage, and was the head of the NAACP, helped Lewis with the research, by inviting him to meet many African Americans and learn about their lives in a segregated society.
• 
  Kurt Brindley

  This is the first Sinclair Lewis book that I have read. It won’t be my last. I had no expectations when, on a whim, I pulled the book off my book shelf and began to read it. What I found was a very progressive read, even for our times, and especially for the time in which it was written and set.
  
  In this story, Neil Kingsblood, the protagonist, a white man by all regards, is prompted by his father to research his ancestry to see if they are born from royalty. What he finds instead, is that he comes from the blood of a black French Canadian frontiersman, which, according to the laws at the time, make Neil, and his family, black. Neil’s struggle with this knowledge and whether he should come out, so to speak, or not, is both painful and fascinating to witness.
• 
  Marian

  In its truthtelling about Black-White inequality inside U.S. society and (white as well as Black/mixed race) FAMILIES, this book is the literary equivalent of (German director) Douglas Sirk's 1959 film IMITATION OF LIFE. This was Sirk's LAST U.S. film before he returned permanently to EUROPE. Sinclair Lewis wrote KINGSBLOOD ROYAL about people of Black American/African descent IN MINNESOTA -- communities that like to see themselves as "all-white", where fairskinned Blacks were "passing" as being "white" 2 or 3 decades BEFORE being Black allegedly became "cool" (& now even profitable, as in gaining U.S. presidency). Sinclair Lewis deserves a post-humous award for this one!
• 
  со фи

  "Ќе живееме сега па макар и умреле од тоа!"
• 
  Don Shelby

  I have always appreciated Sinclair Lewis's ability to puncture the inflated self-congratulatory balloons Americans always give themselves. But Kingsblood Royal goes beyond Main Street, Arrowsmith, Babbitt, Dodsworth and Elmer Gantry. The writer, a White Minnesota plains boy with an Ivy League education, first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and a sensation in publishing in the 1920s, takes on the race question, implicit and explicit bias and white supremacy in Kingsblood Royal. If you think much has changed, you might read this novel - written from a peculiar perspective. After reading it you will get an idea of who we were in 1947, and you will recognize America as it is in 2021.
• 
  Andrijana

  Pročitala sam više knjiga na temu rasizma u Americi, i nekako su sve slične. Kraljevska krv se odvaja od njih, razlikuje je sam pristup temi, način na koji je pisac odabrao da predstavi probleme crnog čoveka. Prvi deo knjige mi je bio jako zabavan, drugi ozbiljan. Preporuka.
• 
  Guillermo Toscano

  I'll have to meditate on this longer to form a more coherent review but I loved this book.
• 
  Michael Fredette

  At the beginning of Kingsblood Royal, Neil Kingsblood, the protagonist of Nobel-laureate Sinclair Lewis's 1947 novel, is a prosperous young banker and recently returned WWII vet in the upper-Midwestern town of Grand Republic. He has a wife named Vestal, a young daughter named Elizabeth (Biddy), and a live-in maid named Belfreda. He is a social success with a seemingly bright future; a pillar of his community. Inspired by family lore, which claims that they are descended from royalty (Henry VIII and Cathrine of Aragon), Neil begins researching his family's genealogy. He learns that one of his forebearers, a frontiersman named Xavier Pic was a self-professed full-blooded Negro, making Neil 1/16th negro, and his daughter 1/32 black. This precipitates a crisis of identity for Kingsblood, who hitherto was uncritically and matter-of-factly racist. During a holiday 'stag' party at his prestigious country club, an incendiary racist speech is given in which several of Neil's newly acquired black friends are targeted as "Negro agitators." Neil decides to publicly "out" himself as a negro, which kicks off a string of ever-worsening events beginning with his being forced to resign from the club, losing his position at the bank, and being besieged by a mob of white terrorists when he refused to leave his home (in a 'white' neighborhood protected by a restrictive covenant).
• 
  Eva Hnizdo

  In my opinion, this is one of the best books about racism I know, despite it being about a white man.I won't include Spoilers. I read it many times, and thought it was brilliant
• 
  Melissa Cline

  Heartbreaking
  
  I did a lot of flinching reading this. I was born in 1965 in Louisville KY. Growing up the N word was spanking worthy in my home, so seeing it tossed around by a toddler as the dog's original name a bit appalling.
  
  This story is heartbreaking and unfortunately probably pretty accurate. Enough to make me ashamed to be white more than once. Wonderful advancement has been made, but you only have to turn on the evening news to see that not nearly enough has changed. This story isn't for the faint of heart by far.
• 
  Erica

  This novel does not sugar-coat its message: if you are a White person, especially if you live and/or grew up in the Midwest, you need to take a good, hard look at your assumptions and rethink them. The fact that the story takes place 80s years ago makes no difference—change a couple slang terms, and some of the conversations in this novel could have happened last week.
  
  I think Lewis’s storytelling is particularly effective: he starts off with a snobby (and racist) family from the east coast looking down on Minnesota as a bunch of hicks, which, if you are Midwestern, is an immediate hook, because you have met these types, and you can tsk-tsk at them along with the author. They look around and make all kinds of unfair assumptions, and then one of them, right after a blatantly foreshadowing racist comment, observes that Neil Kingsblood is very handsome. Then we shift to Neil’s comfortable upper-middle-class life in small town Minnesota. At first, Neil comes off as kind of annoying, saying all kinds of cringey racist things and getting way too caught up in pride about his ancestry and social connections, just like the east coast snobs did at the beginning of the story (oops, turns out we all have more in common than we thought!). But the more Neil starts to understand how wrong he was about everything, the more his ignorance starts to look like naivete, and at times he’s almost a sympathetic character. This is especially true when the story becomes highly satirical. For example, his boss does not want Neil to interact with customers because they (not the boss, of course, but other people) might be put off by having to interact with a Black person…even though Neil is a pasty redhead. This is an effective use of satire to underscore how arbitrary the racial caste system is in the US.
  
  But where this book really nails the insidiousness of racism in the Midwest is in the dialog. So many of the social rejections that Neil faces come in the form of ostensibly polite words hiding hostility. Almost every White character at some point says some form of “I’m not prejudiced, but…” and then proceeds to tell a Black character that they are not allowed to do something a White person does. And the whole point of the story is that Neil Kingsblood, naïve White Midwestern everyman, does not understand how bad this is until he is on the receiving end of it. Moreover, he does not grasp the depth of the problem when he is merely kicked out of the snooty conservative men’s club—it’s when he becomes unemployable, disowned by his family, threatened, and, ultimately, attacked so that he can be arrested and jailed that Neil Kingsblood finally understands what segregation really is. (Just to repeat that point: they don’t physically attack him, they threaten him until he must defend himself and his family—they DO injure Vestal—and then they arrest him. Similarly, when all the Black men in town become unemployed, unrest occurs in the Five Points neighborhood, and then police are sent in, threaten them, get attacked by just a few, and arrest many. Sound familiar?)
  
  Still, I’m left wondering if Neil is brave or foolish. For Neil to truly grasp the social injustice, he has to completely change his sense of identity, but this shift of perspective is based on racist assumptions—the whole concept that “even a drop” of Black heritage makes you “tainted.” This makes Neil’s first visits to the Five Points very uncomfortable to read: Neil goes there to indulge in what amounts to a fantasy about himself and his family history, not to learn about others (although he ultimately does). Most of his Black friends and acquaintances warn him not to reveal his heritage publicly, partly for his and his family’s safety, but also because they feel that he could do more good fighting racism as a White man. Which raises a terribly uncomfortable question for White people to consider: could you do that? Clearly, Neil’s entire social circle is racist—from casually racist loved ones and close friends to blatantly racist colleagues and extended family. And, every one of them immediately denies it when someone points it out. Neil eventually outs himself because he can’t stand this ugliness anymore, and he probably assumes that they will change their hearts when they realize that someone they love and/or respect could be considered part of the group they hate. Instead, their hatred is so deeply ingrained that it wins out, and they all shun him. Isn’t this exactly what every White person fears when they keep silent after a colleague tells an off-color joke, or a family member makes a racist assumption? Not only that they could face social consequences (fight with a spouse, trouble at work), but that their efforts wouldn’t even change anything, and they would be stuck with hateful loved ones and colleagues they can’t respect. Neil and his family do not attempt to move; Neil knows that even if he went to a new town where no one knew about his heritage, he would face the same dilemma all over again. Cheery thought, isn’t it?
  
  One final thought. The idea of racial identity has some new implications with the advent of DNA testing. Already stories have come out about people discovering ancestry much like Neil’s, and it turns out to be far more common than previously thought. For some people, this kind of discovery is not a pleasant one. If you’re White, would you be as unsettled as Neil was to make such a discovery? If so, even 80 years after this story took place, it might be worth examining why.
• 
  Marion Stein

  This little fable is probably as relevant and timely now as when it was written. As a "text" it should be used in high schools and colleges when studying the history of racism in this country and trying to understand why exactly it is that the idea of a black man in the White House drives some folks crazy.The edition I read was a paperback, used but in mint condition with a deliciously pulpy cover.
• 
  Old Man and the Read

  I really enjoy reading Sinclair Lewis. This is a departure from his other books in that it deals with the very disturbing racism that existed during this time (1947). His books are usually fairly lighthearted satires of modern life but this was difficult to read at times even though he used much of his usual dialog.
• 
  Brent Legault

  A cardboard cut-out puppet show would have been more realistic, more convincing and infinitely more interesting than this, this parade of soul-starved mouthpieces.
• 
  Mike

  Certainly a solid satire that starts strong, Kingsblood Royal has that singular, almost paradoxical quality of having wildly perceptive and prophetic things about race writ large while also having an arguably implausible main character. Lewis' wager is that the actions Neil Kingsblood takes through the work, often reminiscent of a queer "coming out" story in its arcs and machinations, are believable acts of gumption. For those who could not imagine anyone before our generation coming out of the closet as anything in particular, the fact that he would knowingly resign from the white race sounds so countervailing to our notion of the past that we think "how could anyone have had the courage to come out as gay/trans/mixed-race/etc back then?" But the fact of the matter is, people did, and as far as gay men are concerned, Quentin Crisp did. The other prong of this is how believable Kingsblood's courage is in the moments where he publicly proclaims his deep dark secret, outing himself to a hostile audience because he is outraged by what they are saying or beyond annoyed at their ignorance or both. The plausibility of these moments were hard for me to acknowledge until I remembered my own coming out story in my own life - indeed, I was so frustrated with the ignorant homophobia of a classmate in a class discussion that I insisted I knew from personal experience queerness was not a choice, outing myself knowingly in the process. So while it might not be the same time, context, or milieu, I can empathize with Kingsblood and what Lewis was going for with those scenarios. I can't say I've resolved the tensions between relatability and plausibility, however.
  
  Lewis is nevertheless customarily acerbic and entertaining throughout, just not as consistently as his other offerings. Some aspects of the early to middle section of the book get bogged down in teaching scenes, where the Black characters preach the truth to Neil and the audience by proxy. Lewis especially nails how white people choose to interact with him, and the "well I'm not prejudiced but I worry for you on the account of people who are" deceptions are out in full force. By the novel's end, Lewis does avoid these preachy-but-required exchanges in favor of a plot that has more forward momentum than, say, Babbitt's, which I will disclose I dislike despite being an overall fan of Lewis.
  
  Overall I liked this book and recommend it for what sometimes reads like a Baldwin interview, and then sometimes reads like a sepia-toned sketch from the early Chappelle's Show, and then reads like it has flickers of the wall-to-wall brilliant Main Street. I must give a particular shout-out to Neil Kingsblood's wife, Vestal, for being a consistent hoot throughout this book, which impressively balances pedagogy with a dynamic plot, good humor, and (some) memorable characters. Ranks between Arrowsmith and It Can't Happen Here for me.
• 
  Mark Feder

  In the old days when I attended high school, Sinclair Lewis was a mainstay in English classes, and we read Main Street and Arrowsmith. I thought of Lewis as a chronicler of mainstream American life, a life different from what I knew growing up in the Bronx. Just like TV shows such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver portrayed families that I took to be normal American families that were different from my own, I thought of Lewis as portraying the real America and that I was experiencing something less genuine.
  
  I don't think I was completely oblivious to the satire in his novels, but it wasn't till later, when I read him as an adult and became acquainted with It Can't Happen Here and Elmer Gantry that I realized that Sinclair Lewis was less a chronicler than a critic of American culture. When I read Kingsblood Royal for the first time, earlier this year, my estimation of him as a critic, and a very prescient one, was confirmed.
  
  The novel is about Neil Kingsblood, an up-and-coming young banker with solid middle-class credentials in post WWII Minnesota. He looks into his genealogy because his father suspects a family connection to the English throne. What his research ironically turns up is that one of his ancestors may, in fact, have been a black man. He is at first shocked by this discovery and keeps it secret. Gradually he he becomes curious about the black people in his community and meets several of them, finding out that some of them are finer people than many of his white acquaintances. As someone with as much as 1/32 Negro blood, Kingsblood is marked as a black man when he reveals his secret, and eventually loses his job, status and house because of it.
  
  Lewis's selection as the first American recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature is sometimes treated as a travesty. Admittedly he doesn't stand out stylistically, but his depictions of people, descriptions of places and plot handling are inferior to none. What adds to his stature as a novelist is his real understanding of people and his determination to write about things that matter, regardless of the popularity of the topic. It's a real eye-opener to read Lewis's 1947 novel about racial attitudes in 2018. His novel isn't set in the deep South but in the most progressive region of the Midwest, and what Lewis exposed more than 70 years ago we now have the misfortune to be experiencing in our own times.