Babbitt (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

While it took the first 50 pages to get into Babbitt, I was quickly drawn into this narcissistic, driven man who criticizes everyone. It takes him a while to understand the grass is not always greener on the other side.

1984 and Brave New World are the typical go-to fears of dystopia. And yet Babbitt is probably the most realistic dystopia -- because it existed in 1920 and it exists in 2020. Lewis shows how economic, religious, political, and social forces all work together to create a kind of invisible path. If you stay on the path, everything is happiness and roses for you. If you stray off the path, even slightly (like, say, saying the local labor union leader "isn't so bad") things just happen to stop going your way -- you just happen to lose out on a business deal, your customers dry up, you get passed over for leadership positions, you don't get invited to dinner parties, etc. The walls start closing in. Go back to parroting the party lines and cliched political phrases and "common sense" -- and you'll be forgiven and brought back into the fold. Why do people conform? Because to stand out costs you. Costs you in status, money, power, friendships. All the implicit incentives of society push you to go along with the status quo.

Thoreau wrote in Walden, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." . This truly describes the liife of George F. Babbit. He had all of the outward trappings of the quintessential business/family man. He had a socially acceptable wife who was loyal and always did his bidding. He had three children who displayed different levels of independence, he ran a very successful real estate business, he was a member and leader in all of the right groups, clubs, organizations, and church in the city of 300,000 save one, he live in the most fashionable neighborhoods in town, but something was missing.Georgie's wife no longer excited him. Lunch with the movers and shakers in the community. Sitting in church became Waa waa waa. His kids did not accept his sage words of wisdom. Closing a big business deal no longer motivated him.What was he to do? In modern parlance, there was nowhere that he could "move off of the grid". If it were possible to have a mid-life crisis in the 1920's George had one. He adopted a lifestyle that would have been totally unacceptable to his friends had they known. The demographic makeup of his circle of friends changed completely. He also made a change in his thinking that could have cost him everything. He changed his mindset from that of a conservative businessman to whom labor unions to a liberal populist who thought that the downtrodden workers should have been treated more humanely. This was the unforgivable sin in his social strata.Was George able to get his ship of life back on its proper course? Did a family feud cause him to re-evaluate what he was doing? Did his entire world reach the point of no return? I'm not telling. You will have to read the book to find out.If I had any problem with this book, as I read it, my mind was watching the larger than life George F. Babbit being portrayed in a movie being portrayed by the larger than life John Goodman, and I found it nearly impossible to separate the two.

You can't go wrong at $3.50 for this classic which I somehow got through HS and college without having to read.I don't regret catching up with it but I did not enjoy it, and was left somewhat wondering why it is so famous. Probably when it came out it had more significance for its trenchant observations. But I don't think it is particularly well-written. For starters, all the characters including Babbitt himself are cardboard. You really aren't made to care a hoot about any of them. Another thing is that the author's disdain for his "hero" and indeed for everything about the 1920's American scene he is writing about comes through very clearly. I feel the author can have a critical POV and still effect better balance and nuance. There is no nuance here - it is more like a diatribe continually hitting you over the head. Others have written of finding various scenes hilarious, but I did not find that. The overall effect is just depressing - perhaps the author's intention. The ending, where Babbitt (spoiler alert) seemingly "finds himself" I found unconvincing and uninteresting. Actually, I'm not even certain whether we are to see him as having found himself or as pathetically going back to his complacent, self-satisfied life. Probably it is supposed to be the latter, but at first I thought it was the former, because at least that would represent some form of growth/insight, which most great novels effect in their hero/heroine by the end. In other words, that even though on the surface he goes back to his old life, he does so with more insight into exactly what he is doing and why. But the more I reflect the less I think this was Lewis's intent - rather that Babbitt is pathetic and goes back to complacency without an ounce or growth or self-awareness.I *was* interested to learn how rampant real estate speculation in the suburbs was even in the early 1920's - I hadn't realized that.In point of fact I got through school without ever reading any Lewis. Main Street was next on my list, and I'll probably read it despite my disappointment with Babbitt, but thus far I am not impressed.IMO John Cheever does a far better and nuanced job of covering similar subject matter. Even in his short stories I cared about the characters, even the ones which were supposed to be despicable.

Sinclair Lewis humorously depicts the Philistine values of American Twenties society. It is not a pleasant picture! Moreover, he excoriates social conformism, religiosity and political conservatism. Babbitt seeks freedom. He does not quite find it, but he at least comes to question the values of his compatriots and the domination of the business "ethic". The novel is rather sprawling, but it has bite. We await something similar for Trump's America!

The book showed the pressure in 20 and 21st Century to conform to public opinion. Babbitt had ticked off the list of what should according to “normative” belief make humans happy and was baffled to find he wasn’t happy. After a brave attempt to fight the system he couldn’t find the courage to continue his stance against the community in which he lived.

A classic of life in small town USA. Sinclair Lewis brings out the shallowness of social values and has a laugh at the small mindedness of the characters.

A man's dilemma with his daily life... American... first read in the 1950s

Good book,fast delivery