Product Description

Businessman George F. Babbitt loves the latest appliances, brand names and the Republican party. In fact, he loves being a solid citizen even more than he loves his wife. But Babbitt comes to resent the middle class trappings he has worked so hard to acquire. Realising that his life is devoid of meaning, he grows determined to transcend his trivial existence and search for a greater purpose. Babbitt captures the flavour of America during the economic boom years of the 1920's, and its protagonist has become the symbol of middle-class mediocrity, his name an enduring part of the American lexicon.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #246019 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

About the Author
Sinclair Lewis was an American playwright and novelist. Born in 1885, he received his bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1908 and published his first novel, Hike and the Aeroplane, in 1912. He published Babbitt, perhaps his most fanous work, in 1922 and in 1926 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Arrowsmith but rejected it. In 1930 he was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in Rome, in 1951, and his last novel World So Wide was published posthumously.

Customer Reviews

The standardisation in this book is terrifying
What struck me most about Babbitt was the standardisation of life. Everything was about brand names and getting the best product in order to compete with neighbours.
Floral Heights seemed like it was just a cardboard cutout town with every house replicating the other - same decor, same cars, etc.
This was very scary in some sense and it made me realise how dull life would be if everything was so standardised - or maybe the world we live in is standardised but i am so conditioned to this i hadn't noiticed - i hope i am wrong about this though.

Subtle and absorbing satire on the American Dream
I've only recently discovered Sinclair Lewis and am now working my way through his wonderfully absorbing novels about small town American life. His slightly earlier novel `Main Street' (1920) was all about a woman who is disappointed in her husband and bored by her neighbours. George Babbitt is in some ways a parallel figure, a fairly prosperous and conventional salesman who goes through a mid-life crisis and begins to have some doubts about the American Dream. I was struck by the similarities between Lewis's description of 1920s America and our own society. Babbitt's is a world of extravagant advertising campaigns, self help books, New Age style gurus and product lust.

Although we are encouraged to feel some sympathy with Babbitt and his friend Paul, both of whom are tired of their wives, Lewis - as you'd expect from the author of `Main Street' - is careful to show us that these women have problems and disappointments of their own. Paul is actually the person whom Babbitt cares for most - and there is something touching about the way Lewis depicts his inarticulate but protective affection for his friend.

Babbitt is an irritating and not particularly admirable character. Yet somehow it's impossible not to identify with him. As I read I was reminded of Ricky Gervais' character in `The Office' - he makes you cringe, partly because you suspect you might be just a tiny bit like him. Babbitt also made me think of Joyce's Leopold Bloom - and in fact Lewis's novel was published in the same year as `Ulysses'. `Ulysses' may be all very well for those long-hair types - but if you want to read a story about regular folks then buy `Babbitt' - it's swell!