Babbitt

Rating:
Summary: Unmasking Bourgeois Lies
Review: This is a wonderful book. It gives you a hero you care about, and you can understand. Babbitt embodies the aspirations of the rising 1920's middle class. This book is funny and yet so very sad. It is yet another story of a man who is shaken up and woken from his bland life and hollow illusions. Like many similar characters, he is too constrained by societal fetters to follow through with his spiritual revolution. However, he sparks he gets a taste of rebellion. In a real world, the rebellious protagonists engage our imagination but are brought back down to earth by their want of complete freedom and courage. That is why we are mere humans. Lewis reminds us of this. And yet, you cannot help but admire the ambition towars truth.

Rating:
Summary: Babbitt is Us
Review: Though written some 70 years ago, Babbitt still is the most accurate portrait I have seen of the people of the northern, middle America. I grew up in Ohio and can honestly say that the state is, for better or for worse, filled with the characters that populate this wonderful novel. As America becomes all the more suburbanized, it becomes more Babbitt-ized. This si all the more reason to read this hilarious yet maudlin book.

Rating:
Summary: Engaging social satire
Review: What a terrific book! I bored all of my friends and my wife to tears telling them about this book that I was reading that was written in the 1920's (I'm guessing it was written in the 20's), and how relevant it was to our society today. It has pompous businessmen, evangelical conmen, hypocrital churchmen, and many more contemporary characters. One note to potential readers: This is a portrait of a person; it's not a thriller, or a romance or a mystery. As such, it has very little plot, so beware. But for readers who wish to try this book, and read it as a study of a class of people, most will find it very rewarding.

Rating:
Summary: this is a very insightful book
Review: When i began reading this book i was thoroughly bored. The whole first half is one day! I thought I was going to die reading it. But then it gets better. I start to realize the stupid things that happen, and I start to notice that people I know do these superficial meaningless hypocritical things too. Sinclair Lewis captures the decieving qualities of society very well and skillfully shows it to us in this really well written book.

Rating:
Summary: Babbitt Ariseth From the Ashes
Review: When the 20's were bursting out all over, we find the antithesis of the Fitzgeraldian hero, a 40 something, unoriginal, humpty dumpty, but groomed sort of fellow called Babbitt. Babbitt's secret desire is to live again, not in the suburban sense, but in a wild and colorful way, and he supresses it until he finally bursts and makes a complete ass of himself. He throws away his Boosterism, his faithful but bland wife, and converges on his quiet midwestern city of Zenith with a fervor that will rock the tabloids and fuel the gossips until the second coming of Christ. Realizing that the futility of his efforts will not free him from the dyed in the wool masses, Babbit submits to becoming a cog in the machine and finally realizes his ambitions through his offspring in a dying F.U. to Zenith and to the world. Hurray for Chicken Croquets and Lettuce Sandwiches, and a toast to Sinclair Lewis who has had entirely to many already.

Rating:
Summary: A classic - yet somewhat pedantic and tedious
Review: 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.