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Great Deal
By Bill R. Moore
This deal contains two of Sinclair Lewis' best works: Main Street and Babbitt. Anyone lacking these excellent novels would do well to get them here.
The book that made Sinclair Lewis famous, Main Street was the first in a remarkable series of 1920s novels that earned him a lasting name and ensured him a spot in the American canon, though several taste revolutions ensure we now see it very differently. To understand Main Street's immediate titanic impact it is necessary to recall when it was written and published. It came out in 1920, between World War I and the Great Depression. The universal sourness left by the former still lingered, and the economic boom leading up to the latter's massive bust had not really begun. America was cautiously optimistic but knew major changes were needed and that many had already come - for better or worse. Main Street reflects two changes that had become undeniable: the twilight of American village dominance and the expanding role of women. The pioneer days that led to small settlements like Lewis' actual hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota and Main Street's fictional Gophers Prairie, Minnesota were already all but gone by the time of Lewis' 1885 birth. Growing up, his generation saw its dying gasps. By 1920, cities had emerged as the indisputable center of American progress in all forms: political, social, artistic, intellectual. The death of small towns was proclaimed - gladly by most; regretfully, if sentimentally, by some. On the other hand, the Progressive Movement in many ways culminated in 1919, when women were given the right to vote. This, coupled with the greater independence and connection with the world outside the home forced on them by WWI, ensured they were an ever-growing force.
Main Street synthesizes these elements into brilliant, mostly satirical but thoroughly realistic fiction. Carol, its protagonist, is a prime example of the (then-) New Woman: educated, independent, willful, and ambitious. Its main setting is the sort of American small town that then seemed to be undeniably dying. The inevitable conflict between the two and all associated controversies - conservatism vs. liberalism in politics, mores, gender roles, etc. - is vividly dramatized. We see many contemporary sociopolitical issues played out movingly and instructively. The book is extraordinary in making many of the same points Betty Friedan later famously made in The Feminine Mystique - all the more extraordinary in being decades earlier and written by a man. It is thus unsurprisingly a classic of feminist literature. Like many twentieth-century American women, Carol left college with a passionate desire to reform the world but little idea how to do it. After several years of dreaming but little practical result, she decides to marry and ostensibly "settle down" after all but cannot bring herself to abandon her dreams. Yes, her husband will be the breadwinner, and she will run the house while taking care of the inevitable children, but she does not despair; she will reform the small town to which she moves. Sadly, again like many real-life women before and even today, she finds that her vague dreams are no match for Society and Custom. She fights against them for years in varying ways with small successes here and there but never gets beyond tolerable equilibrium. Several times she threatens to run away or take some other radical step and eventually does - only to return, somewhat begrudgingly but not without hope. Lewis beguilingly leaves the ending somewhat open. Carol is neither glad nor sorry to have returned and settles back into routine easily enough, realizing she will never achieve her aspirations but resolving to keep trying. She has gained a new practicality and may get somewhat further. She even has newfound appreciation for Small Town America and its ways in certain respects and is essentially cured of naïve notions that she had developed more from imagined contrast with her drab existence than from experience or reality. However, we are left in little doubt that she will be more or less a failure, arguably not even a grand one. She will live out her life just like nearly all women for all practical purposes, dying as if she had never lived - ideals broken, goals unfulfilled. The book ends somewhat abruptly with her practical, down-to-earth, traditional husband ignoring her last-ditch rationalization to talk of the eternally mundane - a dread foreboding of her life to come. It is a pretty bleak depiction of the New Woman's future - certainly depressing for anyone then interested in it to complicate.
But there is far more to Main Street, and it is not nearly as dark in tone as I have implied. Indeed, like Lewis' other famous works, it is generally satirical - often bitingly but at least as often humorously. He was a diverse author who can be appreciated in many ways, not least in his dramatically vivid depictions of the small town Upper Midwest in the early twentieth century. This puts him solidly in the grand tradition of American local color writers. His brilliant ear for dialogue is one of his greatest strengths here, but his thoroughly realistic style also shines; as fellow small town Minnesotan Bob Dylan puts it in Chronicles Volume One, Lewis was "the master of absolute realism, had invented it." He has a near-unmatched eye for little details and is one of the most visual of writers. His depictions of small town life - from store front descriptions to almost Dickensian deftness with character traits and quirks - truly make his settings come alive. Even a well-done film could hardly convey them more palpably. From early on, some derided Lewis' descriptions as too inclusive to be artistic, and they probably are something one either loves or hates. However, they are certainly an important part of his style and a cornerstone of his realism. Yet his style is not, as one might easily assume, boring or stilted. This is where satire serves him best. There is something to grin at on nearly every page and often something to laugh aloud at; the send-up of Small Town America's failings, foibles, conceits, and pretensions is caustic and enduring. He criticizes where appropriate and is often merciless even when most amusing. Many well-known small town faults - hypocritical piety, arrogance under the guise of humility, jealousy of cities under veil of complacency, etc. - are shown with stunning skill, and it is no exaggeration to say the contempt most Americans now at least claim to have for small towns stems in large part from Main Street, whether or not they know it. That said, it is easy to exaggerate this aspect of the novel and of Lewis generally, as he is above all notably realistic. Lewis unforgettably shows that small towns are more than just laughs, even satiric ones. Tragedy creeps dreadfully in more than once; several subplots involving minor characters are especially heart-wrenching. His satire also turns to wider arenas; indeed, another way to appreciate Lewis is through his examination of contemporary issues. One can almost see his novels as satirical American versions of Henrik Ibsen's famous "problem plays." The religious satire that would come to fruition in Elmer Gantry is especially prominent here. It is instructive to see how much this issue has changed, though still prominent; how incredible to realize that Sunday driving and recreation were actually controversial in 1920! Perhaps more importantly, if more inclined to satire than charity, he nonetheless convincingly shows small towns' few positive aspects and has much to say of pros and cons relative to cities. Some of Main Street's characters are so viciously lampooned that those inclined to defend may call them unfairly one-sided, though others have virtuous qualities depicted, sometimes even in regard to city-dwellers. One can easily retort that the fault lies not in Lewis but in the upstart yokels he drew from, but his take on them is in any case leavened by playful pokes at Carol and others who think themselves so superior to Gopher Prairie and its ilk. They may well be right but are surely not as right as they think - and Lewis will not let them or anyone else forget.
The depiction of Carol is indeed one of the more interesting facets. She was a radical, even revolutionary, character at the time and still stands out as a strong, thoroughly modern heroine; she would have been unthinkable in a mainstream work even a few decades prior. Yet she is far from idealized; even the most sympathetic feminists cannot deny some of her less appealing qualities, such as vanity, materialism, and bouts of classism. Indeed, those so inclined could even somewhat plausibly argue that she is satirized just as much as other characters. For all her high-mindedness and talk, she is a hopeless idealist: flighty, watery, and near-comically impractical. She changes her mind within minutes on the most important topics for the slightest pretexts - and goes back just as quickly. The years have only underlined these faults; she can now easily seem naïve, even silly, for the same reasons she struck initial readers as vibrant and full of potential. That said, it cannot be seriously doubted that Lewis meant her to be sympathetic and, to a certain degree, proscriptive. Her faults, such as they are, essentially serve to make her well-rounded; above all, she is believable. She is not meant to be perfect so much as Everywoman - or what Lewis thought Everywoman could or would be. Besides, she has several inarguably admirable qualities, including determination and stamina. She still stands as one of American literature's - nay, literature's - strongest and most distinctive female leads.
As all this implies, though not really written as such, Main Street can easily be seen as a historical novel. To be sure, it is a fascinating glimpse into an important, distinct American era in nearly all sociopolitical aspects. It also of course gives much insight into early twentieth century American Small Town Life and women's issues. Some would perhaps call it dated for these reasons, but there is a strange sense in which it is at least as relevant as ever. The edition I read was from the early 1960s with an Afterword by Lewis biographer/critic Mark Schorer that says contemporary readers see the novel far differently than initial ones because, among other things, Small Town America's fate had been sociologically decided - i.e., was virtually gone and soon would be for good. Yet it remains nearly fifty years later. Nearly all Americans are at least outwardly contemptuous of small towns, and most are probably genuine, but there is also a wide-ranging sentimental streak keeping them alive. Perhaps more importantly, their actual inhabitants, though shrinking each year, are largely unchanged - at least as self-righteous and complacent as Lewis depicted nearly a century ago. I grew up in one even smaller than Gopher Prairie in the 1990s, and it is still virtually the same - proudly ignorant, xenophobic, fiercely resistant to change, etc. -, as are its thousands of nationwide counterparts. Indeed, hard as it is to believe, they have actually in some ways even worsened; I cannot begin to imagine the residents of mine even having heard of the intellectual and literary people and concepts Carol is dismayed at Gopher Prairie consciously turning down. Small towns thus continue to cancerously cling to the main American movement of growth and progress and show no real sign of disappearing any time soon. Main Street will continue to have special relevance as long as they exist.
However, this is a small part of its legacy. It will surely continue to be read as long as great literature is appreciated because, important as its time-specific elements are, its core themes are timeless: individuality vs. collectivity, idealism vs. practicality, knowledge vs. ignorance, etc. Lewis wrote powerfully about these issues in a way that spoke profoundly to contemporary readers and speaks to us hardly less relevantly or meaningfully - as it doubtless will continue to long after every vestige of "Main Street" and all it stands for are finally beyond memory.
1922's Babbitt is one of Sinclair Lewis' best works and one of the best twentieth century American novels, essential for anyone interested in Lewis or the era.
Babbitt satirizes American urban life and depicts the American Everyman. The latter is its best-known and most insightful aspect. The character of Babbitt epitomizes 1920s' middle class values; obsessed with consumerism and money making, he embodies conservatism, Republican politics, and WASP supremacy. In short, Lewis deftly drew the kind of American then growing more common each year - and more importantly, the ideal to which, outwardly at least, more and more people aspired. Babbitt is one of the most vividly drawn and fully lifelike characters I have seen in the hundreds or thousands of books I have read; he not only seems real in himself but the very image of many people I have known. It may be very hard to like him; he is vain, ignorant, narrow-minded, shallow, hypocritical, temperamental, and many other unsavory things. That said, it is almost impossible to hate him; he is truly kind to his friend Paul and has occasional insight as well as admirable if thwarted ambition. Despicable as his thoughts and actions sometimes are, we cannot shake the feeling that he is decent at heart. An early reviewer made the all-important point that few will see themselves in Babbitt, but all will see people they know - probably many. He is the apotheosis of an important American type, perhaps the era's dominant one and still very prominent. More fundamentally, he is essentially human; for all his faults, any honest person will feel with and for him, because his failings and many of his strivings are central to the twentieth/twenty-first century human condition. Nearly everyone in current Western society can sympathize greatly with his doubts and struggles. Babbitt is at times nothing less than loathsome and often risible, yet it is hard to laugh at him, much less anything harsher; he is really more pitiable than anything.
This gets to the book's more important American dream critique. Babbitt is ostensibly successful in a way most Americans would envy yet plagued by uncertainty. He has gone about life unthinkingly for years but is suddenly haunted by dissatisfaction and a dreadful feeling of hollowness. Lewis was ahead of his time in depicting this malaise, which was not generally admitted for decades. He exposes American society as not only superficial but largely artificial, dominated by crass, anti-intellectual commercialism and unthinking conservatism. The novel rigorously condemns capitalism at its worst, vibrantly showing how it dehumanizes and saps culture. Much of this is done via brilliant speech evocation; Lewis was one of the first to use contemporary American speech fictionally, and Babbitt is perhaps its height. H. L. Mencken, author of The American Language, rightly praised it. Lewis had a great ear for slang and uses it with aplomb; one of his key insights is just how thoroughly commercialism had invaded speech. He also invented slang terms, several of which entered popular use, as did "Babbitt" and "Babbitry." This is such an essential part of the work that a glossary was necessary in European editions, and the book did much to make Europeans aware of American slang.
Babbitt also searchingly dramatizes a range of other related and important issues, including masculinity, femininity and feminism, religion (the focus of Lewis' later Elmer Gantry), race, and class. It is often satirical but sometimes ponderously thought-provoking and occasionally tragic. Lewis is typically called a satirist, but this sells him rather short; his range is significantly wider, but even more important is his strong artistic skill. Anyone who likes Main will like this, though the latter's good humor profusion is largely missing, but Lewis' artistry had clearly improved. The episodic plotting that many criticize him for is mostly gone; Babbitt initially seems episodic, but a closer look reveals a very deliberate progression. This is all the more remarkable in that hardly anything really important seems to happen; the book begins with a near hour-to-hour account of Babbitt's everyday life and continues focusing on apparent minutia. However, these small events are more meaningful in retrospect and form an important whole. The primary improvement over Main is that the ending is not arbitrary but extremely deliberate and indeed, given the writing's steady march, all but inevitable in the best artistic sense. It is also unusually hopeful for Lewis, suggesting that, however savage his critiques, he believed things might change for the better.
This sadly has not occurred; Babbittry has grown ever more pervasive. The novel was written at an important time in American history - between World War I and the economic boom preceding the Great Depression. All this shows up; WWI is hardly mentioned openly but looms like a ghastly demon, fueling dissatisfaction and insecurity. Lewis memorably dramatizes the poor economy's effects: labor unrest, growing radicalism, emboldened reactionaries, etc. The Jazz Age decadence famously chronicled by contemporaries like Fitzgerald and Hemingway is also on display. It was a dark period, and Lewis chronicles brilliantly; his realism and attention to detail ensure that one can learn more about the era here than in any history book. We not only see what daily lives were like but absorb much about a wide variety of subjects: politics, speech, gender roles, sexuality, fashion, music, cinema, economics, and practically everything else. Perhaps most revealing is a candid picture of Prohibition era drinking. The book answered several questions I had always had and taught me much.
The fact that Babbitt so completely embodies its era unsurprisingly led to a decline in its and Lewis' reputation when the era became a dim memory. However, those who wrote him and it off were unrealistically optimistic. The realization that later prosperity was mostly illusory and the continuing existence of nearly everything the book criticizes make it seem newly relevant. It may indeed be more relevant than ever, but the unfortunate truth is that it has always been relevant. The novel is certainly a timepiece in many ways, giving it great historical value, but several core themes - not least its conformity send up - are eternal, and its depiction of existential unease is central to the present human condition. We were unwise to write Babbitt off and must not repeat the mistake; it has much to teach us and is also highly entertaining with much to provoke thought and emotion - an essential early twentieth century American novel.
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