The Resource Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
Resource Information
The item Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in DC Public Library System.This item is available to borrow from 1 library branch.
Resource Information
The item Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in DC Public Library System.
This item is available to borrow from 1 library branch.
- 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
- Extent
- 898 pages
- Contents
-
- Main Street
- Babbitt
- Isbn
- 9780940450615
- Label
- Main Street & Babbitt
- Title
- Main Street & Babbitt
- Statement of responsibility
- Sinclair Lewis
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Label
- Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
- 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
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<div class="citation" vocab="http://schema.org/"><i class="fa fa-external-link-square fa-fw"></i> Data from <span resource="http://link.dclibrary.org/portal/Main-Street--Babbitt-Sinclair-Lewis/XO_2KQD9Ae8/" typeof="Book http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/Item"><span property="name http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/label"><a href="http://link.dclibrary.org/portal/Main-Street--Babbitt-Sinclair-Lewis/XO_2KQD9Ae8/">Main Street & Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis</a></span> - <span property="potentialAction" typeOf="OrganizeAction"><span property="agent" typeof="LibrarySystem http://library.link/vocab/LibrarySystem" resource="http://link.dclibrary.org/"><span property="name http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/label"><a property="url" href="http://link.dclibrary.org/">DC Public Library System</a></span></span></span></span></div>
