Main Street on Main Street: Community Identity and the Reputation of Sinclair Lewis

Abstract

Whereas sociologists have devoted extensive attention to the development of individual identity, the question of community identity has not received similar treatment. Most examinations of collective identity assume that communities build upon positive events and memories, but what about those communities that are forced to deal with criticism? The case of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the hometown of the Nobel Prize winning novelist Sinclair Lewis, is instructive in this regard. In his first major novel, Main Street, Lewis was highly critical of the fictional town of Gopher Prairie, a thinly disguised Sauk Centre. Yet, within a few years reputational entrepreneurs in Sauk Centre had incorporated Lewis and the image of “Main Street” into the town's cultural identity, using these images to promote the town. We examine five processes by which this transformation occurred: revaluation, incorporating positive commentary, confronting negative commentary, selective omission, and contextualization.