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The Resource Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis

Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis

Creator
Contributor
Summary
  • In Main Street and Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis drew on his boyhood memories of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to reveal as no writer had done before the complacency and conformity of middle-class life in America. These remarkable novels combine brilliant satire with a lingering affection for the men and women who, as Lewis wrote of Babbitt, want "to seize something more than motor cars and a house before it's too late."
  • Main Street (1920), Lewis's first triumph, was a phenomenal event in American publishing and cultural history. Lewis's idealistic, imaginative heroine, Carol Kennicott, longs "to get [her] hands on one of these prairie towns and make it beautiful," but when her doctor husband brings her to Gopher Prairie, she finds that the romance of the American frontier has dwindled to the drab reality of the American Middle West. Carol first struggles against and then flees the social tyrannies and cultural emptiness of Gopher Prairie, only to submit at last to the conventions of village life. The great romantic satire of its decade, Main Street is a wry, sad, funny account of a woman who attempts to challenge the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of her community
  • "I know of no American novel that more accurately presents the real America," wrote H.L. Mencken when Babbitt appeared in 1922. "As an old professor of Babbittry I welcome him as an almost perfect specimen. Every American city swarms with his brothers. He is America incarnate, exuberant and exquisite." In the character of George F. Babbitt, the boisterous, vulgar, worried, gadget-loving real estate man from Zenith, Lewis fashioned a new and enduring figure in American literature - the total conformist. Babbitt is a "joiner," who thinks and feels with the crowd. Lewis surrounds him with a gallery of familiar American types - small businessmen, Rotarians, Elks, boosters, supporters of evangelical Christianity. In bitingly satirical scenes of club lunches, after-dinner speeches, trade association conventions, fishing trips, and Sunday School committees, Lewis reproduces the noisy restlessness of American commercial culture
  • In 1930 Sinclair Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, largely for his achievement in Babbitt. These early novels not only define a crucial period in American history - from America's "coming of age" just before World War I to the dizzying boom of the twenties - they also continue to astonish us with essential truths about the country we live in today
Language
eng
Work
Publication
Extent
898 pages
Contents
  • Main Street
  • Babbitt
Isbn
9780940450615
Instance
Label
Main Street & Babbitt
Title
Main Street & Babbitt
Statement of responsibility
Sinclair Lewis
Creator
Contributor
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
  • In Main Street and Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis drew on his boyhood memories of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to reveal as no writer had done before the complacency and conformity of middle-class life in America. These remarkable novels combine brilliant satire with a lingering affection for the men and women who, as Lewis wrote of Babbitt, want "to seize something more than motor cars and a house before it's too late."
  • Main Street (1920), Lewis's first triumph, was a phenomenal event in American publishing and cultural history. Lewis's idealistic, imaginative heroine, Carol Kennicott, longs "to get [her] hands on one of these prairie towns and make it beautiful," but when her doctor husband brings her to Gopher Prairie, she finds that the romance of the American frontier has dwindled to the drab reality of the American Middle West. Carol first struggles against and then flees the social tyrannies and cultural emptiness of Gopher Prairie, only to submit at last to the conventions of village life. The great romantic satire of its decade, Main Street is a wry, sad, funny account of a woman who attempts to challenge the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of her community
  • "I know of no American novel that more accurately presents the real America," wrote H.L. Mencken when Babbitt appeared in 1922. "As an old professor of Babbittry I welcome him as an almost perfect specimen. Every American city swarms with his brothers. He is America incarnate, exuberant and exquisite." In the character of George F. Babbitt, the boisterous, vulgar, worried, gadget-loving real estate man from Zenith, Lewis fashioned a new and enduring figure in American literature - the total conformist. Babbitt is a "joiner," who thinks and feels with the crowd. Lewis surrounds him with a gallery of familiar American types - small businessmen, Rotarians, Elks, boosters, supporters of evangelical Christianity. In bitingly satirical scenes of club lunches, after-dinner speeches, trade association conventions, fishing trips, and Sunday School committees, Lewis reproduces the noisy restlessness of American commercial culture
  • In 1930 Sinclair Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, largely for his achievement in Babbitt. These early novels not only define a crucial period in American history - from America's "coming of age" just before World War I to the dizzying boom of the twenties - they also continue to astonish us with essential truths about the country we live in today
Related
Member of
Cataloging source
DLC
http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/collectionName
Main Street
http://library.link/vocab/creatorDate
1885-1951
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
Lewis, Sinclair
Index
no index present
Literary form
fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography
http://library.link/vocab/relatedWorkOrContributorDate
1885-1951
http://library.link/vocab/relatedWorkOrContributorName
Lewis, Sinclair
Series statement
The Library of America
Series volume
59
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
  • Women college graduates
  • Physicians' spouses
  • City and town life
  • Married women
  • Middle-aged men
  • Businessmen
  • Conformity
  • Minnesota
Label
Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
Instantiates
Publication
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 885-898)
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Contents
Main Street -- Babbitt
Control code
ocm25245462
Dimensions
21 cm.
Extent
898 pages
Isbn
9780940450615
Lccn
91058224
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
n
System control number
(OCoLC)25245462
Label
Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
Publication
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 885-898)
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Contents
Main Street -- Babbitt
Control code
ocm25245462
Dimensions
21 cm.
Extent
898 pages
Isbn
9780940450615
Lccn
91058224
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
n
System control number
(OCoLC)25245462

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