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BABBITT (1922)
by Sinclair Lewis reviews and comments by Patrick Killough (A) Review for http://www.barnesandnoble.com Your Title: Babbitt REVIEWER: Patrick Killough (patrick@thekilloughs.com), about to teach an adult education course on 23 NOVELS OF SINCLAIR LEWIS, September 13, 2005 RATING OF THIS NOVEL: FIVE STARS * * * * * TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: And His Middle Name Was (hurrah!)' Follansbee' As American men go, George F. Babbitt, realtor of Zenith, is not particularly good, not notably bad. But he is restless and he grows worse, particularly after his best friend shoots his nagging wife and is sentenced to three years in prison. Babbitt then falls apart, chases women, drinks too much Prohibition Era liquor and shows dangerous sympathy for labor unions and a radical local lawyer named Seneca Doane. Babbitt determines to break free and become accountable to no one. But his friends in the Boosters' Club, the Presbyterian Church, the Republican Party and other organizations make it clear that he must either return to being the old predictable, conformist George F. or he will find his business fading to nothing. *** Babbitt then sees the light, hauls himself up and is welcomed back to normalcy as husband, father, businessman, Republican and Booster. In token of atonement offered and accepted, one of his fraternal admirers, while on a trip to Catawba, George's birthplace, discovered the truth about Babbitt's middle initial. The 'F' stood for FOLLANSBEE (the name of the Babbitt family doctor). The once lapsed Babbitt was re-baptized with good natured male humor back to the spot back where he belonged. *** What fun the broad-minded Boosters had with that revelation of inner weakness before they forgave their Georgie! What name might they have otherwise guessed? *** 'Flivver, they suggested, and Frog-face and Flathead and Farinaceous and Freezone and Flapdoodle and Foghorn. By the joviality of their insults, Babbitt knew that he had been taken back to their hearts ... '. 'He knew that he would no more endanger his security and popularity by straying from the Clan of Good Fellows.' (Ch. 34) Also recommended: Sinclair Lewis, ELMER GANTRY, ANN VICKERS, MAIN STREET. Mark Schorer, SINCLAIR LEWIS AN AMERICAN LIFE. =-=-=-=-=-= (B) Review for http://www.amazon.com Babbitt (Dover Thrift Editions) by Sinclair Lewis RATING OF THIS NOVEL: FIVE STARS * * * * * Title of this Review: George F. Babbitt: Apostle of Rotarianism and Boosterism, September 14, 2005 Reviewer: T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews In April 1920 George F. Babbitt was a moderately successful, reasonably honest real estate man in the mythical midwestern industrial American city of Zenith. Product himself of a virtuous small town, Catawba, Babbitt rose to become a college graduate, married man and father of three. He was a joiner (Elks, Boosters), political activist (Republican precinct leader), churchman (Presbyterian) and believer in the power and beauty of advertising. Over the next year or so, George or "Georgie" became favorably noticed by his betters through previously muted oratorical and advocacy skills. But as he rose in public and kingmakers' esteem, he also stumbled by admitting weakly to a certain sympathy (but not solidarity) with labor unions, strikers and a radical local lawyer, college friend Seneca Doane. When another and much closer friend went to prison for a crime of personal violence, Babbitt lost his bearings. Zenith, its mores and values, no longer defined for Babbitt the outer imaginable limits of human striving. Yet he could not create anything better. All he could rouse himself to do was to experiment with a couple of amours, run around for a few weeks with a fast crowd, drink too much, hurt his wife's feelings, slip out of the office to go to movies and slide into mild disrepute with his business peers and his betters. In the end, however, Babbitt lost energy and all pretense to be a free wheeling libertine and slipped back to being Good Old Georgie. Once again he was predictable. That is, "he cheated only if it was sanctified by precedent" (Ch. 4). He championed with conviction "the spiritual and mental side of American supremacy ... spiritual and, uh, dominating movements like Efficiency, and Rotarianiam, and Prohibition, and Democracy" (Ch. 6). While transforming himself back to what American businessmen were intended to be, George F. Babbitt left posterity a name synonymous with dull mediocrity, caution and conformity. -OOO- |