My illustrated version of Moby Dick is off to the printers so I’m on to the next thing. I enjoyed working on that one enough to throw the bucket in a similar well. Another public domain classic crying out for a redesign and some drawings that can, at least obliquely, refer to our horrible historic moment.

Sinclair Lewis was once a very big deal but is mostly forgotten today. He wrote a series of bestsellers in the 1920s and was the first American to win the Nobel in literature. He may be best remembered today for It Can’t Happen Here, a novel that imagines a fascist being elected president. That’s too on the nose even for me.

I was tempted to choose Elmer Gantry, his portrait of a demagogue preacher, but there’s a very good movie version with Burt Lancaster. It would be a distraction and maybe too much of a hurdle not to draw that antihero as Burt.

I’ve read Babbitt a couple times. George Babbitt might be Lewis’s most enduring and resonant character. An empty suit whose one concern is how he’s judged by others. At one time his surname was widespread enough to become a noun synonymous with hollow materialism. The idea fits these times very well, I think.

I’d donated my 1922 hardcover of the novel to Tangible when I gutted my library. A couple weeks ago I found it on the shelf and took it home. I made a couple drawings in ballpoint like the Moby Dick ones, then tried sumi ink, finally settled on pencil.

I think this one will go straight out to Amazon. Quick and dirty. Available everywhere. It’s the opposite of my approach to books up to now. Maybe this one and Moby will make some impact.

Feels like I’m making a pact with the devil but that’s what the times call for. I’m done fighting it. All that’s left is to watch the parade of horribles swagger by.