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Sinclair Lewis
MAIN STREET (1920) Reviews and Comments I. By Patrick Killough II. By Mary Killough ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I. by Patrick Killough (A) Review for http://www.barnesandnoble.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here is how your review will appear on the title page: RATING OF THIS NOVEL: FIVE STARS * * * * * REVIEWED by Patrick Killough (patrick@thekilloughs.com), a man of both small towns and cities, September 7, 2005, TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Small Towns Can Be Depressing In 1905, 37 year old lawyer Paul Percy Harris created the Rotary Club of Chicago and launched the Service Club movement. His explicit goal was to transplant to huge, cut-throat, impersonal, low-standard Chicago the best features of friendly, uplifting, prospering, moral Wallingford, Vermont (population 1,000) where Harris had grown up. In 1920 appeared MAIN STREET, a novel by 35 year old Harry Sinclair Lewis. The novel's most obvious goal was to alert America to the negative, under-achieving, soul-shrinking aspects of small towns, particularly of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota (population 7,000). *** Trailing glorious memories of Judge Milford, her wise father and of her childhood home in Mankato, Minnesota, Carol Milford married a man a dozen years her senior, Will Kennicott, M.D., and moved with him to Gopher Prairie. Her father, who died when Carol was a teen, was a Massachusetts man, 'smiling and shabby, ... learned and teasingly kind.' And Mankato 'is not a prairie town, but in its garden-sheltered streets and aisles of elms is white and green New England reborn' (MAIN STREET, Ch. I) In college the orphaned Carol had discovered a dreamy bent for sociology and town-planning. These experiences she brought to her wedding and to her move from St. Paul where she worked as a librarian to Gopher Prairie, population 7,000. The mixture of past, present and future proved unstable in Carol Kennicott. *** Will Kennicott was not the intellectual that Carol Milford Kennicott's father had been. Will was a plodding, ordinary, hard-working country doctor. The most intellectually daring thing he ever did was to admire volatile, questing Carol and persuade her to marry him. Gopher Prairie was no transplanted Athens (as Carol remembered Mankato). And Gopher Prairie and its Main Street, representing thousands of similar American small towns, were unplanned, ugly, dirty, uncultured and a parasite on surrounding rural areas and farmers. Carol Kennicott set out to reform husband, town and 'denizens.' She played an idealistic, reforming Mary to her friend Vida Sherwin's more practical Martha. Carol sought to transform the village's architecture, school, and culture and create a sense of civic solidarity among its wealthier leaders. Carol's blitzkriegs all failed in the short run. But meanwhile behind the scenes, with an eye to the long haul, over the years Vida Sherwin patiently won a new school. *** The Kennicott marriage was neither a partnership in which husband and wife pooled resources behind the same profession nor a happy home built around a burgeoning nursery. Doctor Will retained an all male coterie of duck-hunting, tobacco-spitting friends, notably the merchant Sam Clark, 'dealer in hardware, sporting goods, cream separators and almost every kind of heavy junk you can think of' (Ch. III). The closest Carol was permitted to that circle was when Will bade her serve them food and drink on poker nights. *** Towards novel's end, yearning for freedom, a job, intellectual stimulus and romance, Carol took her three year old son off to Washington, DC in October 1918, a month before the end of World War One. There she experienced both the excitement of socializing with richly experienced, creative adults as well as the dullness of a Government office job. After a taste of strikers and the women's suffrage leaders, a more realistic Carol returned to husband, Gopher Prairie and Main Street. *** Sinclair Lewis went on to write BABBITT and other books mocking the devotion to transplanted small towns created by Rotary, Boosters, Kiwanis and other men's organizations. The duel goes on to this day, with idealized Mankato, Minnesota and Wallingford, Vermont rebuking a spirit-crushing Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, and pitting Rotary's Paul Percy Harris against fiction's Harry SInclair Lewis. *** -OOO- Also recommended: Sinclair Lewis, BABBITT, IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE. James P. Walsh , THE FIRST ROTARIAN: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PAUL PERCY HARRIS, FOUNDER OF ROTARY. .-OOO- (B) Review for http://www.amazon.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here is your review the way it will appear: RATING OF THIS NOVEL: FIVE STARS * * * * * TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Gopher Prairie Absorbs the irritating Carol Kennicott, September 8, 2005 Reviewer: T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews By 1880 fictional Gopher Prairie was no longer a raw, Minnesota frontier community. After the Civil War its social equilibrium was provided by an older aristocracy of stern Puritan immigrants from New England: four men of respected professions, "medicine, law, religion, and finance." But by 1910 or thereabouts, the Gopher Prairie of Sinciair Lewis's 1920 novel MAIN STREET (and the surrounding countryside which ithe town was meant to serve) had become an ethnic melting pot and mere merchants and land speculators were growing rich and challenging old standards of social respectability. Lewis's MAIN STREET is about a newly volatile mix of small-town people groping toward a constructive social equilibrium for Gopher Prairie. Their search is best illustrated in four characters: Carol Milford Kennicott, her schoolteacher friend and critic Vida Sherwin Wutherspoon, Carol's husband Dr Will Kennicott and his best friend and social inferior, merchant Sam Clark. Melting-pot Gopher Prairie is severely challenged by its latest arrival, idealistic, impatient, impractical Carol Kennicott (nee Milford). All its "denizens" (Carol's word) seem called to resist her pretense to be an insistent sun of the Minnesota prairies' cultural solar system. She wills Gopher Prairie to become as beautiful and refined as Mankato, Minnesota where she grew up. She exhorts individuals and organizations to achieve her vision of an Athens of the Prairies. Carol puts on a play. She befriends social misfits. She by turns enchants and baffles her steady, plodding husband, Will Kennicott, M.D. She imagines her town infected by a "Village Virus" which spreads mediocrity. Slowly, however, impulsive, idealistic Carol accepts the importance of timing in the art of reform and is tamed downward to a feasible level of action. Vida Sherwin proves the wisdom of settling for just one new school if and when transformation of the entire town becomes too much. Gopher Prairie is thus made hospitable to both a wiser, priority-setting Carol and to Vida, as once long ago Biblical Bethany had worked for Jesus's friends, the very different sisters Mary and Martha. Venerable survivors of Gopher Prairie's old New England transplanted aristocracy accept the professional credentials of Will Kennicott and the town's other doctors. But they remain conditioned to regard Will's best friend Sam Clark and other merchants as undignified social upstarts. Why does Dr Kennicott hunt ducks and play bridge with the likes of Clark, self-described "dealer in hardware, sporting goods, cream separators and almost every kind of heavy junk you can think of" (Ch. III)? And why does Kennicott decline to go lower socially? Why, for instance, shoot ducks with his tailor, but not with his barber? Will Kennicott is a good-hearted, tunnel-visioned, work absorbed "plugger." Will and Sam are as close as David and Jonathan. It is Sam who drives the newly weds from the train station to their home in his pre World War One automobile. Sam Clark and his wife are the first denizens to entertain the Kennicotts at home. Indeed, the unimpressive Clark house is ever before Dr Kennicott's imagination as the model for his own future dream home. Carol resents tobacco-spitting Sam and other poker-playing friends of Will and perhaps subconsciously blames Sam for making her professional-level husband feel comfortable bathing only once a week, shaving thrice, not shining his shoes and letting his clothes become rumpled. Neither Sam nor Will is a big reader, though they admire one-time St. Paul librarian Carol for her bibliophilia. Towards novel's end Carol has made it clear to her husband that: "You have a right to me if you can keep me. Can you?" (Ch. XXXVI). Will then makes a quiet effort to improve himself and wins her back. For his part, faithful Sam keeps on accepting his friend's judgmental, demanding wife. A new equilibrium is created in Gopher Prairie. But Carol Kennicott foresees for her baby daughter a new world as far into the future as the year 2000. "She may see aeroplanes going to Mars." She will meanwhile be "a bomb to blow up smugness" (Ch. XXXIX). But for the moment the "Tories" of Gopher Prairie settle gratefully for a calmer Carol and resume straightening their collars, hanging their storm-windows and looking for misplaced screwdrivers. -OOO- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= II. by Mary K. Killough:
Notes and Passages to be read: For the Montreat College Adult Education Course, "23 Novels of Sinclair Lewis" 1920 MAIN STREET =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= A. THE STORY ----summary Analysis of Carol's characterization (from "Main Street. The Revolt of Carol Kennicott, by Martin Bucco in Twayne's Masterwork Studies, 1993) MS is a long, rather rambling novel; its 39 chapters contain long and short scenes with a great deal of detail, but Bucco has divided it neatly into 7 parts. The author does not mark these divisions, but Bucco describes them as follows: --1. introduces the reader to Carol Milford, first as a college student, next as a librarian in St. Paul, finally as Dr. Will Kennicott's bride. --2. describes Carol's struggles to fit into philistine Gopher prairie. --3. describes her trials, first as a helpmate to her husband then as director of an amateur play. --4. the centerpiece, depicts Carol as a semi-satisfied young mother. --5. shows her increasing estrangement from her husband and her intellectual revolt from Gopher Prairie,. --6. treats Carol's involvement with young Erik Valborg and --7 (last) details her physical revolt from the village and ,a fter nearly two years with her son in Washington, D. C., her return. (pp. 25-26) Time goes quickly in some chapters and very slowly in others. The story is told from a third-person, omniscient view; it is from Carol's perspective but with an intrusive novelist-narrator. Bucco's first characterization on Carol is as PRAIRIE PRINCESS. She is a romantic dreamer who wants to conquer and change the world. She has a sense of superiority, she basically wishes to remain aloof from most of the villagers. She sees all types and classes of society. She questions everything she sees in her famous 30 minute walk through Gopher Prairie. Though the novel is crowded with details, and 80 or more characters, Lewis says very little about Carol's physical appearance. She is cast as attractive to men. Carol shows interest throughout the novel is art, sociology, political and economics. She shows some feminists leanings. Next, Bucco dubs her CAROL D'ARC. (Chaps 7-12). She wants to lift up the city with her vision of goodness and truth but meets failure after failure- getting her husband to read poetry, the break the routing of their social group with sledding parties, to enrich the women's study club, erect a new city hall, help the poor, etc. She feels lonely and gossiped about. Carol's counterparts and friends are Bea, her household help, whom she befriends, and Vida Sherman, the only women with similar sentiments to Carol's. She tries to fit in with her social group and the "Jolly 17" and to improve the sessions of the Thanatopsis Club. 3. Carol is described as LADY BOUNTIFUL- she helps Will on some of his medical calls, becomes a Drama coach, she tries to make up with neighbors she has offended, she beautifies her home. She makes friends with Guy Pollack, highly cultured and someone with more similar intellectual interests than her husband. 4. MATER DOLOROSA (Chaps 19-21)- Carol becomes a mother to son Hugh, though she was first rather unhappy during pregnancy and doubtful of her maternal instincts. In these chapters (19-21) the rather disappointing Chataqua lectures are described and her frustrations on the library board. her friend Vida's life is examined. 5. VILLAGE INTELLECTUAL (Chap. 22-27). Carol is very unhappy; Will has an affair with Maud Dyer and her friend Bea, who has left her employ, dieds of typhoid with her son Olaf. Carol finds Gopher prairie increasingly dull. 6. AMERICAN BOVARY (Chaps. 28-33) Carol has a romance with the young Erik Valborg, a tailor, though nothing physical comes of it. She explores the backside of Main Street, the dismalness, rot, pulp, grease, flies, manure etc. Rev. Zitteral preaches agains workers controlling industry, women's suffrage, leftists in Russia, Mormons. Socialism is atheism in disguise. There are many incidents describing real historical and sociological events of the time. 7. PASSIONATE PILGRIM (Chaps. 34-39). Finally Carol escapes GP on a trip west and then a trip east, where she goes to Washington with Hugh to make a life of her own, working in a government office. Will comes to visit and their romance is re-kindled, Carol begins to miss GP but returns to find nothing changed. Carol herself has not changed much, except becoming a bit more complaisant. Bucco's analysis at least helps the reader wade through the many adventures of Carol Kennicott and shows the many facets of her personality. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ANALYSIS from "The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1929-1930" by James Hutchisson, 1997. MS shatters the myth of the friendly village and illustrates SL's own aversion to the "village virus" (define; ) Basic plot paradigm: youthful and middle aged seekers reject convention in favor of adventure -- to escape dull existence, then retreat to a safe route, partly satisfied that they have found their true selves or option for unconventional or peripatetic life. SL's first wife Grace was a model for Carol- a snob, well educated, independent. Also L's step- mother Isabel inspired him. Carol thinks she is radical but is actually rather prosaic. L's use of satire instead of preaching is more effective. ---------------- In "Women in Three SL Novels" by Nan Bauer Maglin, from "Sinclair Lewis", Editor Harold Bloom, 1987 This critic says that MS is like "The Diary of a Mad Housewife". It shows the stultifying effects of small town American from 1906-20. (pp. 103 ff) With no family ties and rebellious, Carol becomes restless. She is disillusioned with marriage, her husband and the chore of child-beaaring. She considers her husband Will coarse, drab and unimaginative. For her the myths of marriage are only myths. She finds no magical transformation through it. Employment is taboo for a married woman; she feels isolated and friendless and reverts to childlike behavior herself. She dreams of escape. There is no real solution for Carol. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ----interspersed QUOTATIONS. Text of MAIN STREET referred to by pages: NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY Signet Classic Pocketbook 1961 reprint. --(1) Author's PREFACE, p. 6, "This is America..." --(2) Chapter 1, p. 7, paras 1,2,3 ending "It is Carol Milford fleeing for anhour from Blodgett College." --(3) Chapter 4, pp. 37 - 41. Carol Kennicott's initial 32 minute stroll through Gopher Prairie, ending "She escaped from Main Street, fled home." --(4) Chapter 4, p. 42, Introducing Miss Bea Swenson, ending "Bea had never before been in a town larger than Scandia Crossing, which has sixty-seven inhabitants." --(5) Chapter 6, p. 78f Parlor Games at the Kennicotts' first party. --(6) Chapter 7, p. 83. "the town handyman -- Miles Bjornstam." --(7) Chapter 13, p.154f. Carol hears Guy Pollack's views on "The Village Virus." --(8) Chapter 15, p. 181. Mrs. Bogart's Victorian home. --(9) Chapter 20, p. 238f. Dr Will Kennicott's Uncle Whittier and Aunt Bessie Smail have critical opinions of views of Carol Kennicott. --(10) Chapter 22, p. 257. Two American images of the Village: its virtues and vices. --(11) Chapter 29, p. 338f. Carol contemplates the back side of Main Street. --(12) Chapter 38, p. 424 f. Carol's "active hatred of Gopher Prairie had run out." ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Public Impact of Novel Reception and critical acclaim varied; not all reviews were favorable. Some said it lacked depth in characterization, that there was not enough concern for the inner lives of the characters- they are presented in terms of possessions, motor cars, i.e. superficially. There is no spiritual of psychology depth. Mencken liked HSL best for his mimetic talent- he could capture the speech and habits of many different levels of society. L. was like an anthropologist. Mencken appreciated his satire as the strongest feature. HSL is compared with Dickens in his accuracy of showing the way people spoke walked, their gestures, and their eyes. --Made into money-losing silent Movie by Warner Brothers. --Prizes. None. Methods of Sinclair Lewis: Research L. used story boards, outlines and maps to guide him in his writing. He went on trips to research areas. Writing As L. revised his work, he softens Carol to a less abrasive, less high minded person. He makes her more sympathetic to the readers. Motherhood brings her around -- she is able to break free from her environment, unlike Babbitt. HSL's revisions made MAIN STREET less dark, cut out the explicit sex in Carol's love affair. His publisher, Harcourt, had HSL cut some length from the book. Carol's time in Washington is therapeutic. Revised pages are available for study at the University of Texas library in Austin. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ critical scholarly synopsis of main street (7) 1920 MAIN STREET. Attack on small-town American life, through the frustrations and eventual rebellion of Carol Kennicott in Gopher Prairie. Criticizes sanctified topics such as marriage, gender roles, and American values: "the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history." =-=-=-=-=-=- Mary K. Killough Oct. 9, 2005 (work in progress) |