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You should probably read Sinclair Lewis’ novel “Arrowsmith”

Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2020 9:49 pm
by ReaderMan
I don’t remember how I first heard of it, and I probably got curious because it won a Pulitzer Prize.
I used to think that books that won prizes are too serious and I still do to some extent but sometime I get brave so I thought I’ll try it.

I was also worried that being so old it would feel dated and that might bother me. However, I like many old books so again, I thought I’d just stop if I don’t like it.
So here we go; I’m not a book critic so take everything I say as my personal feelings and opinion.

It’s the story of Martin Arrowsmith, not of a master-arrow-maker like I thought at some point.
He is a medical student in the beginning, then a doctor with ups and downs throughout the story.
He falls in love multiple times and once has the craziest way to deal with a simultaneous “affair”; I won’t spoil it for you. He does frownable-upon things. He’s human.

In the end, I think I got two main messages from the book.
The first is that there are many kinds of love and while they may be very different they are not generally wrong. Love is good and if you get it (back) you should appreciate it. Sure, in retrospective one may be greater than others but it is ok to love more than once and you may get different things from different loves.
The other is about passion for something. Hopefully everybody gets to have some passion for something. Hopefully it’s just great enough and it’s for something that one can actually do so one gets fulfilled by it. Sometimes things get in the way and time flies and you forget you even had a passion. Or life, kids bring up other things that maybe more important; at least temporarily. In the end some get consumed by their passion and others forget about it; a few lucky ones manage to find a happy balance.
I liked the book, it was pretty epic with many things happening,

Re: You should probably read Sinclair Lewis’ novel “Arrowsmith”

Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2020 9:55 pm
by AnotherReader
Maybe you should have mentioned the conflict about friendship too; I think that was important.
I also liked the book and it feels very real; things that actually are likely to happen in a lifetime.

Re: You should probably read Sinclair Lewis’ novel “Arrowsmith”

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 5:41 pm
by CoolGuest
You've convinced me!