Gideon Planish
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By RANDOM HOUSE
SINCLAIR LEWIS has always been preoccupied with the futility of the American success story. It is a masculine story, and there is usually a rapacious female for whom Mr. Lewis has less sympathy than for his wistful if inarticulate men. Like Elmer Gantry, Gideon Planish exploits sweetness and light for his own ends, but unlike Gantry his ends are shaped by a woman, and it is his one good quality, his loyalty to her, which defeats him. Gideon is driven by the wants of Peony, his girl bride, into the mill of what Mr. Lewis terms “philanthrobbery “ — a mill that grinds Gideon into an executive secretary instead of a man.
Again Mr. Lewis exposes a racket-— this time the racket of organized philanthropy. If the exposure is less exciting than it ought to be, the blame may lie with a world which has moved faster than Mr. Lewis.