
Writers Like Us
My Life with Sinclair Lewis
Barnaby Conrad(Author)
Barnaby Conrad III(Editor)
Academica Press
Published on 31. March 2025
Book
Hardback
200 pages
978-1-68053-420-7 (ISBN)
Description
Writers Like Us is a poignant literary memoir by Barnaby Conrad, who had the good fortune to be mentored by Sinclair Lewis, the first American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the spring of 1947, the 25 year-old Conrad was living in Santa Barbara, California, when he met Lewis. Conrad was struggling with his first novel, while Lewis, then 62, was in the twilight of his career. While they both had studied at Yale and had the same literary agent, they could not have been more different. A charming San Francisco-native, Conrad had been a dashing diplomat in Spain during World War II, an amateur bullfighter, a cocktail pianist, and a gifted portrait artist. Lewis was an awkward but strident genius from the Midwest, a sharp-tongued literary giant whose face had been ravaged by skin cancer. He had been married and divorced twice and was deeply lonely. Conrad was in awe of Lewis's global stature and charmed by his crusty humor and humanity. This odd couple instantly developed a camaraderie. Over a four-month period spent at Thorvale, a 700-acre estate in Williamstown, Massachusetts, Conrad worked as Lewis's personal secretary and mentored the young man's first novel-in-progress. Although Sinclair Lewis has fallen out of fashion, many writers agree that no one wrote more clearly about America than he. In Writers Like Us, Barnaby Conrad wrote a fascinating literary memoir of the intertwined lives of the two authors and the elusive nature of literary success.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Bethesda
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
386 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-68053-420-7 (9781680534207)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
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E-Book
01/2025
Academica Press
€31.49
Available for download
Persons
Barnaby Conrad (1922-2013) was an American author, artist, nightclub proprietor, bullfighter, and filmmaker. After graduating from Yale, Conrad served from 1943 to 1946 as the U.S. vice consul in Seville, Malaga, and Barcelona. While in Spain, he studied bullfighting and became the only American to have fought in that country, Mexico, and Peru. In 1947, he served as secretary to Sinclair Lewis, the first American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. John Steinbeck chose Conrad's 1952 novel Matador as his favorite book of the year, and it was translated into over 20 languages. Conrad started the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in 1973, inviting well-known authors such as Eudora Welty, Ray Bradbury, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, and Ross Macdonald. His charcoal portraits of Truman Capote, James Michener, and Alex Haley are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
Barnaby Conrad III (b. 1952) majored in painting at Yale and became an artist, art critic, and author of twelve non-fiction books, including Absinthe: History in a Bottle, Ghost Hunting in Montana, and Jacques Villegle and the Streets of Paris. A former magazine editor at Horizon and Forbes Life, he was a special correspondent in Paris for the San Francisco Chronicle and now teaches aspiring authors at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. He and his family live in Accomac, Virginia and San Francisco.
Barnaby Conrad III (b. 1952) majored in painting at Yale and became an artist, art critic, and author of twelve non-fiction books, including Absinthe: History in a Bottle, Ghost Hunting in Montana, and Jacques Villegle and the Streets of Paris. A former magazine editor at Horizon and Forbes Life, he was a special correspondent in Paris for the San Francisco Chronicle and now teaches aspiring authors at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. He and his family live in Accomac, Virginia and San Francisco.