Elmer Gantry
- Author Sinclair Lewis
- Narrator Anthony Heald
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date 1 January 2006
- Run Time 15 hours and 56 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Classic fiction, Fiction: general and literary.
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What to expect
Elmer Gantry is the portrait of a silver-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church, yet lives a life of hypocrisy, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence.
The title character starts out as a greedy, shallow, philandering Baptist minister, turns to evangelism, and eventually becomes the leader of a large Methodist congregation. Throughout the novel, Gantry encounters fellow religious hypocrites. Although often exposed as a fraud, Gantry is never fully discredited.
When Elmer Gantry was first published in 1927, it created a public furor. Now it is considered a landmark in American literature and one of the most penetrating studies of hypocrisy in modern literature. The novel also represents the evangelistic activity of America in the 1920s and people’s attitudes toward it.
Critics Review
u201cElmer Gantry is charismatic without being likable, which makes voicing him a tricky business for Anthony Healdu2026Healdu2019s pacing, his accents, [and] his narrative drive are all excellent.u201d
u201cWhat always made Lewisu2019s novels richer than mere satire was the affection he so clearly felt even for the people and institutions he was most eager to expose. As awful as Gantry is, we canu2019t suppress a sneaking liking for him, and neither can his authoru2026So much a product of its own historic moment, it turns out to be a book for our time as well, and probably for all times.u201d
u201cThe background of Elmer Gantryu00a0is the religious activity of America in evangelistic cirles and the attitudes of the nineteen twenties toward it. The religious life in the United States had fallen into a condition of listless and at the same time enthusiastic decayu2026What the Lewis novel pictures, in part, is the confusion ofu2026the material and the spiritual and the consequent corruption of both.u201d
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