Rating: 
Summary: Hapless salesman in prepostmodern world
Review: Sinclair Lewis wrote many novels about flawed, non-heroic, Americans living in the midwestern heartland of the 1920s.
This one is about George Babbit, a real estate broker living in the up-and-coming city of Zenith. Babbit is a community booster, civic club member, and proud family man. He has an electric cigar lighter in his car and a fashionable sleeping porch on his house. Just the sort of citizen beloved by the Chamber of Commerce.
After describing the details of George's happy, respectable, and utterly unexamined existence, Lewis throws wrenches into the works. An old friend goes off-kilter. Bored by evenings at home with his rather bland wife, George starts hanging out with a fast and loose crowd. He tries out "liberal ideas" in the way that he might try out a new suit, and flirts with the idea of dumping his suburban existence and living in the woods.
George comes off as a hapless boob, vaguely aware that things are terribly wrong with his life and society but unable to effectively deal with them.
Some of the issues Lewis addresses are a bit dated, but _Babbit_ remains an interesting look at American society. Of note is the cringe-inducing lot of married women, and the lost world of railway travel.
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Summary: BABBITT is an Unappreciated 20th-Century Literary Triumph
Review: Sinclair Lewis, once one of America's most popular and widely-read novelists, has, in the past 50 years, fallen into the darkness of utter anonymity. This is a true literary travesty. In my opinion, BABBITT is an evocation of the hollow American lifestyle that is unequalled in literature, including even its overrated contemporary, THE GREAT GATSBY. Lewis uses a heady mix of hard, factual journalism and broad satire to transport the reader into a world that daily seems to more resemble our own in its banality and cruelty.
Rating: 
Summary: The heart of Middle America
Review: 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.
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: 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.
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Summary: A book about the roaring 20s that is hardly dated
Review: This book focuses on the ideals at the time, as George Babbit epitomizes the person confronted with the American ideal of the 1920s, an ideal that still exists, in a modified form, today. The early parts of this novel detail Babbit's possessions, the items in his home being the same as all respectable upper middle class persons in the city of Zenith. Babbit is part of the Boosters and the Chamber of Commerce, as is expected of him. Life is as it should be, but the dreams of the fairy child hint at something Babbit is missing. Babbit's friend, Paul Reisling, recognizes something missing in himself as well. The man Babbit relates to most feels constrained by the way things are, personified by his shrewish wife. While Babbit continues to try to maintain the status quo and indulge in Paul's friendship, Paul lashes out. Their first conversation in the Athletic Club (where most of the "good guys" in Zenith frequent) hints at what is to come, not only concerning Paul, but George as well. Paul's act triggers the change in George, as with Paul's sudden absence George finds himself in a more modest rebellion of the values he has accepted. The ideals of the fairy child and his youthful dreams of becoming a lawyer for the people propel him to go against the norm. No, this rebellion, while spurred by idealism, is not idyllic, noble, or even healthy. It is his rebellion though, and for a brief moment, George feels a freedom sorely missing from his life. Unfortunately, the reality of being a respected businessman turned rebel sinks in quickly. This novel deals with the obsession with consumer items, keeping up with the Joneses, and all those materialistic ideals that predominated the 1920s, as a post-war boom and new technologies led to an ad-oriented consumer society that continues to exist. While my simplistic analysis of the 1920s is an interesting time capsule in this book, and applicable today, the more universal element to this story is how one is confined by the expectations of society, regardless of what that society is. This appeal of depicting the 1920s, seeing how it relates to the present day, and how it can also relate to any time period and any culture makes this a novel that anyone can identify with. Why only 4 stars? Some parts of the novel dragged a bit, and Babbit's brief metamorphic rebellion was a bit underdeveloped. A lot more could have been done with it. Lastly, the language is dated, and while an interesting lesson in 1920s colloquialisms (lots of gees, gollys, etc.) and unique contractions (e.g., f'rinstance) might entertain some, it seemed stale (with the gees) and unnecessary (with the f'rinstances) to me. Overall, a good read. Not the most entertaining book I've read, nor the most aesthetically pleasing, but the theme helped carry me through to the last page.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent read - a great Socialist work.
Review: This book is especially powerful if read immediately before or after reading Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Where Rand promotes the virtues of Capitalism, Lewis promotes the virtures of Socialism. This is an fascinating comparative reading.
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Summary: I loved this business satire.
Review: This book was amazin
Rating:
Summary: Attempted Return To Innocence
Review: This certainly is a wonderful creation. Lewis recognized the jumbled priorities of Americans in the early twentieth century. Out of this relization, which became more obvious and blatant the more he considered it, he created Babbit. He designed this character to show that financial success is worthless. In the capitalistic haven of America, financial success is pushed to the forefront of our hopes and expectations. At the same time, Man is endowed with a yearning to return to nature, to innocence. Babbit heroicly attempts such a return. Lewis also sends us a message similar to Thoreau's. He questions the neccesities of life and reasons for our tempestuous need to complicate them. As a bonus, the pages are riddled with wit and humor. I heartily recomend this novel.
Rating: 
Summary: A really boring classic
Review: This classic by Sinclair Lewis is set sometime in the early 1900s (1920s ?). It was written to show the shallowness of life of the average, middle-class men of the day in their pursuit for money, popularity, etc. I found this book to be incredibly long and boring, but I think that was part of the point. At any rate, it's a classic, and in the words of a great literary critic, "These works are no longer on trial - the readers are."
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