Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize, which I just found that the author declined, it is ranked 1630th on The Greatest Books of All Time – you find many reviews on magnum opera from The GOAT and other sites, along with notes on films on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html I will be pleased if you visit and ecstatic if you subscribe

 

Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize, which I just found that the author declined, it is ranked 1630th on The Greatest Books of All Time – you find many reviews on magnum opera from The GOAT and other sites, along with notes on films on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html I will be pleased if you visit and ecstatic if you subscribe

 

9 out of 10

 

The Hero compared with the Orange Villain

 

Most often, when I read or see a movie these days I think about the protagonist, the ideals, moral in the book or film in contrast with what I see in the world today – now I have in the background the show Washington Week with The Atlantic, I listened to it on every Saturday and they comment on what happened in the past seven days

 

While Arrowsmith is a hero, we have now a model that is the Mobster – modelled on the Orange Fool from the White House, no longer the building we knew, for he is demolishing part of it – embraced by the MAGA cult, but alas, also by a few billion around the world, those who vote for the extremists, Taliban, fundamentalists

Part of the reason why many people support such ghouls (though reason has nothing to do with it, as the process which involves rational process and more) is explained in Lake Wobegon Days https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/lake-wobegon-days-nine-out-of-10.html and we have the term:

 

‘The Lake Wobegon Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals overestimate their own abilities, believing they are above average compared to others’ this can become a serious condition, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and we see it at the highest level, the buffoon who talked in Davos the other day is the quintessential mental case

Arrowsmith https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/arrowsmith-by-sinclair-lewis-awesome.html has impressed me the first time, the feeling now, encountering the hero for the second time is that he may be obsolete, as mentioned before, people are either stupid, or else so greedy they elect people without any qualms

 

H.L. Mencken said that ‘Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard’ and it so funny and accurate, indeed, he is one of my favorite thinkers, only what about the rest of us, those who have to live with the consequences of the decisions of the hoi polloi?

I was thinking that even in science, the type of human who succeeds is not Arrowsmith today, but the likes of Musk, Peter Thiele, albeit the latter may be more of a financial wizard, I am not sure, I know he is behind quite a few startups and has good ideas for business, innovation, but on another level, he is crazy, talking about the Antichrist and mad theories

Finally, America used the be a dream place, Arrowsmith was born there, if only in the mind of Sinclair Lewis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/babbitt-by-sinclair-lewis.html whereas now, they have brilliant human beings – my sister is a doctor in Chicago – but MAGA gave us their idiot leader to watch ranting and threatening war

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

 

 

 

 

 

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