Babbitt

Rating:
Summary: shockingly modern
Review: I was surprised to learn that what I think of as modern-day american culture existed in the 1920's. Girls sulk in sweatsuits. Couples divorce. Mid-life crises strike at 46. Teenage siblings argue over car keys. Unmuddied by old-timey-ness, the writing is clear and present from the first page.

Crochety old Babbitt (the title character) worships business, technology, and practical knowhow, but trembles daily with a vague dissatisfaction. A precursor to Revolutionary Road, Rabbit, Run, Independence Day, Preston Falls, and American Beauty, Babbit describes a middle-aged man undermined by his prosperity, teenage children, and his digestion.

Babbit burns away any nostalgia we might have of the '20s as part of an earlier time where faith staved off anxiety, civility reigned, or the world was any less immoral. Written during the period it describes, Babbitt reveals a basic american character and how little progress we have made

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening, but not interesting
Review: This book belongs on a high school reading list, but nowhere else. It is an excellent forum for conveying the intangible aspects of he Prohibition Era that are never explained very well in a text book. However, while its historical value is great, its literary value is questionable. The incessant demonstrations of hipocrisy become redundant; the prose fails to hold the reader's interest; and at times the title character is unbearable. Read this when studying the 1920's,or leave it on the shelf.

Rating:
Summary: What's to like?
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A good book to read
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Man and the City
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Quintessential American
Review: Babbitt, the main character of the book, is nothing less than the quintessential American, albeit satirically stereotyped. Exuberant, practical, naive, progressive, blindly optimistic, cheerful (on the surface), and out to get the bucks. Of course, not all Americans are exactly like Babbitt, but if America was said to have a national character, or some sort of behavioral and psychological mean, Babbitt would be it (see, for example, "The Ugly American"). He is the common man. The self-made businessman. He's the kind of guy that wouldn't ask for directions from his wife. He's the lover of gadgetry and automobiles. The smoker of fine cigars. The conservative Republican. The loyal tax-payer. The supporter of the troops. The anti-communist. In short, he is the man in the middle who makes it all happen -- and as it is today, the man in the oval office who really makes it all happen. This book will split your sides it is so funny at times. At other times, it will make you feel like crying, as Babbitt's nagging sense of alienation and dishonesty reminds you of many people you see around you, perhaps even yourself. Sinclair had a commanding grasp of the American Spirit, and it scared the Bejezus out of him. Read this and you will be frightened too. If you live in America, you will find that there is something all too familiar between these covers, like waking up with a hang-over and staring into the mirror for too long. The image is distorted, aging, and less-than-ideal. As I read, I kept thinking to myself, This is like the tale of an American Ivan Illich, only he never quite wakes up to the innanity of it all. Sobering.

Rating:
Summary: Everybody is a clown when playing to be respectable
Review: The old phrase of "Do not judge a book by its cover" is full applicable in this case. Here we have a guy who was trained to not think by itself while believing that he does. All the nasty effects of conformity and its permanent conflict with social ambition are perfectly displayed in a humorous tone with makes the satire of the author even more piercing.

While Babbitt struggles to find his place in the web of social fabric, he also is feeling lost about what is his role as a family man and what is the sense of coming back each evening to a boring and fat wife, who also happens to care for him. He is also boring, bald, ugly and fat himself but incapable to perceive these facts or at least acknowledge them. So, to a large degree he feels that life is unfair with him.

This explosive cocktail takes him in a quest to figure out what is he really capable of and to demand from existence what he believes it owes him.

While the reader accompanies Babbitt, he is easily submersed in his skin and laughs at him. Here is were the author does the magic trick and before you know it you are not laughing about the character misfortunes but to our own lack of understanding of everything. That is what this work a fantastic piece of literature.

Rating:
Summary: a period piece but a good one
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Venom
Review: George F. Babbitt is an upper-middle class businessman in the great city of Zenith. In "Babbitt", Sinclair Lewis gives us the story of Babbitt's fall from and redemption to the good graces of Zenith's Floral Heights' society.

With George F. Babbitt, Lewis has attempted to personify the modernizing struggles of early twentieth century America. Lewis uses Babbitt to stand in for the forces of conservatism which fought against the unionization and socialization of America's labor force. Babbitt also represents the bourgeois lifestyle that has been the ideal of American existence (except for the upper class) since Europeans began colonizing it.

In Babbitt we see the supposed struggles that middle class people are supposed to experience because of their empty, meaningless lives. Here's where I have my falling out with "Babbitt." Lewis attempts to portray Babbitt as representative of an entire class of people. The brush that Lewis paints with in "Babbitt" is far too wide to be realistic. Had he tried to make Babbitt an example of one man's struggles, then it would have been successful, at least to a point.

Lewis is a known "crank" (to borrow a term popular in his day). Usually he is able to focus his derisiveness to a fine point. His work in "Main Street" and "Arrowsmith" are examples of the sharpness of Lewis's best efforts. However, "Babbitt" has none of the crisp commentary of these works. It bludgeons the reader with something beyond social commentary that borders on misanthropy, or at the very least, class envy. Lewis's venom in "Babbitt" is meant to kill and not merely to wound.

One gets the impression that Lewis detested George F. Babbitt and men like him. Perhaps he felt these men were below the likes of a distinguished author or painter or some other artist. Lewis cannot hide his distaste in "Babbitt" and it ruins what could have been an interesting examination of a man learning his own mind.

Rating:
Summary: A Lot of Hilarious Shilly-Shallying, Flip-Flopping and Fun
Review: If you ask me. And I mean it, I mean, I really mean it. I mean, the people in this book are, well, as peppy and interesting as any folks can ever be, know what I mean? I liked the dinner party parts and the ladies' looking alike and the gentlemen not looking alike until you got to know 'em and then you realized it was the reverse. The men all acted just about the same, know what I mean? Always repeating themselves and acting like they were the Big Cheese and such. Also, it was quite a bit of amusement hearing about Prohibition, what it was really like, if you get my meaning. How people in the Big Little Cities like Zenith defended it but in private couldn't wait to get their hands on a bottle of gin and go on about their Rights and Liberties, by golly, and how nobody had the right to tell them what to do in their own homes and in America and such. Hypocrisy. Boosterism. Crony-ism. Now, those were the days. (They're still the days.)