Elmer Gantry

By: Sinclair Lewis

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 15 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award, Literary Fiction, 2009

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.

Elmer Gantry is considered a landmark American novel and one of the most penetrating studies of hypocrisy in modern literature. It portrays the evangelistic activity that was common in 1920s America as well as attitudes toward it.

©1954 Michael Lewis (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

A great read of a classic, very different from the film version

A great novel, nicely read by the Audible version
Very well presented surprise ending
Read and Enjoy

Don't just see the movie !

Don't just see the movie !--the movie staring Bert Lancaster is great but, the book is much different.
Great character development, a real American classic.
Listened to one time will make you want to listen again...one of the few that books with such depth.

Still Pertinent and Impertinent

Considering that this was the most popular book in America in 1927, it has aged extremely well. The foibles of public preachers don't seem to have changed much in the intervening century, and way too many of the issues they rail against (for the adoration of their congregations) haven't changed much.

Elmer Gantry's charisma leaks thru the narrative, to the point that I found myself frequently rooting for the rascal, and chiding him when his ambitions led him directly into temptation (and his temptations threatened to thwart his ambitions).

On the whole, the prejudices, misogyny, and holier-than-thou attitudes Sinclair Lewis was impertinently skewering are still with us now. If anything, poor Brother Elmer looks like he's aiming too low; today, he could run for president himself.

Amazing story applicable to today's world

Elmer Gantry is quite the character and despite taking place 100 years ago (approx 1920), it has eery similarities to certain figures in public life today, namely D.T. People who are narcisistic and simply think about me, me, me and how everything and anyone can advance them in their desire to rule the world. The other great and relevant thing about this book is the sardonic humor that Sinclair Lewis uses in his descriptions (he writes about one speech that Elmer gave to a local Chamber of Commerce and says that everyone had a really good time, well, except for the members of the Chamber of Commerce...hahahaha). This is an amazing book and despite the lack of depth in the female characters as most are simply set pieces for Elmer's grander plans and ambitions, it is a highly enjoyable book.

An American Classic, Relevant to Today

Sinclair Lewis' ferocious 1927 satire, "Elmer Gantry", traces the career of a young man who is sent to a theological seminary by his pious mother but initially has no interest in becoming a minister. Indeed, his reputation for drinking and carousing with women is so notorious he earns the nickname "Hellcat". But from the book's opening scenes in 1905 to his ascension to the position of a famous moralizing evangelist 20 years later, Gantry never really repents of his ways (though he does stop drinking); he merely finds ways to ingratiate himself with the rich and powerful so that his misdeeds, many of them egregious, never become known. This book reminded me of Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men", which is about an equally ruthless and ambitious man, but Penn Warren was writing about a politician rather than a preacher. "Elmer Gantry" is an excellent portrait of the unchecked rise of a glib sociopath to the position of moral leader of a nation despite his private hypocrisy. Sound familiar? The Blackstone Audio reading is excellent, but I found the novel itself to be a bit slow and meandering in its pace. Lewis misses an excellent opportunity to make the book a more dramatic portrait of Gantry alone by not ending the story around the time when Gantry's secret love affair with a famous female evangelist comes to a dramatic and fiery end. Had Lewis chosen to focus more exclusively on Gantry, instead of bringing in scenes of other more honest ministers wrestling with their faiths, and ended it at that climactic moment, this book could have been a character portrait as magnificent as F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". But instead, it launches into a lengthy second section which recounts Gantry's career as a Methodist minister, and this is where some people may find the book becoming overlong and heavy-handed. Overall, though, this book is a classic of its kind.

Wonderful

Great story still relevant today. Superbly read by Anthony Heald

Great book. Great narration

Even though this was published in 1927, this book is an amazingly current satire of the religious puffery, false piety, and small mindedness of some that still exists today. The narration is pitch perfect.

Great reader - good book

Terrific reader - one of the best read books I've listened to in the past few years. Although the book is very good, I prefer Main Street.

Still biting and pertinent today

The fictional Elmer Gantry rises to prominence before the era of radio and TV evangelism, but his greed, selfishness, and sexual indiscretions are just like those of some real-life preachers we all know.

Elmer Gantry follows the protagonist from his beginnings as an irreverent student at a religious university who's browbeaten into being "saved" by another traveling preacher who turns out to be a cynical fraud himself. But Elmer is set out on his path, and goes to seminary to become a Baptist preacher. After getting caught with one of his flock, he's kicked out by the Baptists. He becomes assistant (and lover) to a crazy woman evangelist named Sharon Falconer, who on the one hand is as phony as he is, and on the other seems to really believe every bit of nonsense she spouts. Her character was quite interesting; today we'd probably call her bipolar, and she seems to be the one woman Elmer truly loves, as he remembers her for the rest of his life, even when he moves on to bigger and better venues after losing her.

This was a great story for its study of hypocrisy and very cynical and realistic examination of religion in America. (Sinclair did his homework, sitting in on a lot of church services to write this.) It's not exactly an indictment of Christianity and shouldn't be taken that way -- the novel doesn't take a stand on the rightness or wrongness of any particular religious beliefs, only on the all-too-realistic behavior of the clergy and parishioners. Sinclair writes a straightforward story with lots of minor characters, each of them very human and flawed and interesting. By the end of the book, you're really, really hoping that Elmer Gantry will finally get his comeuppance, but despite many close calls and setbacks over the course of his career, Gantry is like an eel who always seems to wriggle his way out of the worst of his difficulties.

Elmer Gantry

Enjoyable and interesting. I am glad he is not my minister. He is a character!!!