Babbitt

Classic satire of the American businessman and capitalist culture in general. As one earlier reviewer here states: "shockingly modern". I was drawn to this book after hearing Joseph Campbell quote Babbitt in the "Power of Myth" video series: "I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life!", Babbitt tells his son at the end of the novel. He's hoping that his son will be strong enough not to turn into him, and it's a quintessential moment because it's simultaneously sad and uplifting. Babbitt is someone most of us have encountered, or, if we're honest and perceptive enough to admit it, are or have been ourselves. This makes him very easy to sympathize with and his patriotic, capitalist "zippo" appeals to the democratic idealism most Americans want so badly to believe in. We root for him, while despising him at the same time. We resent being confronted with this mirror of superficiality (or should be, if you disagree with me). He struggles internally with the discrepencies between the capitalist bag of goods he's been sold, and his own natural desires, values, and free will. Like most people unwilling or unable to rebel or break out on their own, Babbitt settles on an un-easy compromise: conformity. This only after humorous, sometimes bold, but ultimately futile attempts to "break free" (I'm reminded of Jim Carrey's character, Truman, slamming into the mysterious "sky/walls" of the pre-fab world he's been caged within in the 1998's poignant movie, "The Truman Show"). Babbitt is punished by society's worst weapon - ostracism - and so we watch him buckle and fold neatly back into the herd. This is the only book I've ever actually "heard"; and it's the unmistakable, tragic sound of a spirit breaking in two. Most sadly of all and even more tragically for society, we understand.

The action happens in a Midwest city called Zenith -your typical Cleveland, Cincinnatti or Minneapolis, during the 20's. The US are getting out of nation teenage and moving on to superpower status, which will come about after WWII. America is getting rich and the middle class which is its bakcbone is rapidly developing towards the crisis of the Great Depression and the further revival. Many guys are getting rich in the business-friendly country. George F. Babbitt is one of them, proud, ignorant and conformist. It is interstting to compare this novel to the ones by Scott Fitzgerald (the frivolity and wild life of the very rich) and to Steinbeck (the misery of the lowest clasees). Babbitt is the business man, the middle class self-made-man who really built what the US are today. The portrait, however, is not a celebration. Deep inside of him, Babbitt feels the hollowness, the vacuity of a life built around petty business success, a heartless social and family life, and the pretentiousness of his surroundings. At some point, Babbitt tries to rebel against society, but fails utterly, just as his friend Paul, a frustrated violinist turned roof-material salesman, who will end up in jail. It is the story of a man who tries to break up the mold of a rigid society, but is unable to do so for lack of will and spirit.
Although it is certainly unfair and absurd to think that all middle-class life is empty or unhappy, this is a powerful book in that it crudely depicts the dangers of conformity, of the "quiet desperation" of the life devoted solely to material success and social status, with no spiritual or intellectual life whatsoever. It should be read even more now, when American society is conforming to keeping the lowest common denominator in social life, and where mediocrity is rampant in the popular arts and entertainment.

The themes in Babbitt are as relevant now as they were when this book first appeared nearly 100 years ago. George F. Babbitt is a successful middle aged businessman and and respected member of the local establishment. He appears to have everything: a wife, a family, his own business, political connections that make his life smooth...and yet something's wrong. He begins to wonder "is this all there is?" Surely, an eternal question for those who have attained everything that society says they should in order to find fulfillment.

Babbitt is a blowhard and a rather shallow thinker; he's never questioned the premise that the right college, a solid busineess standing and societal connections are what lead to happiness. Somehow, he stumbles into a world of politically dangerous "liberal" thinkers and members of society who live in a world parallel to his, but askew from its conservativeness. He dabbles in illicit affairs with women not his wife, he attends parties and is seen cavorting with those his "upright" friends don't approve of. He soon finds his previously friendly society groups greeting him with a frosty apprehension. He's even directly threatened with the loss of their support. All of these events and more cause him to question whether he's ever really done anything he wanted to do or whether he simply did what he did because it was the "right" thing to do in the opinion of the powerful around him. A classic mid-life dilemma from the early 20th century.

I am not saying that Babbitt is unreadable, or even a discredit to Lewis in relation to his other work. This was my first Lewis novel: A cynosure, a statement by the man who, with touches of Flaubert and Anderson, crafted painstaking and rewarding satires rife with conformists and cavaliers, and the boredom and outrage experienced by outcasts in small towns and mid-sized cities alike. I read Babbitt a few years ago, and found it a delight to the last.
But it isn't Main Street, the book that helped to gel my admiration of Lewis' craftsmanship. This is why I suggested that first time readers sound Lewis' art by trying out the earlier book before Babbitt. It seems that those aspects that set Main Street like a needle in the eye of small town sameness and malaise: Incisive satire, wit and a mirthfulness that often counteract the more melancholy stretches; and a beautiful troupe of dissatisfied outcasts (Guy Pollock, the bachelor attorney; Miles Bjornstam, itinerant Swedish horse trader turned semi-settled by marriage; Erik Valborg, a tailor with a poetic bent who mispronounces words and runs off to Chicago to star in cheap pictures), are all overstated in Babbitt. There are some surprises: Paul shooting Zeena, George's affair with Tanis Judique, and Ted's elopement with Eunice Littlefield. But, overemphasis on George's hypocritical stance on liquor and his overconsumption of the same, as well as lengthy passages explaining the efforts George undertakes to quit smoking before unceremoniously lighting up again, put lead in the shoes of the story. However, this is still a great book, with some startling prose to its credit. Just give Main Street a glance before you give this a shot.

Sinclair Lewis and Thomas Hart Benton, the artist, were about the same age, they both focussed on the American Heartland, and as I read Lewis, I see that they both had something else in common. They both had a tendency to draw cartoonish characters. George F. Babbitt is the main character of a satire by the same name; you might even laugh aloud in some places. Lewis is skillful, but at times, heavy-handed. He has portrayed an average Joe of 1920, the pep- and vim-obsessed go-getting businessman who was the bedrock of our industrial age, hypocritical, materialist, crooked, conformist, even proto-fascist. Babbitt is a real estate agent, a family man surrounded by the wealth of material goods provided by thriving industrial capitalism. He belongs enthusiastically and unquestioningly to any organization dedicated to preserving his and his family's ready access to those goods---professional group (realtors association), Boosters, church, and set social circle. He spouts meaningless platitudes on every subject, knows nothing except the price of real estate and methods of collusion, and ignores his feelings, his family, and the rest of the world, all the while believing that his city, state, and country are the best in the world. The first 90-odd pages of BABBITT are pure genius; one of the best character portraits you are likely to find in American literature---but it is a caricature after all. Lewis' choice of names underlines his cartoonish glee in writing this brilliant novel---Vergil Gunch, Professor Pumphrey, Chet Laylock, Matt Penniman, Muriel Frink, Opal Mudge, Carrie Nork, and Miss McGoun---names that could have been annexed years later by MAD magazine ! "Babbitt" has long been a word in American English, signifying a conforming materialist citizen without a mind of his own. Perhaps this is not entirely fair.
George goes through a mid-life crisis, rebels against his static, materialistic life with its know-nothing attitudes, its moral certitudes, and its boring routines. His closest friend (aren't there certain unspoken overtones of homosexual love ?) commits a dastardly deed, breaking George's heart. "On the rebound", he meets the fantastically-named Tanis Judique, femme fatale à la Midwest. Certain consequences arise, Lewis brings in his ever-present fear of American fascist tendencies, and there's a rather hopeful ending, also in the American tradition. If you are looking for a place to begin reading Sinclair Lewis, BABBITT is an excellent choice. If you already know other Lewis novels, don't miss this one. I would say that with "Main Street", "Elmer Gantry" and "Dodsworth", BABBITT is at the solid gold core of Sinclair Lewis' work. He certainly did deserve that Nobel Prize.

Sinclair Lewis was the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature with a remarkable collection of books including Babbitt and Main Street. I have to say that he writes clearly most of the time. There are times that I wished that he would just get on with it. Zenith is small town America and that is where the protagonist and family lives. George is supposed to be satisifed with his mundane life but he isn't just like Carol wasn't in Main Street. Small town life seems suffocate George and Carol and that is theme in Lewis' novels. If you despise your hometown or small town life, then read Sinclair Lewis. I am just surprised that there is no movie based on his works. Maybe they would not work because it is character driven and not plot driven today.
I know that Sinclair Lewis novels like Elmer Gantry and Dodsworth were adapted to the screen. Classics like Babbitt are timeless and should be taught in schools and adapted to the screen. American Classics like Babbitt and Main Street seem to be disregarded in favor of lighter, inferior fare for the audiences. We have to stop dummying down the audiences' mentality.

America doesn't need a bronze memorial statue in the city park in the likeness of George F. Babbitt, the eminent businessman. (Imagine it: the statue would be of a rotund man in a high collar shirt, in suit pants cut too high at the cuff, holding a chewed cigar, and standing foot-forward in the pioneer stance of a successful salesman.) American has the memorial in print in this period novel.
Set in 1920, Lewis crafted the title character to portray the new mammalian beast reigning in the business world: The Middle Class Salesman. The species is very much alive and well in our era, but Lewis was first to discover and name this gargantuan, this colossal figure of Commericalism. Lewis stands behind Babbitt much like a puppeteer would, making him respond on cue, and making his actions create the beginning of the fall of the Empire. For these reasons alone, one should read this novel.
By now, the statue may have been marked by pigeons, but the permanent stare to the west by this hollow cast figure stands as a reminder to the rest of us that, although they lit the way, the got singed in the process. For this, we revere our business leaders.

Sinclair Lewis wrote a series of satires that exposed the hypocrisy of early 20th century America. “Babbitt” is a snapshot of the life of George F. Babbitt, a somewhat prosperous middle class businessman who lives in Zenith, Ohio. Zenith has a population of 300,000+, and has an active business community. This community has its own rituals and ironclad rules. These rules consist of being one of the gang, being a member of all the right clubs and organizations, and never deviating from the ideals of business and money. These rules cause enormous difficulties for Babbitt when he goes through a midlife crisis at the end of the book and begins spouting liberal ideas and associating with the “wrong” crowd.
This is my first encounter with Sinclair Lewis. I really don’t know why I chose to read “Babbitt” first, as I also have copies of “Main Street” and “Arrowsmith”. I think it was the unusual cover of the Penguin edition, which is a picture of a painting called “Booster” by Grant Wood. To me, that picture IS Babbitt, and I’ll always be able to see Babbitt in my head whenever I’m reminded of this book.There really isn’t a lot of symbolism here (and the symbolism that is here is pretty easy to decipher) and the prose is much closer to our present day writing and speech. This is brilliant satire, and you’ll laugh out loud at many of the situations Babbitt gets himself into. An especially hilarious incident occurs when one of the local millionaire businessmen finally accepts an invitation to dine with Babbitt. The evening goes badly because Babbitt is in a lower social class. Lewis then shows Babbitt going to a dinner at an old friends house who is in a lower class then him. It’s hilarious to see the similarities between the two events, and it brings home how class is strictly enforced in Zenith, and by extension, America.
Babbitt is a person that I found myself both hating and liking, often within the space of one page. He’s ignorant, in that he is a major conformist who often repeats slogans and phrases merely because others in his circle say the same things. He’s a namedropper who refers to people he doesn’t even know as though they were his best friends. He’s also high volume. Babbitt is one of those people we all know who is always boisterous and noisy so they can hide their own insecurities or ignorance. Just when you think you can’t stand Babbitt for another second, Lewis tosses in a situation that makes you feel for the man. Babbitt is the boss at a real estate company, and he worries about his employees liking him. When a confrontation arises with one of his salesmen, Babbitt frets and doesn’t want to fire the guy, although the rules of business eventually force him to do exactly that. He wants all of his employees to like him. He also feels bad about cheating on his wife while she is away and worries about what his children will think of him when he comes in drunk after a night of carousing. Ultimately, although Babbitt can be a major heel, the reader is almost forced to sympathize with him. This is true especially at the end of the book, when Babbitt renounces his liberal ways and rejoins his old colleagues. His return to the pack is not quite complete, however. Babbitt is changed by his transgression, and has learned a few lessons that he imparts to his son on the last page of the book, thus ending the tale on an upbeat note.
I would like to have seen a better section of explanatory notes in this Penguin edition. While some of the more obscure references are defined, many are not. Also, some of the language in the book is very 1920’s slang, and for a 21st century ear, it can be difficult to pick up on some of them. This book is both funny and sad, but well worth reading. Sinclair Lewis eventually won Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for his literary endeavors. It’s not hard to see why. Recommended.

Lewis was an enormously successful writer in the 1920s (really on the same level as Hemmingway and Fitzgerald), but he has faded and is hardly read today. This, however, has no bearing on the importance of his writing. His writings reveal the social realities and concerns of his time. He focuses on individuals not communities (not bound together in any organic way). He is also skeptical about success and the American dream. There is a real sense of contempt toward the middle-class in Lewis. He really fills in a gap in The Great Gatsby, which included old money, new money, and the working class, but where is the middle class. As a result, Lewis' is famous for satirizing the middle class.
Lewis wrote Babbitt in 1922, and based it on sociological research in Midwestern cities. He spent months simply observing. A little backgroud information: first, George F. Babbitt is a real-estate agent and land has become a commodity in the 1920s. Second, the reader presumes Babbitt to have been a progressive in his younger years since his son is named Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt. Third, Babbitt is going through a midlife crisis. Lewis offers a satirical view of Middle American life. Lewis is closely attuned to the nuances of social classes. Within the middle class Lewis teases out differences in rank (lower-middle and upper-middle). He examines social conformity and the pressures of the group on behavior. Lewis also observes the new mass culture and the automobile's impact.
Also adding to the success and interest of Babbitt is the fact that Babit can be read as an authentic, fully developed character throughout the novel. Babbitt is a success but he has a tremendous feeling of longing for things not accomplished due to social reality. Babbitt is a conservative, but quite amazingly he becomes involved in a socialist's campaign. His character is transforming. He even joins a bohemian circle (Lewis offers a description for the counter-culture). He realizes that there are social conformities that exist in this small group of Bohemians as well as in "normal" middle class.
Lewis also turns away from the city and towards the wilderness. This encounter with nature represents that chance of reenergizing or rejuvenating. Babbitt goes to a fishing camp where Joe Paradise is the guide. But Babbitt realizes that there are no more canoes. Instead they have been replaced with motor boats. However, there are still no cities or stores. Joe tells Babbitt that he would move to the city and open a store if he had the money to do so. This is a pivotal point in Lewis' story. Joe Paradise wants the life that Babbitt has and finds so frustrating. Babbitt realizes that he is shaped by the city.
The one real change that Babbitt makes in his life occur is in the realm of family intimacy. His marriage is dead in the beginning of the book, but his wife has a medical emergency. It is in that situation that Babit rediscovers his love for his wife. It also confirms Babbitt's entrapment. In order to have this intimacy Babbitt has to accept the conformities of the city life.
Babbitt is a tremendously important description of a man and the affect of city life in the new urban America.

Before reading "Babbitt," a 1920s-era cavalcade of a middle-class social climber's daily life and decline--by one of America's most illimitable muckrackers--ignore, if you can, academic whiners who insist Sinclair Lewis wrote second-rate novels that have lost their luster. Even if you find Lewis' almost chirpy, concise and unusually witty treatment of George Babbitt--booster, scoundrel, moral klutz--offputting and oddly reminiscent of the typical "personality profile" you'd probably find in "People" or "Newsweek"...you'll be amazed at how closely "Babbitt" mirrors the conventional business ethic behind today's headlines.
Eighty years after its initial publication, "Babbitt" resounds with the kind of disgust anti-WTO protesters registered in 2000 against America's empire of "market forces"--and what that kind of misbehavior can do to a person. But perhaps eighty years has been far too long--at least long enough for us to forget Lewis' powerful message. Yes, long after the nation's initial sip of The Gilded Age revealed a dissonant aftertaste--one that resulted in both civil unrest and the eight-hour workday, medical benefits for employees, Social Security and hundreds of other hard-won reforms--the reappearance of a new, lean-and-hungry Babbitt on the cusp of the 21st Century requires that we never forget to remember where avarice, hubris and self-satisfaction have led us before. Babbitt is rich. Now what?
Did we already ask you to take a look at George Babbitt? Well, just take a look at that good old George Babbitt--an orotund, well-dressed farmboy who honestly believes that a smallish fortune in real estate is proof positive that he is "superior" and some kind of Renaissance Man. Really nothing more than a self-deluded social climber desperate to gain more status and lose the private celebrity of a rootlessness he can't grasp, Babbitt is driven by the forces that made him: Having been taught to confuse "consuming" with "power", "real estate" with "substance" and "self-interest" with "morality", Babbitt never seems to understand where his superficial understanding of himself and the world is bound to end. Still, without what constantly elludes and haunts him--what more to expect from a walking market survey?--Babbitt just knows he'd be nothing. Even when opportunity knocks and the reader sees how far out of his league he has managed to malinger, Babbitt the Fool threatens to snowball right into oblivion. His values just aren't up to snuff when it comes to footing the bill in the purchase of his illusions. He's a cross between a bush-league Donald Trump and Frankenstein.
Sinclair Lewis is perhaps the only Nobel-Prizewinning author who never gave up his day job: As a novelist, Lewis remained a journalist at heart. Not content to muse and muddle over deep feelings or states of being, Lewis, in the style of any good muckracker, literally cut to the chase, opting pragmatically to hook-up with a large audience rather than appease a small circle of critics--who, by the way, came along for the ride anyway. This popular novel about the boundaries of what we now call "pop culture" may ring like a tin trumpet in the ears of those who are now accustomed to a more up-to-date tone-of-voice. But remember: The tone-of-voice Lewis used in "Babbitt" mirrors the superficiality and cloyed nature of his subject. "Babbitt" is an uproariously political novel that wields political correctness like a crowbar.

I just spent fourteen hours over the last couple of weeks with George F. Babbitt, listening to the audio version of Babbitt. I wouldn't recommend his company to anyone. He is a joiner, follower, flaky, unreliable and a man of no agency. Things happen to him and he acts or reacts trying to sound out what he thinks others might think best of him.

George F. Babbitt is not my friend, no matter how much time I have spent with him recently. I wouldn't suspect you want to be his friend either. I suppose that this is a credit to what I think of your character. As for Babbitt though, he is an interesting character, but I don't know if Lewis created a new archetype or just adapted one. I think this is a triumph no matter, as he created a character sketch that is effective but never defines the character.

I still don't know who George F. Babbitt is, do you?

As some other readers have noted, this is not Lewis's best work (I always liked "It Can't Happen Here", Lewis's story of how fascism could have come to America) - but I liked it. I am not sure Lewis has much of a grasp of the eternal characteristics of the human heart, but he does a good job of sketching a specific type of person in a specific place and time, kind of like Tom Wolfe today. Unlike some reviewers, I don't think Lewis is unnecessarily venomous towards Babbitt -- at the end (when Babbitt tells his son to do what he enjoys instead of what his father did) he reveals himself to be somewhat of a mensch. I also don't think Babbitt is as much of a role model as some other reviewers think; his business ethics are too borderline, his attitude towards First Amendment values too cavalier. Generally, I liked Lewis more as a teenager than I do now; I think high schools should use his books more.

Sinclair Lewis' portrayal of the 1920's American social-class system is a scathing rebuke of the popular assumption that Americans live in a fair and open society. It is said that, in America, one can pull himself up by his bootstraps and attain whatever his heart desires, in the true spirit of Horatio Alger. In the go-get-`em America portrayed by Lewis in Babbitt, we see this familiar system at work. A closer look, however, reveals that the assumption of social mobility is false. In 1920's America (and even today), there is only the illusion of social mobility; not only are the Keys to the Kingdom still firmly in the hands of the Very Rich, but they also own the bootstraps.

The novel itself is a treasure-trove of atmosphere concerning life in America in the 1920's. Like Lewis' other four novels - Main Street, Elmer Gantry, Arrowsmith, and Dodsworth - Babbitt offers quite a panorama of important American values and concepts of the time before the Great Depression, including Prohibition, immigration, racism, wealth, social class, political corruption, evangelical religious hypocrisy, crusading social agendas, and gender inequality. The fictitious world in Babbitt is curiously - almost sickeningly - familiar. And it is for this reason that the novel resonates so strongly today.

It has been documented in literary circles that Sinclair Lewis winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930 (the first American to do so) was somewhat of a sham. I disagree; I think that his portrayal of American life during the "Roaring `20's" was brilliantly conceived and almost sociological in its execution.

Sinclair Lewis literally made a spiritual surgeon around the human being with his disventures and trivialities .

This merciless story must have been schoking the most advanced minds in that age . The scandal raised for this work was the clear signal about its inner qualities .

My kind reader ; I believe that any creation process somehow implies the destruction of the established previously order.

Think about the scandal generated for Le Sacre du prientemps in 1913 , the Marcel Duchamp works , The Eroica , The Sixtin Chapel or The Citizen Kane in movies .

If you are an artist and nothing happens beware what you are doing .

This book somehow broke the walls in the early thirties and allowed to Sinclair Lewis to throw his glow to the eternity with this masterwork .

Although the plot is slow and at points non-existent, "Babbitt" is still a great read for those interested in the social mores of the '20s as well as a great satire on conformity in American society. As satire it is wonderful, and for its the skewering of the conspicuous consumption habits of the middle class, it is definitely required reading.

Still, it was not always a compelling read. I got bored often as the chapters felt more like a compilation of sociological observations of all these different aspects of American life - the self-help culture, religion, family, work, sex - rather than a comprehensive story and narrative. It is very episodic and really could have been edited down a good deal. I did come to like Babbitt as a character and enjoyed the full-scale rebellion that occurs in the novel's final act. Still, it came to late and it seemed as if he never really paid a price for anything he did. The book was like an American version of "The Death of Ivan Ilych" in how the protagonist comes to devalue all that he previously values, although the ending was not as profound as Tolstoy's classic.

Finally, one theme of the novel that is never mentioned is Babbitt's deep longing for male bonding. Throughout the novel, he frequently is seeking good male friends and seeks out the raucous company of men and often feels unsatisfied with the result. He seems to feel quite feminized by the world he lives in.

As I was reading this book, I kept thinking, "What would a modern day Babbiit do?" What would be the equivalent of the nickel-plated cigar lighter he buys to impress people?

Although it is not always a satisfactory read, I think it's still an important novel to read for those interested in 20th-century Americana.

This endearing novel about George Babbitt, early 20th Century conventional middle-class success story, was easy and enjoyable to read; a page-turner. The bulk of the book is more a rich and extremely amusing description of the blustery, self-contented, self-deluding, benevolent Babbitt's day to day life as father, business-man, service club and church member than it is a typical novel with a clearly developing plot. When the plot finally develops, deep into the second half of the book, it is kind of a shock, and the chain of events seems contrived and outlandish. Without giving away what happens, suffice to say that Babbitt's whole system of beliefs is shaken, leaving him struggling to re-establish some kind of meaning in his life as his personal behavior veers wildly from what others expect of him. Like Lewis' prior novel, Main Street, the resolution involves the protagonist's acceptance or embracing of convention, although their experiences have allowed them to see it as a choice that is made rather than their only option.

Sinclair Lewis is best known for his novel Main Street. But Babbitt is a fine novel. H.G. Wells said of it: "I wish I could have written Babbitt." It's a novel about George F. Babbitt and the city he lives in, Zenith. Some of the greatest lines in the book are descriptions of Zenith, not the least of which is the opening lines. Lewis creates in Babbitt the total conformist and we follow him through his conformity and into thinking on his own. Babbitt is simply a man who wants to be liked by everyone. Babbitt gives expression to the glibness and irresponsibility of the professional social climber. Lewis gives us one of our modern classics.

For those unfamiliar with American history's dance with itself, "Babbitt" (1922) is shockingly modern. As eye-opening as "American Beauty" was for a certain suburban teen, this book is a delightful illustration of the travails and solemn duties of middle-class middle-aged white men. Since the content has become familiar, the mild inoculation of self-criticism (repackaged as entertainment a la Desperate Housewives) that remains is no longer the powerful strain it was in the period between the World Wars. This was a period of Dada denunciation of Hitler, widespread cynicism and thanks to a few bold writers, an era that made the public aware of its critics. These critics were resentfully thanked for their troubles but never invited to the right sort of parties.

America's curious balance of boastfulness and anti-intellectualism finds no better metaphor than in business, and this is where Sinclair Lewis directs our gaze. Who is George Babbitt? To what can we attribute his remarkable ability to get paid exactly what he earns? Is it Pep? Efficiency? Rotarianism? Lewis deftly shows us it is his gentle insensitivity to hypocrisy, and a well-meaning, lazy self-obsession that gets him what he's got coming. Much as our modern American protagonist Homer Simpson, Babbitt knows how to say just the right things to his wife so we don't hate him for his insensitivity. He expresses just enough empathy for the people he cheats. His ability to proudly repeat a cohesive, easily digestible set of morals is his best evidence of a free nation of thinkers. And that is, thinkers that think one mustn't spend too much time thinking instead of jawing with the neighbor, or giving lectures to the Chamber of Commerce. To possess self-reference without self-deference, that means you're a bleeding-heart Buttinski.

Yet somehow, the pervading sense one gets when reading Babbitt is that rather than part of a tradition of disenfranchised literary criticism, the book is part of an American tradition. Lewis, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

"I had realized in reading Balzac and Dickens that it was possible to describe French and English common people as one actually saw them. But it had never occurred to me that one might without indecency write of the people of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, as one felt about them. Our fictional tradition, you see, was that all of us in Midwestern villages were altogether noble and happy; that not one of us would exchange the neighborly bliss of living on Main Street for the heathen gaudiness of New York or Paris or Stockholm. But in Mr. Garland's Main-Traveled Roads I discovered that there was one man who believed that Midwestern peasants were sometimes bewildered and hungry and vile- and heroic. And, given this vision, I was released; I could write of life as living life."

Lewis argues it is the lack of a coherent American voice that enables writers like himself to be heard without comparison. But perhaps most disheartening is that not only do the traditions of hypocrisy seen in the book persist, but the vilifications of independent thinkers remain. The business world analogue exposes the entrepreneur as the all-desirable, but salaciously free-thinking, and displaces the ordinary business man thinking he is safe in conformity. Claiming intellectualism is a class act, and consequentially condemning them is a sleight of hand to eliminate the role of the everyday thinker, the man on the street who one evening decides to pick up a pen instead of the paper. Perhaps there is no better way to close a meditation on the role of the individual and the public than to return to Lewis:

"I salute them, with a joy in being not yet too far removed from their determination to give to the America that has mountains and endless prairies, enormous cities and lost far cabins, billions of money and tons of faith, to an America that is as strange as Russia and as complex as China, a literature worthy of her vastness."

I just spent fourteen hours over the last couple of weeks with George F. Babbitt, listening to the audio version of Babbitt. I wouldn't recommend his company to anyone. He is a joiner, follower, flaky, unreliable and a man of no agency. Things happen to him and he acts or reacts trying to sound out what he thinks others might think best of him.

George F. Babbitt is not my friend, no matter how much time I have spent with him recently. I wouldn't suspect you want to be his friend either. I suppose that this is a credit to what I think of your character. As for Babbitt though, he is an interesting character, but I don't know if Lewis created a new archetype or just adapted one. I think this is a triumph no matter, as he created a character sketch that is effective but never defines the character.

I still don't know who George F. Babbitt is, do you?

Meet George F. Babbitt, age 46. Babbitt is a conformist. Babbitt is an image driven, merchandising, dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterian businessman. Babbitt is bleached white by a 1920's suburban midwest society and is in hot pursuit of the almighty dollar and happiness. He loves his midwest American wife and his 2.2 children. He loves his midwest American cars and good cigars. Babbitt loves being seen with all the right people in all the right bars. He's politically correct and morally right. Babbitt is everybody's dad, everybody's favorite uncle and everybody's pal. Yet, Babbit suffers. He's a victim of a kind of scurvy; a deficiency of vitamin adventure, freedom and fun. He becomes a renegade, a political apostate and pariah amoung his socially correct brethren. His newly found revolutionary spirit knows no limits. He even goes to the extreme of backing the wrong mayoral candidate, leaving stunned, an entire community that once saw him invited to all the best dinner parties in town.

But I speak of Babbitt as if he were a real person, not a fictional character from the mind of the brilliant, Sinclair Lewis. Lewis so elequently three-dimensionalizes and humanizes Babbitt that the reader will grow to love him or hate him, but know him and know him well. Lewis's artistic limelight shines so bright upon Babbitt that all other characters are not nearly as illuminated. Mrs. Babbitt, little Babbitts, friends and relatives are merely incidental; supporting roles to the essential Babbitt.

This book is complete with analysis and comments from well known literary critics from that time and since, including "the right reverend" H. L. Mencken. They all claim there is a deeper Babbitt afoot, a more meaningful issue to gnaw on than midlife crisis. They tend to psychoanalyze Babbitt to death. Whether you come to the same diagnosis as I or not, I think you'll agree that everyone should own a Babbitt.

This is a wonderful read, not only for its simplistic beauty, wonderful 1920's cultural style and clever narrative, but also its historic importance in showing the unchanging problems in America's political and economic systems we still face. Today's George Bush supporters have many of the same views as those of George Babbitt nearly a century ago. Lewis was a literary genius at showing these non-changing issues through the use of the cartoonish George the reader can't avoid to simultaneous love and hate. His flaws are almost cute, and though the reader may despise him, he will also hope for his redemption. It's a sweet novel that reminds me of many Vonnegut stories, especially "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," in that it shows the flaws of American success and wealth with wonderful character development and a real human sweetness that clearly shows through these literary giants' words. These are books that help our society better understand the many inequalities and challenge us to find better, more unique solutions to our many struggles to increase our standards of living... and peace. After reading this, I read Elmer Gantry and Arrowsmith, but neither live up to the social impact found in Babbitt. The book is a must read for anyone serious about seeing different perspectives in all these issues while being moved and entertained by great American literature.

What strikes me most about Babbitt is how current it feels, while at the same time being so clearly rooted in its own time. This is not because Lewis was a prophet, but I think instead that (i) Lewis did a masterful job of capturing Babbitt's shallow existence in the world that he lived in, and (ii) there is nothing new today under the sun. It is no accident that "Babbitt" is so close to Updike's "Rabbitt" series. The latter is a masterpiece of sorts as well, but do not neglect the original: Babbitt.

Babbitt is a very intriguing story. A businessman has a mid-life crisis and realizes somewhere along the line his life is not all that great. He doesn't love anything; he isn't the man he wants to be; he isn't where he wants to be. Nothing goes write for George Babbitt. Somewhere along the line Babbitt gets the idea he'd found happiness but soon after realizes it's just an illusion. Babbitt is a powerful character drownded in greed, in desperation, a pathetic man. He never did anything he wanted to, as he says, but he never figured out what he wanted to do either. Babbitt is an incomplete man, but somehow Sinclair Lewis drew a complete picture of Babbitt's pathetic life. Therein lies the greatness of the novel and Lewis' powerful storytelling.

Yes, Babbitt is an undeniable classic. Yes, Sinclair Lewis provides biting satire of the middle-aged conservative middle class white male that made a profound impact on both literature and society in general; he did, needless to say, coin the term for the conformist and prosaic middle class individual with his title character, Babbitt. Laudable. Genuinely laudable.

Be that as it may, I do not need a whole book that, by the way is far from riveting, to preach to me ad nauseam of the dangers of conformity and capitulation to the powers that be. Much better books out there actually(get this!) disseminate this message in a much more subtle and much less pedantic and didactic manner(e.g. A Clockwork Orange, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, 1984, & The Razor's Edge to name just a few). Painfully, Lewis incessantly introduces us to a slew of new unendearing and banal characters whose roles in the novel are less than substantive, if not just totally pointless. Lewis remains one of the best-selling American novelists of the 20th Century. That being said, he fails to belong in my opinion, however, in the 1st tier of truly sublime 20th Century literary talent such as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, or even Vonnegut and Salinger.

Sinclair Lewis, the son of a Minnesota doctor, is known primarily for his novels that examined American ways of life during the 1920s. While commercially successful, his books also reformed American letters at a time when sociology and economics were transforming across the nation. Lewis, America's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930, enflamed his reading public with such novels as 'Main Street,' 'Babbitt,' 'Arrowsmith,' and 'Elmer Gantry' during an era of breakneck prosperity and social recklessness.

America can be a very ironic place and Sinclair Lewis's triumphs of the 1920s are a shining example. Lewis's novels sold hundreds of thousands of copies, yet he was continuously smeared by the literary establishment and those outside of it. Lewis was judged by many critics as out of touch with the prevailing American spirit. He felt this disfavor in 1921, when the Columbia University Board of Trustees overturned 'Main Street' in favor of Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence' for the Pulitzer Prize. In a provocative move five years later, Lewis refused his Pulitzer for 'Arrowsmith,' noting that American authors were forced to be 'safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.' After the wide publication of 'Elmer Gantry' in 1927, he received death threats and condemnation from religious leaders.

The atmosphere presented in 'Babbitt' is anything but safe or polite; rather, it is smug, suffocating, and duplicitous. When 'Babbitt' first appeared in 1922, the United States was undergoing vast and seemingly effortless growth after the First World War. The sky was apparently the limit for American expansion, but Lewis, a social critic who seemed to inherit his father's medical precision, was able to cut through several layers of hubris and realize that all of it was a sham. 'Babbitt' startled its first readers accordingly, receiving simultaneous praise and criticism while becoming a major success in both America and Europe.

'Babbitt' is a novel of 34 chapters with varying subdivisions, all centered upon George F. Babbitt, a real estate agent based in the Midwestern city of Zenith, which compares to Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and Omaha. Though Lewis does not specify the exact location of Zenith, it serves as a prototypical American city that is undergoing major economic developments. This prosperity, however, is not freely shared in Lewis's world; a brief member of the Socialist Party, he sensed a gross inequality between the upper and lower classes. And to make matters worse, the rich were (and still are) as equally miserable as the poor.

As Lewis biographer Mark Schorer adeptly points out, the ruling classes of 'Babbitt' are radically different from those in the American literary tradition of James, Dreiser, and Tarkington, who laid the country's economic power entirely in the hands of tycoons like Andrew Carnegie and John Jacob Astor. By the 1920s, American commerce was dominated by 'middlemen' who do not propel forward an industry, create a product, or offer anything of tangible value. These men, who include real estate dealers, attorneys, stock brokers, and bankers, have only cleverness and a gift for conversation as their selling points.

The middlemen may be turning vast profits at the lower classes' expense, but don't readily assume that they're so happy. In Lewis's America, those of higher social strata only exist for profit's sake. While driving a shiny car and living with a neat family in the suburbs, these nouveaux-riches live emotionally and intellectually crippled lives that are overshadowed by American conformism. Several institutions play a role in this castration of personality - Lewis delves into government, family structure, civic organizations such as the Rotarians and Elks, religion, and America's one-shoe-fits-all system of education.

'Babbitt' is not so much a novel as a series of vignettes. It is a trail of episodes placing Babbitt and his acquaintances in everyday dilemmas that reflect America at large. Any semblance of plot is not noticeable until chapter 21, after dear friend and inspiration Paul Riesling shoots his wife and finds himself in prison. A novel without clear plotlines would fail miserably if written by an author of lesser talent than Sinclair Lewis. But Lewis accomplishes a major feat by injecting enough significance into the chapters for each one to stand on its own. The story is presented through a witty, third-person narrative and is often pathetically funny, unlike earlier social novels.

Lewis was interested in socialism but actually lived as a bourgeois through the success of his writing. In 'Babbitt,' Lewis hints - rather skeptically - at workers' movements as a possible solution to the American malaise. He sympathizes with the working classes to an extent, but his middle-class upbringing still causes him to portray those of lower social strata as ignorant and uncouth. This inner conflict feels similar to that of W. H. Auden, who dabbled with Marxism during the 1930s but was too much of a middle-classman to remain for long. Lewis, in fact, doesn't seem to possess much hope for America's future at all. The novel concludes with a possibility of Babbitt's college son Ted overcoming the constraints of older generations, but this is a large question mark. In fact, America may be so bogged down in its conformity and anti-intellectualism that to reform American thought means to destroy its very existence.

The dilemmas seen by Lewis in the 1920s continue today and seem far worse after eight decades. With such factors as the globalization of commerce, the advancement of women and minorities in the workplace, the further polarization of urban and rural dwellers, and the complete amorality of those in power, the situation is a hundred times more complicated and not an inch closer to being solved. Now the question needs to be asked if it's worth trying to solve America's problems at all or if we should just ride out the steep decline.

For those who can stomach these issues (even after my depressing review), 'Babbitt' is a unique experience in American novels. 'Babbitt' has been republished several times, including as a small paperback by Signet Classic (451-CE2366), which hit shelves in 1991. The widely-circulated Signet edition is 334 pages long, including a brief afterword by Mark Schorer; a one-page bibliography follows the main text. Signet designed a bright cover for the edition and the novel itself is presented in clear type. The type, however, is rather small and crammed onto the pages. Signet editions have been popular amongst students, but older readers may want to find a larger-sized version. No matter its size, 'Babbitt' is a ground-breaking novel that fits the higher ranks of American literature.

Having recently read Lewis' Main Street, I was interested in more from the author. Babbitt tells the story of George F. Babbitt, a successful realtor in the booming Midwest city of Zenith in the early 1920s. He leads a perfectly mundane life as a business partner with his father-in-law and has all the outward indications of a happy and successful businessman. But inside, he has a vague uneasiness and discontent. Vacations to Maine (he and his friend Paul go a week earlier than their families), winning public acclaim for his speaking prowess at a convention and around town, and his efforts at hometown boosterism all leave him dissatisfied and somewhat empty. His wife and family seem to aggravate him most of all.

I was unable to finish this story, and finally gave up after reading about 2/3rds of it. Unlike Main Street, Babbitt has no really sympathetic characters. In fact, while the supporting characters are slightly more well-developed than those in Main Street, they still come off as unimportant cardboard figures. Babbitt believes he is honest and intelligent, although the book makes a point of satirizing his (and everyone else's) lack of both, and I felt no interest in him. Instead we are treated to an unending stream of his complaining and lengthy speeches extolling whatever virtues he feels expert in and I kept waiting for something to finally make me want to read this book. Alas, no such luck and I'm giving up for greener pastures.

While I can appreciate that the book is a satirical look at how pathetic and vapid the lives of many Americans were (and probably still are), there was just no cleverness to the story. His comparisons are blunt and obvious and lack any creativity, such as the dinner with an old friend who's now very wealthy followed immediately by his attending one at the home of another old friend who's never been successful in business, or his complaints of the children contrasted immediately with their complaints of him. I even tried consulting Cliff's Notes to see what I was missing, but found there wasn't much *to* miss. I listened to the audio book and the narrator (Wolfram Kandinsky) sounded too much like voices from certain old cartoons that I couldn't quite identify, and became very annoying. Recommended only for those with uncommon stamina in the face of unwavering tedium.

Babbitt, adeptly composed by Sinclair Lewis, is a masterpiece that will go down in the annuls of history as one of the great satires. Lewis satirizes the hypocrisy of the middle class in early 20th century America. Loaded with rhetorical devices, Babbitt serves as an immensely entertaining rhetorical reader. Though lulls in action are frequent, it serves only as to dynamically enhance the fact that Babbitt, the main character, lives a mundane life. However, these lulls also build suspense as Babbitt flirts fiercely and frequently with disaster. As aforementioned, Lewis crams his novel so full of rhetorical devices, that I was afraid the book would implode and collapse upon itself. While the beginning was so boring, it brought a tear to my eye and an anguished cry to my lips, the content does become increasingly enthralling as the story sloughs on. Readers will enjoy the myriad of pokes and jabs that Lewis takes upon the hypocrisy of humans through the vigorous use of satire and irony. Allusions and imagery are plentiful and readily available for the picking. Thoroughly enjoyable, this book has tremendous value as both a leisurely read, and an academic read. For those who wish to analyze this book, this novel is abound with rhetorical terms which one can evaluate.

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis is not a book for everyone. It is somewhat slow-moving and un-enticing at first. However, I believe if you are able to tough out what may seem like a boring read, the message conveyed throughout the story of George Babbitt is a very eye-opening and thought-provoking one. It truly makes one examine themselves and society around them. George Babbitt is a very materialistic Republican who has dedicated his life to becoming an upper class citizen and raising his children to do the same. He just goes through the routines, not taking time to enjoy what life truly has to offer. As the book goes on and you follow his life, you see he is beginning to realize he has been doing it all wrong and wishes to find happiness. This quest for happiness provides a very insightful and entertaining read I think everyone who sticks to the end is able to pull something from.

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis is a great book. It is a book that people have been able to enjoy since it was written in 1922. Then theme applies to when he wrote it and still applies to today. Lewis' books seems to pull you in and make you feel like you are part of the city in which the novel takes place. Babbitt is a man who tries to break free from the more materialistic things in life and in doing so sees that all his would be freinds are no longer accepting of him. He wants change, and the way he goes about it is rebelling against the views of society as a whole. Babbitt not only wants better for himself but for his family too. When his son elopes with the neighbor girl. Babbitt takes his son aside and tells him that he(Babbitt) wants him to be able to basically follow his heart and do want his son (Ted) wants to do, because Babbitt never did what he wanted in life. He always did what he thought society wanted him to do. In the end of the story you feel sorry for babbitt because he is no better off than when you forst opened the book and started reading.
I think todays society can learn a lot from this book, we tend to want to please everyone and give into peer pressure instead of doing what would be best for our own growth. When we as a society can look past the material things and not try to conform to what we think everyone wants then we will be able to be truely happy.
Sinclair Lewis seems to be way under estimated. He was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Lewis was ahead of his time when it comes to writing. If you are looking for a good read I would highly suggest reading Babbitt or any of Sinclair Lewis' books.

Basically I recommend this book which I "read" as a book on tape. The theme is "a man's life"---and the "emptiness of life"-------and the search for "the meaning of life". You may perceive certain aspects of YOUR life in the life story of Mr. Babbitt. Thus, you finish the book with the idea, "Hey, this author understands me"....."I'm not alone. "Other people have intermittant feelings of "meaningless of life" and I'm not alone." You probably will get "bored" with some long-winded passages but overall the book is worth reading. Don't expect any "deep answers" to the meaning of life. But, the book does have a "satisfying" ending. Email: [email protected]

I found it very difficult to sustain my interest in this book. I found it to have a flatness of language and feeling, as if it were written by Babbit himself.

I understood that Sinclair Lewis was at once satirizing and presently sympathetically this Midwestern go- getter, shallow and ambitious, who too is hypocritical in his betrayal of his wife.

I find that the great writers create characters who we come to deeply care about.

Somehow I could not do this for Babbit.

The fault may be in the reader, but I found the whole enterprise boring.

"Babbitt," published in 1922, was the second straight publishing phenomenon for Sinclair Lewis, who had become a household name in 1920 with "Main Street." By 1930, Lewis had published three more notable novels ("Arrowsmith," "Elmer Gantry," and "Dodsworth"), declined the Pulitzer Prize in a fit of pique, and finally became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The 1920s were his prime years, and none of his novels was more renowned than "Babbitt," which merited special recognition from the Swedish Academy when Lewis won the Nobel Prize.
So what is one to make of this novel now? It can be dreadfully dull, and could (indeed should) have been cut in half. It wanders around in search of a plot, and though many of its insights can be funny, overall one has to marvel at how genteel the literature of 1920s was in order to make this book a national sensation.
Basically, it is the story of George F. Babbitt, a solidly Republican, supremely self-satisfied, deeply stupid real estate man, who has a sort of midlife crisis in the course of the novel before returning desperately to his earlier state of censorious complacency by the last chapters. Lewis designed him to be an exemplar of his class, and many thought he was. The term "Babbitt" became a popular way of referring to chubby, materialistic businessmen. And then, by the 1940s, the novel had largely faded into oblivion, except in college classes or high school reading lists.
Why? Quite simply, because it's not a particularly good novel. It is a reasonably well-written slice of satirical social commentary, and little more. Today, it is merely a cultural relic from the twenties, kind of like the abominably bad "Great Gatsby," which dilettantes rave over as if it were actually a good novel. It isn't, and neither is "Babbitt." But for those interested in how America saw itself just before the Great Depression, books like these might be informative.

Babbitt is the voice of convention and conservative reaction inside us. His story is the story of conformity to society. It is a great example of story structure and character development. You will come away loving Babbitt and understanding him. For a character as average and events so mundane, that is good writing.

I really liked it.

I picked this up after reading Arrowsmith (which I enjoyed) but didn't finish it. I enjoy French and Russian lit with its long and deep analysis of almost every detail and this book would stand in stark contrast to most of my favorites. Babbit (the book and the character) is almost completely one dimensional. It reads more like a pamphlet than it does a novel. I t reminds me of current cable news - business is bad, industry is bad, and the making of money through business is bad. All is bad, bad, bad, except for the poor peasant who tills the soil to earn his bread. I finally put it down without finishing it. The sarcasm and elitism did me in. Thank God for Hemingway.

On the first page, Lewis describes "an artistic adventure considerably illuminated by champagne" and I thought I was in for a book filled with more of the same delightful prose. Alas.
Mildly interesting for the glimpse of what drinking was like during Prohibition, this book is just another one of too many boo-hoo stories about modern man living the cliche of a dissatisfied life. Why the countless examples of this tiresome genre are to this day lauded as "classics" is beyond me. Perhaps this social commentary was radical at the time it was written, but repetitively harping on the hollowness of modern materialism is not compelling reading today.
I prefer to read books about subjects other than the vague discontent and malaise which pervade the lives of the outwardly successful. The notion that money can't buy happiness is no longer thought-provoking. It is common knowlege to all but the most steadfastly ridiculous people, and they aren't about to pick up an 80-year old book and have an epiphany, so the literary relevance of these non-adventures of George F. Babbitt is questionable, at best. Since neither the stereotypical characters nor the prose itself is particularly engaging after the first page, I cannot recommend this book.