In the following essay, Light examines the quixotic overtones in Lewis's Main Street.

Sinclair Lewis's attitude toward the activity of writing can be seen in his letters to his publisher reporting his progress with Main Street. The letters overflow with excitement, even though the making of an important novel was for him then, as always, a job as wearing as the most strenuous manual labor. "Whether it's good or not," he wrote, "of course I can't tell, but there is this fact usually indicative of some excellence: I'm enormously enjoying writing it . . . indeed I'm not thinking of much else." He was thinking of other matters, however; as a former writer of commercial fiction and as a former employee of a publisher's promotion department, he could not help but concern himself with sales. He gave some thought to marketing his short stories and to advertising his recent novel...