Freeper Reading Club Discussion---"BABBITT"

Self | May 26, 2003 | PJ-Comix

[PJ-Comix]

The current book under discussion for the Freeper Reading Club is Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. This book had a tremendous effect when it was publish and for years afterwards. As a matter of fact, Babbitt still has a big effect. One effect of this book was a certain prejudice against small businessmen for being "narrow-minded." Although there were many truths in this book I don't think a lot of things that held true in the 1920s are applicable to today. There is little of the "boosterism" and the conformity in small businessmen that existed back then. Actually you have to be something of a non-conformist nowadays to be a small business person. The conformists now work for the government or large corporations. Sinclair Lewis died in the around 1951 so his views might have changed. I do know that John Steinbeck and John Dos Passos became very conservative in the latter parts of their careers even though they were very far Left earlier so this might have been the case with Lewis had he lived longer.

Another thing that struck me about Babbitt was its modern feel even though it was written in 1922.

Well, that's some of my observations about Babbitt, Let's hear yours.

[PJ-Comix]

The next Freeper Reading Club assignment is The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is due on September 2. I already finished over a hundred pages of it and it is a great follow up to Babbitt. The conformity of the small businessmen in Babbitt is nothing compared to the conformity enforced by the Soviets under Stalin. This is well chronicled by The First Circle.

[PJ-Comix]

PING!

[jim_trent]

It has been many years since I read Babbitt (and several other books by Sinclair Lewis). One thing I noticed is that he frequently named his characters with obscure technical terms that meant what the character stood for (or the defining characteristic of the character). This is a common device with authors, but Lewis was more oblique than most.

Babbitt is a cheap metal that is used as a bearing. As long as the speed, pressure, and stress are not too great, babbitt will keep things moving, turning, operating.

Gantry was another one. An makeshift crane that helps lift things to the heavens. There were several others, which I forget now.

[Little Bill]

Except for the last quarter of the novel, Babbitt could have typlified the fifties. Lewis added the affair to villify the middle class, which he admitted and was an after thought.

[SamAdams76]

Well I was struck by the "modern" feel of the book as well, even though it was written over 80 years ago. Babbitt's "mid-life crisis" is similar to what a lot of men go through even today. Boring job, nagging wife, teenage kids who only want to borrow the car for the night, makes one wonder what it was all for and whether it was all worth it. In the end, Babbitt decides that it was but he envies his son who is bold enough to resist the conventional path set forth for him and to take his life into his own hands (by eloping and deciding to go to work doing what he loves instead of going to college).

I'm surprised that Sinclair Lewis, a Socialist sympathizer (at least at the time of this book's writing) gave the book the ending he did. As I was reading it, I figured Lewis would keep Babbitt on the "liberal" path and have him reject his materialist world completely. Instead, Babbitt becomes a union-hating conservative again and finds a degree of contentment in it as he is reaquainted with all his old friends and business contacts.

The trip that Babbitt took with Paul Reisling to Maine (without the wives and family) is a highlight of the book. I'm reaching middle-age myself and I'm dying to do something like that. I've spent the past 20+ years with my nose to the grindstone too and I could sure use a month off to do nothing but fish and play cards!

[SamAdams76]

The obsession with "social-climbing" in this book intrigued me. Even today, the wealthy seem to obsess over dinner parties and who is invited to which one as well as who is seated where in trendy restaurants. Maybe not as much as back then, but definitely to some extent.

In the book, Babbitt "overreaches" his social status by inviting a stuffy aristocratic classmate (Charles McKelvey) and his wife (Lucille) to a dinner party at his house after becoming reacquainted with him at a class reunion. Despite a phenomenal amount of preparation on the Babbitts' part, the dinner was a disaster. The McKelvey's appear snobbish and the conversation was stilted, then they yawn and leave early. In that scene, you feel sorry for the Babbitts. But in the very next scene, the Babbitts themselves are invited to a dinner party by a classmate of lesser social rank (the Overbrooks). The Babbitts proceed to treat the Overbrooks with the same scornful disdain that they received from the McKelveys!

Not exactly the kind of world I would want to live in.

[gcruse]

  I loved Babbitt.  It has been years since I read it, but the opening chapter, where he wakes up in the morning, is a fine-grained documentary of everyday life in the 1920s.  The imagery was just like being there.  It may be my favorite Lewis book.  Freepers wanting to learn more about that era should read  Frederick Allen's Only Yesterday.