Babbitt, Minnesota

Babbit by Sinclair Lewis Audio is courtesy of Librivox. Thanks for viewing! Please like, comment and subscribe :) (Summary by Mike Vendetti) Sinclair Lewis' George F. Babbitt is a complicated and conflicted character. When you think you have his next move figured out he surprises you. As you begin to like him, he does something to evoke the "what a rat" response. Male menopause wasn't a pre Great Depression term, but I would say George has all the symptoms. At a pudgy balding forty six he looks at his life, wife, family and business. He sees himself as a pretty successful business man, but when Tanis, the lonely widow has a leaky roof, he sees an opportunity for perhaps a more fulfilling relationship then he has at home. Add to Tanis a foray into radical politics, and we are about to witness an emotional and financial train wreck with Babbitt at the throttle. This is a long story, but well worth listening to. Human nature hasn't changed much in the last ninety years. Babbitt, first published in 1922, is a novel by Sinclair Lewis. Largely a satire of American culture, society, and behavior, it critiques the vacuity of middle-class American life and its pressure on individuals toward conformity. An immediate and controversial bestseller, Babbitt is one of Lewis' best-known novels and was influential in the decision to award him the Nobel Prize in literature in 1930 If Lewis' first widely acclaimed novel, Main Street, sought to shatter early 20th-century romanticizations of small-town America, his subsequent work, Babbitt, turned a critical eye towards the celebrated mid-sized industrial city, home to the enterprising American businessman. Following the social instability and sharp economic depression that emerged in the wake of World War I, many Americans in the 1920s saw business and city growth as foundations for stability. The civic boosters and self-made men of the middle-class represented particularly American depictions of success, at a time when the promotion of the American identity was crucial in the face of rising fears over communism. At the same time, growing Midwestern cities, usually associated with mass production and the emergence of a consumer society, were also celebrated emblems of American progress. George F. Babbitt, the principal character of the novel, is described by the 1930 Nobel Prize committee as "the ideal of an American popular hero of the middle-class. The relativity of business morals as well as private rules of conduct is for him an accepted article of faith, and without hesitation he considers it God's purpose that man should work, increase his income, and enjoy modern improvements. Although many other popular novelists writing at the time of Babbitt's publication depict the "Roaring Twenties" as an era of social change and disillusionment with material culture, modern scholars argue that Lewis was not himself a member of the "lost generation" of younger writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or Joyce. Instead, he was influenced by the Progressive Era; and changes in the American identity that accompanied the country's rapid urbanization, technological growth, industrialization, and the closing of the frontier. Although the Progressive Era had built a protective barrier around the upstanding American businessman, as one literary scholar writes: "Lewis was fortunate enough to come on the scene just as the emperor's clothes were disappearing." [5] Lewis has been compared to many authors, writing before and after the publication of Babbitt, who made similar criticisms of the middle-class. Although published long before Babbitt in 1899, Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, which critiqued consumer culture and social competition at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, is an oft-cited point of comparison.[6] Written decades later, in 1961, David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd, has also been compared to Lewis's writings. PLOT Lewis has been both criticized and congratulated for his unorthodox writing style in Babbitt. As one reviewer puts it: "There is no plot whatever... Babbitt simply grows two years older as the tale unfolds." Lewis presents a chronological series of scenes in the life of his title character. After introducing George F. Babbitt as a middle-aged man, "nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay," Lewis presents a meticulously detailed description of Babbitt's morning routine

• published: 28 Dec 2012
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