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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 camraderie. For four summer months, Conrad worked as Lewis’s personal secretary, chauffeur, and chess partner at Thorvale, a 700-acre estate near Williamstown, Massachusetts. In turn, Lewis mentored the young man’s first novel-in-progress. Although Sinclair Lewis has fallen out of fashion, many agree that no one wrote more clearly about America than he did. Barnaby Conrad’s Writers LIke Us, is a fascinating literary memoir about the intertwined lives of authors and the elusive nature of literary success.
Before he went on to write his iconic bestselling novel, Matador, young Barnaby Conrad spent a memorable, at times harrowing, summer as secretary to America’s first Nobel Literature laureate, Sinclair Lewis. Now Conrad’s son and namesake has shaped his father’s memoir into a riveting tale about what it was like to be mentored by this ultimately tragic figure who had been the dominant literary figure of his day. The result is a lively, fascinating, anecdote-rich account as well as a cautionary tale.
—Christopher Buckley, author of Losing Mum and Pup
Author:
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, Málaga, 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 in 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.