Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. Odd, isn't it, that George F. Babbitt should be one of the most reviled characters in American literature? What, after all, is his great crime ? It's not that he's a conformist; we're all conformists of one kind or another; such is the nature of social creatures. No, the problem with George Babbitt, that which has so incensed intellectuals for some eighty-odd years is the set of ideas that he conforms to : Middle American ideals--hard work, thrift, salesmanship, conservatism, Christianity, family values, monogamy, the whole panoply of traditional morays of which the Left is so contemptuous. George's story is fairly simple. A successful Realtor in the booming midwestern city of Zenith, married with three children, George is a pillar of the community and a support to his family, but he's not happy. Everyone is always coming to him with their complaints about life, but he's never supposed to question his lot. Then his friend, Paul Riesling, begins to express his own dissatisfaction and together the two begin to sow some wild oats. George goes along on a trip to Maine without their wives, but eventually Paul sprints ahead by first having an affair and then shooting his wife. George, who had tried reigning Paul in, now proceeds to have his own affair with the widow Tanis Judique. He also starts to hang out with some of Tanis's scruffy friends and to vocally question the received wisdom of Zenith's business community. But George's wife, Myra, finds out about the affair and George's business partners bail out on a few deals. Meanwhile, George discovers that Tanis, though her life seemed freer at first, is just as bound by societal conventions as he. With his own business now suffering and the bloom off of his new romance, George is already beginning to waiver, and when Myra comes down with a potentially deadly case of appendicitis, he realizes that he wants his old life back. Myra and his friends welcome him back to the fold. In a final scene, George's son elopes, and he surprises everyone by accepting the marriage. He even tells the boy that he should seize his opportunities now, because he (George) never truly did anything he wanted to his whole life. Now I understand that on the surface this does seem like an indictment of middle America, but it also reads like a cautionary tale, defending Zenith and its citizens from the notion that they'd be happier if they rebelled. In fact, the most convincing and moving moments in the whole book come when George returns to Myra : Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest.Forgive me if I'm being overly obtuse, but doesn't that "eternal" make it sound like Lewis is serious about this, that this relationship is the touchstone of Babbitt's existence and should be ? Likewise, perhaps the truest and certainly the funniest social criticism in the book is aimed not at the good people of Zenith, but at those who would change them. When The Reverend Mike Monday, who might easily be nothing but a caricature of a huckster preacher, comes to town, he says the following in his sermon : There's a lot of smart college professors and tea-guzzling slobs in this burg that say I'm aSure, Lewis may have thought this was so over-the-top as to preclude the reader paying any heed to the message, or he may have meant it as nothing more than self-deprecating humor, but isn't it at least possible that he suspected we'd prefer this kind of muscular Christianity to the offerings of the lemon-sucking professors, maybe even that he himself preferred it ? If Monday is supposed to be one of the bad guys, ask yourself this, outside of Richard III, when's the last time you recall the bad guy getting such funny lines at the expense of the good guys ? At any rate, however Lewis intended us to take the story of George Babbitt and his abortive rebellion, the past eighty years have certainly vindicated the morality, even the hypocrisy, of Zenith and its most famous resident. George Babbitt is really one of the heroes of American Literature, all the more so because he chafes at the tugging of the reins but keeps pulling the wagon. Of such sacrifices are great nations and great cultures made. (Reviewed:) Grade: (A) Tweet Websites:See also:Sinclair Lewis (2 books reviewed)General Literature Brothers Judd Top 100 of the 20th Century: Novels Nobel Prize Winners The Hungry Mind Review's 100 Best 20th Century Books -WIKIPEDIA: Sinclair lewis -ESSAY: The Novelist Who Saw Middle America as It Really Was: Sinclair Lewis captured the narrow-mindedness and conformity of middle-class America in the first half of the 20th century. On the 100th anniversary of his best-selling novel “Babbitt,” Robert Gottlieb revisits Lewis’s life and career. (Robert Gottlieb, 1/01/22, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of Library of America--Sinclair Lewis Novels (Steve Vineberg, Boston Phoenix) Book-related and General Links: -ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA : "sinclair lewis" -Sinclair Lewis (kirjasto) -ETEXT : Babbitt (1922) (Bartleby) -Nobel Prize in Literature 1930: Sinclair Lewis (Nobel E Museum) -Sinclair Lewis, Winner of the 1930 Noble Prize in Literature (Nobel Internet Archive) -Sinclair Lewis Society -Sinclair Lewis: As Only His Home Town Could Know Him (Sauk Centre Herald) -Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951) (The Internet Public Library, Online Literary Criticism Collection) -Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) (New Grub Street) -Lewis, Sinclair Writer (1885-1951) (American History 102) -Chapter 7: Early Twentieth Century - Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) (PAL: Perspectives in American Literature: A Research and Reference Guide An Ongoing Online Project © Paul P. Reuben | EMail: its4pr@charter.net |) -ESSAY : `No Decent Man Would Accept a Degree He Hadn't Earned' (P. J. Wingate, Christian Science Monitor) -ESSAY : MY SUMMER JOB WITH SINCLAIR LEWIS (John Hersey, May 10, 1987, NY Times Book Review) -ESSAY : SINCLAIR LEWIS RECALLED IN GROLIER CLUB DISPLAY (HERBERT MITGANG, February 17, 1985, NY Times) -ESSAY : Prescribing 'Arrowsmith' (Howard Markel, September 24, 2000, NY times) -ESSAY : The Western Writings of Sinclair Lewis (GLEN A. LOVE, Literary History of the American West) -ESSAY : The Romance of Real Estate (Judith Shulevitz, February 25, 2001, NY Times Book Review) -ARCHIVES : "Sinclair Lewis" (NY Review of Books) -ARCHIVES : "Sinclair Lewis" (Find Articles) -ONLINE STUDY GUIDE : Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (Selena Ward, Spark Notes) -REVIEW : of Arrowsmith (Henry Longan Stuart, March 8, 1925, NY Times) -ANNOTATED REVIEW : Lewis, Sinclair Arrowsmith (Felice Aull, Medical Humanities) -REVIEW : of IF I WERE BOSS: THE EARLY BUSINESS STORIES OF SINCLAIR LEWIS Edited by Anthony Di Renzo (Linda Laird Giedl, Christian Science Monitor) -REVIEW : of SINCLAIR LEWIS : Rebel From Main Street. By Richard Lingeman (Jane Smiley, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW : of 'Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street' by Richard Lingeman (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post) -REVIEW : of 'Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street' By Richard Lingeman (Martin Rubin, SF Chronicle) -REVIEW : of Sinclair Lewis by Richard Lingeman (Martin Bucco, Special to The Denver Post) FILMS :
Comments:what most of u are missing is that george babbitt is what most people in the working world are: unsatisfaction with life hidden by the guises of being a family man, being in the 'in' crowd, or 'that guy with the nice car'. he's not a hero. he's a human. - some dude - May-08-2005, 11:17 ******************************************************* " Bottom line: conformity is not heroic. What is heroic is thriving to be an individual, as Socrates was, as Kierkegaard was, as the Buddha was. Our man Babbitt had no depth of selfhood. He was not interested in knowledge or the meaning of things. His values were false ones: money and showing off. He loved his family, but all questionable people have 'loyalty' of some kind (Hitler for Germany, Al Capone for his family). - Dennis the Menace - Aug-09-2004, 23:28" - oj - Aug-10-2004, 12:44 ******************************************************* So Babbitt is indeed heroic in that he conforms to societal norms and takes care of his dependents even though he'd rather be footloose and fancy free. - oj - Aug-08-2004, 20:02 ******************************************************* Orrin writes: "Odd, isn't it, that George F. Babbitt should be one of the most reviled characters in American literature? What, after all, is his great crime ? It's not that he's a conformist; we're all conformists of one kind or another; such is the nature of social creatures. No, the problem with George Babbitt, that which has so incensed intellectuals for some eighty-odd years is the set of ideas that he conforms to : Middle American ideals--hard work, thrift, salesmanship, conservatism, Christianity, family values, monogamy, the whole panoply of traditional morays of which the Left is so contemptuous." The internet is chock full of websites created by pseudo-intellectuals who have no wherewithall for academia. These people are not authors or teachers. Many of them are not even graduates. I do not know Orrin's academic achievements, or failings, but the above criticism of "Babbitt" has almost no textual support, and like most bad arguments, it hides on the Internet. He asks what Babbitt's great crime is. It is conformity. Orrin objects that all men are conformists in some measure, and therefore our difficulty with Babbitt can't be his conformity. But that is the point: conformity occurs in degrees, and Babbitt's level of conformity is alarmingly high. Orrin goes on to say that Babbitt conforms to traditional values like "hard work" and "salesmenship" and "Christianity". Leftists dislike this, he says. This, too, is off the mark. Readers are not objecting to hard work or Christianity. Readers are objecting to a man who does anything to keep up appearances, as for example his collection of books which were meant for show, only. Readers are objecting to his lack of self-control, his childish behaviour, his cowardness in social life, his dishonesty in business. Beyond this: we object to his living in fear. At the end of the book Babbitt seems to have matured and advises his son not to live his life in fear as he did. He tells his son in no uncertain terms: my whole life I've never done anything I've wanted. This, then, is our problem with Babbitt. I do not think the man is detestable or substantially different than a lot of people. On the contrary, too many people are like him, which is why he is so familiar and convincing as a character. Babbitt is a weak man who achieves our admiration only at the end of the novel, when he confesses the truth about himself, at which point he can possibly evolve into a better person. Up until that point, he is not at all admirable. To say otherwise, as Orrin has, is playing the game of devil's advocate and nothing more.
- Dennis - Aug-08-2004, 15:01 ******************************************************* That was our first choice, but the URL was already registered - The Brothers - Nov-24-2003, 09:08 ******************************************************* A name change is in order here; the following is a more appropriate name for whatever it is that you do: Right Wing Revisionist Book Reviewing Idiot. - Joseph - Nov-24-2003, 02:56 ******************************************************* im so confused - Megan - Sep-30-2003, 22:03 ******************************************************* if a native american kid in the 1500's hated fishing and hunting, he was shit out of luck. Likewise, if a Hindu Indian kid in the 1800's hated the caste to which he was assigned, he was in a similar predicament. this book is a love letter to american middle-class society. babbit has the leisure time to sit around and decide whether his life is fulfilling. he lives in a society where he can up and change his life 180 degrees at the drop of a hat. this shows how efficient and free his society actually is. - u - Jul-29-2003, 15:38 ******************************************************* Liked the review--you spelled "mores" wrong, though. The way you have it spelled-- "morays"-- you're referring to a dangerous, tropical eel. :-) - Jessica - Jul-16-2003, 23:05 ******************************************************* |
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