It Can't Happen Here

Goodreads can sum up It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis far more succinctly than I could hope to.

"The only one of Sinclair Lewis's later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith, It Can't Happen Here is a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression when America 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." Now finally back in print, It Can't Happen Here remains uniquely important, a shockingly prescient novel that's as fresh and contemporary as today's news."

I first spotted this novel in Barnes & Noble sometime prior to the 2016 election. It put a little shiver of fear in me at the time, but I didn't even want to go down that road so didn't even consider reading it. Now, feeling as though democracy is as frail as its ever been in my lifetime, I decided to take a second look.

I found It Can't Happen Here a little difficult to read. The sentences were long, I didn't understand some of the historical references and often had no clue if characters were from real life or totally imagined. Once I realized how I could skim without losing the drift of the story, that's what I did. Another thing that made this difficult for me to read is that it was overtype satirical. Like ridiculous. Like spread out the satire a little bit or something! But satire was piled on.

There were so many passages in the novel that I highlighted because they were so relevant to today. I won't bore you with all 30-something that I highlighted, but I will share two with you.

• He 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. 
  This is so counter to those who say, "If you don't like it here, leave." I don't believe that's in the spirit of democracy. If you don't like it here, but this is your country, voice your dissatisfaction and work towards improving things. Don't just walk away - and don't allow yourself to be chased away.
  
  
• ... most of them newspapermen, disliked the smell of him more than before they had met him... Even they, by the unusual spiritedness and color of their attacks upon him, kept his name alive in every column...
  If that's not descriptive of the trump era, than I'm not sure what is!

That's as political as I care to get here. If anything that I've written intrigues you, you might want to take a look at this classic novel. I expected to lose sleep with worry and finish up with a increased sense of dread. That didn't happen, although the book did give me some things to think about... and more things to throw about while conversing about politics with my husband or kids.