In a long and turbulent career, Sinclair Lewis met thousands of people. Only rarely, though, did chance meetings develop into more meaningful relationships, and what few friendships Lewis formed were invariably short-lived. Perhaps the stinging rebuffs he met as a child from the “gang” his brother Claude led made him wary of becoming close to people; perhaps the reasons lie elsewhere; but Sinclair Lewis spent much of his life largely friendless. However, the friendship he formed with Walter F. White lasted for nearly a quarter of a century and to some extent was reflected in Lewis' novels.
