Babbitt
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
Zenith is like many American cities in the wake of the First World War: midsize, industrial, booming with opportunities for enterprising capitalists. But Zenith is unique as a middling metropolis; within its wandering streets walks one George Babbitt, world-class realtor, American dreamer, social climber, and civic booster.
But unexpectedly, dark clouds appear on Babbitt’s horizon: his best friend, a convicted murderer? His eldest daughter, a wretched socialist? Coddled by the trappings of his professional and personal success, how can Babbitt become stricken with loneliness, dissatisfaction, and frustration?
First published in 1922, Lewis Sinclair’s contentious bestselling satire of middle-class America is more relevant than ever.
This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) was the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1926 Lewis’s novel Arrowsmith garnered the Pulitzer Prize, which the author refused. His work has been lauded for its critical insight into capitalism and materialist culture in America.
Read more from Sinclair Lewis
Elmer Gantry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Arrowsmith Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dodsworth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Job Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Main Street: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArrowsmith Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mantrap Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Arrowsmith: "There was much conversation, most of which sounded like the rest of it." Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babbitt: American Nobel Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Arrowsmith Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Job (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Martin Arrowsmith Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elmer Gantry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babbit Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Our Mr. Wrenn (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/530 Eternal Masterpieces of Humorous Stories (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Babbitt
Related ebooks
Look Homeward, Angel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Of Human Bondage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Howards End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master and Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Madame Bovary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsO Pioneers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Buddenbrooks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Portrait of a Lady Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ethan Frome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The good soldier Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cry, the Beloved Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dead Souls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanity Fair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Antonia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Magic Mountain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Winesburg, Ohio Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paul's Case and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Main Street Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Can't Go Home Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Day of the Locust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Known World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Room with a View Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women in Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath in Venice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Random Harvest: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Middlemarch Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Middlemarch by George Eliot - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Way of All Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Fiction For You
The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prophet Song: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lagos Wife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invisible Hour: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Babbitt
51 ratings44 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Satiric yarn about how the good ol' boy network self-perpetuates. Chuckled through out, but laughed out loud once, when reading that Mrs. Babbitt spent 17 days in the hospital after an appendectomy.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A bit slow but still worthwhile as the author definitely is a good writer and has Made Babbitt an interesting character that even moves you in the End.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5For the most part, this is a book about an 48 year old grump's midlife crisis. I hated every single minute of this story. George F. Babbitt struck me as wholly offensive and obnoxious from the very first and he only got worse. While I know, on one level, that this is probably to make a point, I cannot accept that he never gets a comeuppance for being an idiotic jerk. He constantly espouses viewpoints as his own, even though he's simply repeating what he has heard or read in the newspaper.
Once again, I listened to an audiobook. It's hard for me to say whether it was a good performance of the novel or not, since I so hated the novel itself. From the first, I really wanted to punch Colacci in the face to make him stop talking. His voice is grating and annoying. This inclines me to say that thus this is not a great audiobook, but, still, such a voice does fit perfectly with the truly awful people in the story. I do imagine that Babbitt sounds exactly like that.
A more fair criticism of the performance than my personally not liking the sound of Colacci's voice is that it was often difficult to tell the characters apart. During conversations, I really could not follow who was speaking, unless there was some sort of note as to who said what. One conversation between Paul Riesling and Babbitt, for example, left me unsure as to whose wife was being annoying and who was praising whom. Surprisingly, though, this gruff-voiced man did a really good job with the female voices, although, again, they all sounded pretty similar. Of course, the women never really have a conversation, so that didn't matter much.
Pretty much the only interesting thing in this novel is the setting (1920s), but I would recommend getting that from An American Tragedy instead, which has some really strange parallels. Babbitt is repetitive (he constantly mentions his desire to quit smoking and then forgets and then announces he'll do it this time and then...) and obnoxious (Babbitt spends the first half of the novel being sanctimonious about things and behavior, then goes and does all those things and is sanctimonious about those that judge him for it). If that's your thing, then go for it. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is the story of a man who does everything he thinks he is supposed to to be successful and yet comes to a point of believing he is an empty soul. Where to go from there? You have to read the book! I will say that the plot drags a bit in the middle, but otherwise moves right along. Much of the story made me think of the "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" concept. A timeless theme!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5George F. Babbitt is a successful realtor in the fictional Midwest town of Zenith in the 1920s. Though he has all a middle class man could desire he is vaguely dissatisfied. He is pompous, arrogant and obtuse and I think this quote nicely captures his essence, “These standard advertised wares—toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters—were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom.”About two-thirds of the way through the novel an event shakes Babbitt to the core. He reexamines his beliefs and values, dabbling in some immoral and liberal (by 1920s standards) behavior, before his proclivity for self-preservation gets the better of him. Another slow starter of a book and though it never really gets exciting, the inaction and subtle tension is very readable and compelling. As a satire, I didn’t find it overly preachy and details of this suburban life really were amusing. Somehow this self-involved, unlikeable Babbitt grew on me; I was rooting for him and hoping he would wake up from his suburban coma to DO SOMETHING. Alas, I got what I wished for and was disappointed. But really there wasn’t any other way it could’ve been for a specimen like Ol’ Babbitt.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Despite the fact that this book was written way back when, I found a lot of relevance to our current world between these covers and I liked it! George F. Babbitt is a real estate agent in Zenith, a Midwestern city of of "towers of steel and cement and limestone" where the population has grown to "practically 362,000." While anyone visiting its business center would be hard pressed to distinguish it from other major cities, George finds every inch of it "individual and stirring." He is married, has two children, and is above all wrapped up in his community standing. He belongs to a number of civic organizations, most prominently, the Zenith Boosters’ Club, where his like-minded, middle-class associates bow to the gods of business, money and progress and work to keep out any elements that they believe might possibly upset their collective and lucrative apple carts. George lives in a modern house with the latest technologies, belongs to a church, plays golf, and his opinions are shaped by the institutions and people with whom he associates and his political party. Underneath his public persona, however, he's starting to think that perhaps there's something missing, that he's not "entirely satisfied." George has an ongoing and secret dream fantasy of a "fairy child" who will help him to escape to places “more romantic than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea,” but the dreams are short lived; when daybreak comes it's back to more practical things. One of his old college buds and best friend, Paul Riesling, dreamed of becoming a concert violinist, but he too has jettisoned his dreams and has become a member of Zenith's middle-class business community. Unlike Babbitt, however, he is not afraid to confide his personal dissatisfaction: he's bored, his wife Zilla is a constant nag who makes him unhappy enough to have affairs, and he has come to the realization that in the business world, "all we do is cut each other's throats and make the public pay for it." Paul is the only one of Babbitt's associates that recognizes the need for responsibility -- something that Babbitt and his other cronies don't get. When Paul's problems with Zilla come to a head and he literally can no longer take it, he snaps -- and his actions and their consequences send Babbitt into introspective mode where he comes to realize that his way of life has been "incredibly mechanical:" "Mechanical business -- a brisk selling of badly built houses. Mechanical religion -- a dry, hard church, shut off from the real life of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical golf and dinner-parties and bridge and conversation. Save with Paul Riesling, mechanical friendships -- back-slapping and jocular, never daring to essay the test of quietness." prodding George into full-on rebellion.I won't say any more -- the novel is an excellent piece of satire on conformity and middle-class culture, business or otherwise. It is set in a time when unions, Socialism and any other form of organization among workers constituted a perceived threat to the American way of life; a time when the "American way of settling labor-troubles was for workmen to trust and love their employers." As Lewis remarks on a Zenith organization called the Good Citizens' League, the members of this group believed that "the working-classes must be kept in their place ... that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals and vocabulary." hmmm.... let's think about that for a moment, shall we? Democracy?There is also a very purposeful delineation of class in this novel, and Lewis has a way of juxtaposing one against the other in some rather well-crafted scenes. Obviously there's much more to it, and there are some hefty critiques and reviews to be found where perhaps more can be gleaned. It is rather difficult to read, I suspect, under the best of conditions, so if you are contemplating it as a reading choice, my advice is not to give up. The book is constructed as a series of vignettes that eventually all come together in an ending which was not so predictable yet powerfully sad, at least for me. Recommended -- but take your time with it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For some reason, I have been reading novels about people who are not exactly the salt of the earth. In this case, Mr. Babbitt is a "typical" middle-classed businessman. In spite of having the required accoutrements of the age – a wife, a good job, children, etc. – his is a loveless life and he is very unhappy. This novel follows him as he explores this unhappiness, to the point where he becomes a bit of a...radical. However, life has different plans for him and, when it all comes to a close, Babbitt realizes he cannot change. Really, Babbitt is not a particularly likable individual. As I say, I seem to be reading about these types a lot lately. (What, exactly, is the cosmos trying to tell me?) And it is very interesting to watch how well authors handle the task. I have seen it mishandled to the point that I rooted against both the protagonist and author, and I have seen it handled so well that, in spite of hoping for ill things to happen to the protagonist, I continued to read about their progress with interest.In this case, it was very interesting. As Lewis describes Babbitt's life, he is quickly someone with whom I cannot sympathize nor hope good things for. Yet, the early section describing Babbitt's life is fascinating and, in spite of the relative boredom of that life, hard to put down. The ensuring action continues that trend. At certain points you root for Babbitt; at others you grieve for him; and in others you feel it is no less than he deserves.I think what makes this work (and what makes any of them work) is that relatability of the character. No, I'm not as bad as Babbitt. But I can definitely see the humanity in him. And, because of that, I appreciate the telling of his tale.(And, after looking more closely, the other situation where I felt the dislikable character was handled so expertly happened to also be by Sinclair Lewis. I guess this guy knows what he is doing.)
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I read this book long before I lived in Minnesota, or visited Duluth ("Zenith" in the book). I was glad to see this book on the 1000 Novels list, along with Main Street, which I was never able to finish (maybe someday!) I think the difference is in the point of view -- in Babbitt, you see things from Babbitt's point of view and even though he's being judged by the author, there is a certain charm to him. In Main Street, Carol just seems like a whiner to me. But maybe I should give her another chance.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Change the technology and take away prohibition and this story could've been written last week. Hard to believe it was written in 1922. I thought this went so far but wasn't willing to go too far, but then again it was written in the twenties. Lot of proto-types for Babbitt on TV.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book took me a lot longer to read than I felt it should have. I just couldn't get into it. Gosh, the lack of plot and constant use of jargon wore me out. That said, it seemed like an interesting snapshot of life in early 1920's America and this book definitely made me think a lot. When this book was published in 1922, apparently the idea that we've become a society of boring, hypocritical conformists was new and shocking. Nowadays we're more aware of this tendency in ourselves, so it's not a shock, but I still found it to be rather depressing. A lot of George F. Babbitt's problems still exist today--how can I avoid allowing my family to fall into the pitfalls that the Babbitts fell into? Can I raise kids in a typical suburban home without becoming the old frumpish, boring, and needy Myra Babbitt? Is it possible to have a long marriage without it leading to violence or extramarital affairs? Can we disagree with our neighbors and coworkers and still be successful?
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is everything I dislike about literary fiction, and yet it's so darn well written I'm giving it four stars, even though I never would have finished the thing if it wasn't for research purposes. Lewis can WRITE. There's a reason he's remembered as one of the great writers of the 20th century.Here's the thing about Babbit. He's a horrible person, but he's like people all of us know. The book really centers around a catastrophic mid-life crisis. Babbit is sanctimonious, loud-mouthed, a sexual harrasser, desperate to climb the social ladder. He's largely spineless--he follows whatever crowd holds sway over him. Most of all, we are never intended to like him, but we relate to him in small ways all the same. It was only by the power of Lewis's writing that I stuck with the book, because this really hit on so many tropes that I loathe, especially when it comes to spousal abuse (though Babbit's sin in this regard is mostly in supporting his best friend's abuse/near-murder of his wife) and Babbit's extramarital affair. I mean, I HATED this guy, but I kept reading, and on the last page I genuinely pitied him. This book is an exercise is incredible character development.One of the reasons I braved this book was due to the social impact it had in the 1920s. In several books from that period, I have come across mentions of people being considered "like Babbit." The book was a bestseller, and since we all know people like Babbit, it's no wonder the name entered popular culture.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/51922. Really liked it. Sinclair Lewis writes so beautifully that he can make even a middle class businessman's life lyrical. The novel deals with traditional conservative ideals like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and unquestioning patriotism and loyalty. Babbitt briefly entertains a liberal thought. He sympathizes with the labor movement for about thirty seconds, cheats on his wife and drinks too much for a few months, and loses all his friends and most of his social standing. Then his wife gets appendicitis and he rushes to her side to be the perfect husband once again, and he conforms to the standards he was living by before, with just a bit of niggling doubt left in his mind. He places his hope of ever breaking out of society's mold in his son and hopes he does a better job of it.For someone who basically upholds views I disagree with for most of the book, Babbitt is wonderfully human and loveable. He struggles with real-life questions which I think nearly every one can relate to. His life gets too routine and he experiments, but returns to the safe, straight and narrow path before long. And the dialogue is tip-top!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I read this in Grade 10 and hated it with a purple passion. I read it again years later. I still hated it. Perhaps I am not enlightened enough. In any case, I can appreciate the message and all that, but the administration of said message is painful. When the box of books from back home arrives here, I will add the review that I wrote when I was 14. My opinion hasn't changed much.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I did like the writing, however the story just made me sad. There was no time that I could cheer for Babbit.... not when he is in his plastic life at the top of the social hierarchy, and not when he is rebelling with parties and women. It's most crushing when he decides to go back to where he was in the beginning.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5After the enormous success of his novel Main Street, Lewis turned to another icon of American life, this time the archetypal middle-clas businessman, immortalized in the figure of George F. Babbitt. Babbitt is a real estate salesman who lives and works in the fictional Midwestern town of Zenith. His story is that of suburban life in a city which is filled with "neither citadels nopr churches, but frankly the beautifully office-buildings." Lewis' novel satirically but lovingly details Babbit's routines and rituals as he goes to and from work, socializes, plays golf, goes to the club, and becomes involved in local politics. In the mids of his contented and prosperous life, however, an event occurs that turns Babbit's world upside down and forces him to examine his comfortable existanse. Babbit's resulting lurch from one uncertainty to another allows the reader to see beyond the shining office towers of Zenith to a grittier, more sobering but ultimately more human kind of Amarican life. Lewis' triumph here lies in taking a character that no one could possibly like-the self-important conformist, and aggressively bigoted American businessman-and evoking not only barbed humor but vivid human feeling. Babbitt works as a political critique, piercing the smug veil worn by interwar American capitalism, but trancends mere amusing satire. Life in Zenith has a surprising depth; as such, it reminds us of the redemptive power of looking past ideology to the human relations beneath.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I was reading this book I kept thinking, I know this man! Actually, I've met a couple that would come very close to this guy. The way Lewis presented him was very clever. It was hard to like Babbitt very much, but I couldn't hate him either. Just when he got truly unlikeable, he would do something goofy and utterly human or have a moment of relative clarity. His self righteousness as well as his doubts are shown with equal distinction. The satire is fabulous and I laughed out loud many times. Read this book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An excellent portrayal of a middle-class business man in the vernacular of the times being portrayed. Once I got into it, I found it hard to put down. It's broken into small segments making it hard to get confused as to what's going on. Babbitt is a vehicle for exposing some of the major flaws of the business/social climber.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It took me a while to get into this book. Babbitt is supposed to be a satirical, ironic look at American life in the 1920's - after World War I and before the Great Depression, a period of increasing prosperity for America. Sinclair Lewis struck me as almost intentionally forcing himself to write in the idiom of his period, rather than with a neutral, literary language, and I did not find the style comfortable. That's my problem, not Lewis'.The story is of a middle-aged, fairly successful, real estate dealer who aspires to become more than just "fairly" successful at the same time he seems to be going through a mid-life crisis: he feels lost in himself, and wants to experience a more "liberal" lifestyle. He discovers, however, that the pursuit of success and a liberal lifestyle may not be compatible.Ultimately, it is a story of learning about oneself, the choices one has to make to achieve one's dreams, and the recognition that life is a series of compromises between idealism and pragmatism.What amazes me is the extent to which the situations in which Babbitt finds himself actually apply almost precisely to today's America: the attitudes, the aspirations, the contradictions and inconsistencies - the dichotomy between "liberalism" and "conservatism." Putting aside the dialectic differences, this book could have been written in the past 15 years with no loss of relevance. The pure genius of the book is that it applies to life in any era.An exceptional book. I may not read Lewis again, but I am glad that the one book of his that I have read is so timeless.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book created one of the author's most enduring characters, who's name has become synonymous with a certain type of small town businessman. The story is slow moving, and written in Lewis's typical rather turgid prose, but there are some very good moments.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis is a satirical novel about American culture and society that explores the dullness of middle class American life as well as the social pressures there are toward conformity. Written and set in the early 1920’s, many of Lewis’ observations are still valid today. The novel is set in the fictional Midwestern town of Zenith where George F Babbitt, a 46 year old prosperous real estate broker is on the verge of a mid-life crisis. Babbitt ‘s family consists of his devoted wife, Myra, and his three children, Verona, Ted and Tinka. The social status of the Babbitt family is important to George and they constantly are on the lookout to improve their status in the community. Yet, there is a bit of a rebel inside George and when his best friend ends up going to prison and his wife goes away to nurse her sister, George mounts his own small rebellion, but eventually realizes that it is too late for him to change and retreats back into the security of conformity. He does however, encourage his son, to explore his possibilities and not just settle into life.I thought Babbitt was a very interesting read. Instead of the glamour and glitz of the 1920’s, this book gives us a glimpse of middle class American life in ways that are both insightful and humorous. The middle class became a recognizable force during this decade and this book helps us to understand it’s place and importance in society. My opinion of George Babbitt went through a number of changes during the course of the story for which I credit the author for developing such a well rounded character. And although the slang and much of the dialogue was dated to it’s time, in many ways this was a timeless story.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Just couldn't get into this and didn't feel inclined to try particularly hard to endure. Language distant from me and dull story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Written by a Nobel prize laureate and considered one of the best written books of the century! That pretty much says it all. This is an essential book for any avid reader. For the impatient reader, it can be dragging, but the description of the events, characters, and settingsnin the book are unparalleled. Sinclair Lewis takes imagery, in every day life, to a whole new level!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5George Babbitt is a middle-aged real-estate broker living in the fictional Midwestern town of Zenith in the 1920s. He has done everything “right” in life and lives with his kids and wife in a nice little town. He’s well respected in the community and is successful in business. He loves to think about his superiority over others and “subtly” brag about his material possessions. When a crisis with his best friend sends him spiraling into a midlife crisis we learn just how unhappy Babbitt truly is. He’s built a perfect world, based on what he’s been told means success, yet he feels empty. “Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club and hustled through nine holes of golf, as a rest after the week’s hustle.” Babbitt reminded me quite a bit of The Corrections, except I hated that book and I didn’t hate this one. It has a similar concept, looking at the average American family and the dysfunction within it, but this one was published about 80 years earlier. I think Babbitt touched on issues that were completely new and hadn’t been discussed yet, like ambition and success vs. family values, the “American Dream” of bigger cars and bigger paychecks vs. happiness. Even though I liked this book, I struggled to feel attached to it because I disliked the characters so much. There’s not a likeable one in the bunch. Babbitt is a self-important fool, his kids are spoiled brats, and even his wife is a bit of a simpleton. I was impressed with what Lewis said about American society in the early 20th century, before everyone else was saying it, but I didn’t love the book itself. This was my first experience with Sinclair Lewis (who I have always confused with Upton Sinclair) and I’m looking forward to seeing if some of his other famous books, like Main Street, have the same tone.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Very sardonic, satirical, and amusing
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It has been more than forty years since I read this book, so it is probably a good time to return; but I'm not sure what to expect from rereading this classic from the pen of Sinclair Lewis. More recently I've read Main Street which I enjoyed. However, Babbitt, while demonstrating the signature Sinclair Lewis satirical style, lingers in my memory as a different sort of book. Carol Kennicot, was endearing in her earnest innocence, while Babbitt has the reputation of a brash booster who gives urban business a bad name. There must be more to the novel than this simple-sounding approach to character. Yet, the character lives through this image. The opening of the novel suggests that Babbitt is living in a world of "grotesqueries" that make up the city of Zenith. This portends what is to come and is in itself a sign of the thought the author has put into his work. The towers of skyscrapers are contrasted with the lowness of tenements. All culminating in the comment that this is "a city built - it seemed - for giants." Enter the lilliputian booster in the person of George F. Babbitt. This reader is confident the style will carry him over and beyond the drudgery of the naturalistic philosophy that underlies this "classic" of the nineteen-twenties.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I see a lot of myself in Babbitt. He's a man trapped within himself and his limitations; he wants to be free, but he's not sure exactly what he wants to be free from, or how to go about his release from the pressures of society and relationships. His rebellion is fascinating though short-lived.The novel itself is more of an account of America in the early 1920s - the rampant growth of the economy, the nascent anti-communism leanings that would reach their zenith with McCarthy, the standardisation and normalisation of everything and everybody, and the rise of 'science' - though this being America and business, a very unscientific science.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Babbitt is a characterization of a capitalist drawn by a socialist. The author calls Babbitt a conservative, but gives him the feelings and vices of an elitist liberal. Since all good humor must have it’s base in truth, this book is totally humorless and extremely boring. I believe most of the passages were stolen from advertisements.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Babbitt is the story of a man attempting to break free from the stranglehold of society. In the start of the novel Babbitt is just another conservative upper class citizen but throughout the story he takes on new directions in both his lifestyle and political ideals. Besides politics this novel is so much more. The only downside to the book is its length, far to short. I wish the book would be twice the long so I could enjoy all the more time with it.If you wish to read a brilliant political satire than this is the book for you. Lewis has a simple but thought provoking style which combines the best qualities of storytelling and Orwellian satire to create a new masterpiece which is Babbitt.Some reviewers complain about being able to follow the storyline, but that is simply not true. You must enter the novel with both an open mind and an understanding of satire in order to understand Lewis' creative style. Well worth any effort you may instow upon it.A must for any bookshelf!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read the book over 32 years ago. Although I no longer remember all of it, I do remember enough of it to recommend the book to almost anyone. If you're going on a long plane flight or need a book for your vacation, leave Clancy, Kellerman, et al at home and take this or any of Lewis' other works with you. You will enjoy the book and your trip much more than you would have had you taken some other work of popular fiction along.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm still a bit torn on this book.The writing was good. The main character, Babbitt, had considerable depth and we really got into his head. The environment/setting/etc was well presented and really gave me a good feel for 1920s middle America. The ending wrapped up the various elements into a nice little package while still giving you something to think about.And yet, I left this novel feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled. There are a few ways to take this novel. From a high level, it's a great sociological exploration into the American upper-middle-class family of the 1920s. It does a great job of showing work life and family life...of exploring the various issues a worker and a family may face...from labor unions to college to prohibition to the overly peppy youth.From a plot standpoint, it's more difficult to evaluate. We follow this man Babbitt through his business days and his time with family and friends. We really get into his head and get a feel for the large variety of things that leave him discontented. And yet through many of the chapters, there doesn't seem to be much "plot" at all other than just randomly following this guy around.There are, backing out to the overall novel, elements of a story arc that takes Babbitt's discontent and allows it to rise and fall and thus driving him to some action. But the elements of action felt sparse within the context of the novel. When the story arc finally reached its first climax, we got a few chapters of self destructive behavior and it looked as though our hero was in for a fall that would spur him either to disaster or into some radical action. Unfortunately, neither came to pass and the climax petered out.I think part of the problem too for me is that I read this in a moment when I was already personally discontented with some elements in my life (work, school...) and so I found myself relating too closely to the overly depressive side of Babbitt. So as he spiraled downward, I felt my own mind reeling, though grateful that I could personally avoid his type of behavior. And yet, once the conclusion of his actions wrapped up, it felt very anti-climactic for me and I felt like nothing was truly resolved the way it could be resolved in real life. Thus, it was as though I got wrapped up in the emotions of a self-destructive mid-life crisis without feeling any resolution to pull me out of the disparaging pit the novel dug. Fortunately, things aren't that bleak for me and I'll quickly dig myself out.If you're interested in the 1920s...or middle america...or the emotions and turmoil of a midlife crisis...then by all means, give this book a read. There are moments of humor and, if pieced together, can make an engaging narrative. Otherwise, the novel itself is rather boring and I personally feel that it can largely be passed by.***2.5 stars out of 5
Book preview
Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis
CHAPTER I
I
THE TOWERS OF ZENITH aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and beautifully office-buildings.
The mist took pity on the fretted structures of earlier generations: the Post Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minarets of hulking old houses, factories with stingy and sooted windows, wooden tenements colored like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, but the clean towers were thrusting them from the business center, and on the farther hills were shining new houses, homes—they seemed—for laughter and tranquillity.
Over a concrete bridge fled a limousine of long sleek hood and noiseless engine. These people in evening clothes were returning from an all-night rehearsal of a Little Theater play, an artistic adventure considerably illuminated by champagne. Below the bridge curved a railroad, a maze of green and crimson lights. The New York Flyer boomed past, and twenty lines of polished steel leaped into the glare.
In one of the skyscrapers the wires of the Associated Press were closing down. The telegraph operators wearily raised their celluloid eye-shades after a night of talking with Paris and Peking. Through the building crawled the scrubwomen, yawning, their old shoes slapping. The dawn mist spun away. Cues of men with lunch-boxes clumped toward the immensity of new factories, sheets of glass and hollow tile, glittering shops where five thousand men worked beneath one roof, pouring out the honest wares that would be sold up the Euphrates and across the veldt. The whistles rolled out in greeting a chorus cheerful as the April dawn; the song of labor in a city built—it seemed—for giants.
II
There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man who was beginning to awaken on the sleeping-porch of a Dutch Colonial house in that residential district of Zenith known as Floral Heights.
His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.
His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon the khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appeared this sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectable grass-plots, a cement driveway, and a corrugated iron garage. Yet Babbitt was again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romantic than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.
For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others saw but Georgie Babbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in the darkness beyond mysterious groves. When at last he could slip away from the crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends, sought to follow, but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they crouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait for him, that they would sail—
Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.
Babbitt moaned; turned over; struggled back toward his dream. He could see only her face now, beyond misty waters. The furnace-man slammed the basement door. A dog barked in the next yard. As Babbitt sank blissfully into a dim warm tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and the rolled-up Advocate thumped the front door. Babbitt roused, his stomach constricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiar and irritating rattle of some one cranking a Ford: snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist, Babbitt cranked with the unseen driver, with him waited through taut hours for the roar of the starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again began the infernal patient snap-ah-ah—a round, flat sound, a shivering cold-morning sound, a sound infuriating and inescapable. Not till the rising voice of the motor told him that the Ford was moving was he released from the panting tension. He glanced once at his favorite tree, elm twigs against the gold patina of sky, and fumbled for sleep as for a drug. He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day.
He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seven-twenty.
III
It was the best of nationally advertised and quantitatively produced alarm-clocks, with all modern attachments, including cathedral chime, intermittent alarm, and a phosphorescent dial. Babbitt was proud of being awakened by such a rich device. Socially it was almost as creditable as buying expensive cord tires.
He sulkily admitted now that there was no more escape, but he lay and detested the grind of the real-estate business, and disliked his family, and disliked himself for disliking them. The evening before, he had played poker at Vergil Gunch’s till midnight, and after such holidays he was irritable before breakfast. It may have been the tremendous home-brewed beer of the prohibition-era and the cigars to which that beer enticed him; it may have been resentment of return from this fine, bold man-world to a restricted region of wives and stenographers, and of suggestions not to smoke so much.
From the bedroom beside the sleeping-porch, his wife’s detestably cheerful Time to get up, Georgie boy,
and the itchy sound, the brisk and scratchy sound, of combing hairs out of a stiff brush.
He grunted; he dragged his thick legs, in faded baby-blue pajamas, from under the khaki blanket; he sat on the edge of the cot, running his fingers through his wild hair, while his plump feet mechanically felt for his slippers. He looked regretfully at the blanket—forever a suggestion to him of freedom and heroism. He had bought it for a camping trip which had never come off. It symbolized gorgeous loafing, gorgeous cursing, virile flannel shirts.
He creaked to his feet, groaning at the waves of pain which passed behind his eyeballs. Though he waited for their scorching recurrence, he looked blurrily out at the yard. It delighted him, as always; it was the neat yard of a successful business man of Zenith, that is, it was perfection, and made him also perfect. He regarded the corrugated iron garage. For the three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth time in a year he reflected, No class to that tin shack. Have to build me a frame garage. But by golly it’s the only thing on the place that isn’t up-to-date!
While he stared he thought of a community garage for his acreage development, Glen Oriole. He stopped puffing and jiggling. His arms were akimbo. His petulant, sleep-swollen face was set in harder lines. He suddenly seemed capable, an official, a man to contrive, to direct, to get things done.
On the vigor of his idea he was carried down the hard, clean, unused-looking hall into the bathroom.
Though the house was not large it had, like all houses on Floral Heights, an altogether royal bathroom of porcelain and glazed tile and metal sleek as silver. The towel-rack was a rod of clear glass set in nickel. The tub was long enough for a Prussian Guard, and above the set bowl was a sensational exhibit of tooth-brush holder, shaving-brush holder, soap-dish, sponge-dish, and medicine-cabinet, so glittering and so ingenious that they resembled an electrical instrument-board. But the Babbitt whose god was Modern Appliances was not pleased. The air of the bathroom was thick with the smell of a heathen toothpaste. Verona been at it again! ’Stead of sticking to Lilidol, like I’ve re-peat-ed-ly asked her, she’s gone and gotten some confounded stinkum stuff that makes you sick!
The bath-mat was wrinkled and the floor was wet. (His daughter Verona eccentrically took baths in the morning, now and then.) He slipped on the mat, and slid against the tub. He said Damn!
Furiously he snatched up his tube of shaving-cream, furiously he lathered, with a belligerent slapping of the unctuous brush, furiously he raked his plump cheeks with a safety-razor. It pulled. The blade was dull. He said, Damn—oh—oh—damn it!
He hunted through the medicine-cabinet for a packet of new razor-blades (reflecting, as invariably, Be cheaper to buy one of these dinguses and strop your own blades,
) and when he discovered the packet, behind the round box of bicarbonate of soda, he thought ill of his wife for putting it there and very well of himself for not saying Damn.
But he did say it, immediately afterward, when with wet and soap-slippery fingers he tried to remove the horrible little envelope and crisp clinging oiled paper from the new blade. Then there was the problem, oft-pondered, never solved, of what to do with the old blade, which might imperil the fingers of his young. As usual, he tossed it on top of the medicine-cabinet, with a mental note that some day he must remove the fifty or sixty other blades that were also temporarily, piled up there. He finished his shaving in a growing testiness increased by his spinning headache and by the emptiness in his stomach. When he was done, his round face smooth and streamy and his eyes stinging from soapy water, he reached for a towel. The family towels were wet, wet and clammy and vile, all of them wet, he found, as he blindly snatched them—his own face-towel, his wife’s, Verona’s, Ted’s, Tinka’s, and the lone bath-towel with the huge welt of initial. Then George F. Babbitt did a dismaying thing. He wiped his face on the guest-towel! It was a pansy-embroidered trifle which always hung there to indicate that the Babbitts were in the best Floral Heights society. No one had ever used it. No guest had ever dared to. Guests secretively took a corner of the nearest regular towel.
He was raging, By golly, here they go and use up all the towels, every doggone one of ’em, and they use ’em and get ’em all wet and sopping, and never put out a dry one for me—of course, I’m the goat!—and then I want one and—I’m the only person in the doggone house that’s got the slightest doggone bit of consideration for other people and thoughtfulness and consider there may be others that may want to use the doggone bathroom after me and consider—
He was pitching the chill abominations into the bath-tub, pleased by the vindictiveness of that desolate flapping sound; and in the midst his wife serenely trotted in, observed serenely, Why Georgie dear, what are you doing? Are you going to wash out the towels? Why, you needn’t wash out the towels. Oh, Georgie, you didn’t go and use the guest-towel, did you?
It is not recorded that he was able to answer.
For the first time in weeks he was sufficiently roused by his wife to look at her.
IV
Myra Babbitt—Mrs. George F. Babbitt—was definitely mature. She had creases from the corners of her mouth to the bottom of her chin, and her plump neck bagged. But the thing that marked her as having passed the line was that she no longer had reticences before her husband, and no longer worried about not having reticences. She was in a petticoat now, and corsets which bulged, and unaware of being seen in bulgy corsets. She had become so dully habituated to married life that in her full matronliness she was as sexless as an anemic nun. She was a good woman, a kind woman, a diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Tinka her ten-year-old, was at all interested in her or entirely aware that she was alive.
After a rather thorough discussion of all the domestic and social aspects of towels she apologized to Babbitt for his having an alcoholic headache; and he recovered enough to endure the search for a B.V.D. undershirt which had, he pointed out, malevolently been concealed among his clean pajamas.
He was fairly amiable in the conference on the brown suit.
What do you think, Myra?
He pawed at the clothes hunched on a chair in their bedroom, while she moved about mysteriously adjusting and patting her petticoat and, to his jaundiced eye, never seeming to get on with her dressing. How about it? Shall I wear the brown suit another day?
Well, it looks awfully nice on you.
I know, but gosh, it needs pressing.
That’s so. Perhaps it does.
It certainly could stand being pressed, all right.
Yes, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt it to be pressed.
But gee, the coat doesn’t need pressing. No sense in having the whole darn suit pressed, when the coat doesn’t need it.
That’s so.
But the pants certainly need it, all right. Look at them—look at those wrinkles—the pants certainly do need pressing.
That’s so. Oh, Georgie, why couldn’t you wear the brown coat with the blue trousers we were wondering what we’d do with them?
Good Lord! Did you ever in all my life know me to wear the coat of one suit and the pants of another? What do you think I am? A busted bookkeeper?
Well, why don’t you put on the dark gray suit to-day, and stop in at the tailor and leave the brown trousers?
Well, they certainly need—Now where the devil is that gray suit? Oh, yes, here we are.
He was able to get through the other crises of dressing with comparative resoluteness and calm.
His first adornment was the sleeveless dimity B.V.D. undershirt, in which he resembled a small boy humorlessly wearing a cheesecloth tabard at a civic pageant. He never put on B.V.D.’s without thanking the God of Progress that he didn’t wear tight, long, old-fashioned undergarments, like his father-in-law and partner, Henry Thompson. His second embellishment was combing and slicking back his hair. It gave him a tremendous forehead, arching up two inches beyond the former hair-line. But most wonder-working of all was the donning of his spectacles.
There is character in spectacles—the pretentious tortoiseshell, the meek pince-nez of the school teacher, the twisted silver-framed glasses of the old villager. Babbitt’s spectacles had huge, circular, frameless lenses of the very best glass; the ear-pieces were thin bars of gold. In them he was the modern business man; one who gave orders to clerks and drove a car and played occasional golf and was scholarly in regard to Salesmanship. His head suddenly appeared not babyish but weighty, and you noted his heavy, blunt nose, his straight mouth and thick, long upper lip, his chin over-fleshy but strong; with respect you beheld him put on the rest of his uniform as a Solid Citizen.
The gray suit was well cut, well made, and completely undistinguished. It was a standard suit. White piping on the V of the vest added a flavor of law and learning. His shoes were black laced boots, good boots, honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots. The only frivolity was in his purple knitted scarf. With considerable comment on the matter to Mrs. Babbitt (who, acrobatically fastening the back of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, did not hear a word he said), he chose between the purple scarf and a tapestry effect with stringless brown harps among blown palms, and into it he thrust a snake-head pin with opal eyes.
A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. They included a fountain pen and a silver pencil (always lacking a supply of new leads) which belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Without them he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold penknife, silver cigar-cutter, seven keys (the use of two of which he had forgotten), and incidentally a good watch. Depending from the chain was a large, yellowish elk’s-tooth-proclamation of his membership in the Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks. Most significant of all was his loose-leaf pocket note-book, that modern and efficient note-book which contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudent memoranda of postal money-orders which had reached their destinations months ago, stamps which had lost their mucilage, clippings of verses by T. Cholmondeley Frink and of the newspaper editorials from which Babbitt got his opinions and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do things which he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription—D.S.S. D.M.Y.P.D.F.
But he had no cigarette-case. No one had ever happened to give him one, so he hadn’t the habit, and people who carried cigarette-cases he regarded as effeminate.
Last, he stuck in his lapel the Boosters’ Club button. With the conciseness of great art the button displayed two words: Boosters-Pep!
It made Babbitt feel loyal and important. It associated him with Good Fellows, with men who were nice and human, and important in business circles. It was his V.C., his Legion of Honor ribbon, his Phi Beta Kappa key.
With the subtleties of dressing ran other complex worries. I feel kind of punk this morning,
he said. I think I had too much dinner last evening. You oughtn’t to serve those heavy banana fritters.
But you asked me to have some.
I know, but—I tell you, when a fellow gets past forty he has to look after his digestion. There’s a lot of fellows that don’t take proper care of themselves. I tell you at forty a man’s a fool or his doctor—I mean, his own doctor. Folks don’t give enough attention to this matter of dieting. Now I think—Course a man ought to have a good meal after the day’s work, but it would be a good thing for both of us if we took lighter lunches.
But Georgie, here at home I always do have a light lunch.
Mean to imply I make a hog of myself, eating down-town? Yes, sure! You’d have a swell time if you had to eat the truck that new steward hands out to us at the Athletic Club! But I certainly do feel out of sorts, this morning. Funny, got a pain down here on the left side—but no, that wouldn’t be appendicitis, would it? Last night, when I was driving over to Verg Gunch’s, I felt a pain in my stomach, too. Right here it was—kind of a sharp shooting pain. I—Where’d that dime go to? Why don’t you serve more prunes at breakfast? Of course I eat an apple every evening—an apple a day keeps the doctor away—but still, you ought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads.
The last time I had prunes you didn’t eat them.
Well, I didn’t feel like eating ’em, I suppose. Matter of fact, I think I did eat some of ’em. Anyway—I tell you it’s mighty important to—I was saying to Verg Gunch, just last evening, most people don’t take sufficient care of their diges—
Shall we have the Gunches for our dinner, next week?
Why sure; you bet.
Now see here, George: I want you to put on your nice dinner-jacket that evening.
Rats! The rest of ’em won’t want to dress.
Of course they will. You remember when you didn’t dress for the Littlefields’ supper-party, and all the rest did, and how embarrassed you were.
Embarrassed, hell! I wasn’t embarrassed. Everybody knows I can put on as expensive a Tux as anybody else, and I should worry if I don’t happen to have it on sometimes. All a darn nuisance, anyway. All right for a woman, that stays around the house all the time, but when a fellow’s worked like the dickens all day, he doesn’t want to go and hustle his head off getting into the soup-and-fish for a lot of folks that he’s seen in just reg’lar ordinary clothes that same day.
You know you enjoy being seen in one. The other evening you admitted you were glad I’d insisted on your dressing. You said you felt a lot better for it. And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn’t say ‘Tux.’ It’s ‘dinner-jacket.’
Rats, what’s the odds?
Well, it’s what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile McKelvey heard you calling it a ‘Tux.’
Well, that’s all right now! Lucile McKelvey can’t pull anything on me! Her folks are common as mud, even if her husband and her dad are millionaires! I suppose you’re trying to rub in your exalted social position! Well, let me tell you that your revered paternal ancestor, Henry T., doesn’t even call it a ‘Tux.’! He calls it a ‘bobtail jacket for a ringtail monkey,’ and you couldn’t get him into one unless you chloroformed him!
Now don’t be horrid, George.
Well, I don’t want to be horrid, but Lord! you’re getting as fussy as Verona. Ever since she got out of college she’s been too rambunctious to live with—doesn’t know what she wants—well, I know what she wants!—all she wants is to marry a millionaire, and live in Europe, and hold some preacher’s hand, and simultaneously at the same time stay right here in Zenith and be some blooming kind of a socialist agitator or boss charity-worker or some damn thing! Lord, and Ted is just as bad! He wants to go to college, and he doesn’t want to go to college. Only one of the three that knows her own mind is Tinka. Simply can’t understand how I ever came to have a pair of shillyshallying children like Rone and Ted. I may not be any Rockefeller or James J. Shakespeare, but I certainly do know my own mind, and I do keep right on plugging along in the office and—Do you know the latest? Far as I can figure out, Ted’s new bee is he’d like to be a movie actor and—And here I’ve told him a hundred times, if he’ll go to college and law-school and make good, I’ll set him up in business and—Verona just exactly as bad. Doesn’t know what she wants. Well, well, come on! Aren’t you ready yet? The girl rang the bell three minutes ago.
V
Before he followed his wife, Babbitt stood at the westernmost window of their room. This residential settlement, Floral Heights, was on a rise; and though the center of the city was three miles away—Zenith had between three and four hundred thousand inhabitants now—he could see the top of the Second National Tower, an Indiana limestone building of thirty-five stories.
Its shining walls rose against April sky to a simple cornice like a streak of white fire. Integrity was in the tower, and decision. It bore its strength lightly as a tall soldier. As Babbitt stared, the nervousness was soothed from his face, his slack chin lifted in reverence. All he articulated was That’s one lovely sight!
but he was inspired by the rhythm of the city; his love of it renewed. He beheld the tower as a temple-spire of the religion of business, a faith passionate, exalted, surpassing common men; and as he clumped down to breakfast he whistled the ballad Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo
as though it were a hymn melancholy and noble.
CHAPTER II
I
RELIEVED OF BABBITT’S BUMBLING and the soft grunts with which his wife expressed the sympathy she was too experienced to feel and much too experienced not to show, their bedroom settled instantly into impersonality.
It gave on the sleeping-porch. It served both of them as dressing-room, and on the coldest nights Babbitt luxuriously gave up the duty of being manly and retreated to the bed inside, to curl his toes in the warmth and laugh at the January gale.
The room displayed a modest and pleasant color-scheme, after one of the best standard designs of the decorator who did the interiors
for most of the speculative-builders’ houses in Zenith. The walls were gray, the woodwork white, the rug a serene blue; and very much like mahogany was the furniture—the bureau with its great clear mirror, Mrs. Babbitt’s dressing-table with toilet-articles of almost solid silver, the plain twin beds, between them a small table holding a standard electric bedside lamp, a glass for water, and a standard bedside book with colored illustrations—what particular book it was cannot be ascertained, since no one had ever opened it. The mattresses were firm but not hard, triumphant modern mattresses which had cost a great deal of money; the hot-water radiator was of exactly the proper scientific surface for the cubic contents of the room. The windows were large and easily opened, with the best catches and cords, and Holland roller-shades guaranteed not to crack. It was a masterpiece among bedrooms, right out of Cheerful Modern Houses for Medium Incomes. Only it had nothing to do with the Babbitts, nor with any one else. If people had ever lived and loved here, read thrillers at midnight and lain in beautiful indolence on a Sunday morning, there were no signs of it. It had the air of being a very good room in a very good hotel. One expected the chambermaid to come in and make it ready for people who would stay but one night, go without looking back, and never think of it again.
Every second house in Floral Heights had a bedroom precisely like this.
The Babbitts’ house was five years old. It was all as competent and glossy as this bedroom. It had the best of taste, the best of inexpensive rugs, a simple and laudable architecture, and the latest conveniences. Throughout, electricity took the place of candles and slatternly hearth-fires. Along the bedroom baseboard were three plugs for electric lamps, concealed by little brass doors. In the halls were plugs for the vacuum cleaner, and in the living-room plugs for the piano lamp, for the electric fan. The trim dining-room (with its admirable oak buffet, its leaded-glass cupboard, its creamy plaster walls, its modest scene of a salmon expiring upon a pile of oysters) had plugs which supplied the electric percolator and the electric toaster.
In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt house: It was not a home.
II
Often of a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast. But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread the upper hall he looked into Verona’s bedroom and protested, What’s the use of giving the family a high-class house when they don’t appreciate it and tend to business and get down to brass tacks?
He marched upon them: Verona, a dumpy brown-haired girl of twenty-two, just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solicitudes about duty and sex and God and the unconquerable bagginess of the gray sports-suit she was now wearing. Ted—Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt—a decorative boy of seventeen. Tinka—Katherine—still a baby at ten, with radiant red hair and a thin skin which hinted of too much candy and too many ice cream sodas. Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He really disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as it was frequent. He shouted at Tinka, Well, kittiedoolie!
It was the only pet name in his vocabulary, except the dear
and hon.
with which he recognized his wife, and he flung it at Tinka every morning.
He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his stomach and his soul. His stomach ceased to feel as though it did not belong to him, but Verona began to be conscientious and annoying, and abruptly there returned to Babbitt the doubts regarding life and families and business which had clawed at him when his dream-life and the slim fairy girl had fled.
Verona had for six months been filing-clerk at the Gruensberg Leather Company offices, with a prospect of becoming secretary to Mr. Gruensberg and thus, as Babbitt defined it, getting some good out of your expensive college education till you’re ready to marry and settle down.
But now said Verona: Father! I was talking to a classmate of mine that’s working for the Associated Charities—oh, Dad, there’s the sweetest little babies that come to the milk-station there!—and I feel as though I ought to be doing something worth while like that.
What do you mean ‘worth while’? If you get to be Gruensberg’s secretary—and maybe you would, if you kept up your shorthand and didn’t go sneaking off to concerts and talkfests every evening—I guess you’ll find thirty-five or forty bones a week worth while!
I know, but—oh, I want to—contribute—I wish I were working in a settlement-house. I wonder if I could get one of the department-stores to let me put in a welfare-department with a nice rest-room and chintzes and wicker chairs and so on and so forth. Or I could—
Now you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that all this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing in God’s world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a man learns he isn’t going to be coddled, and he needn’t expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his kids unless he earns ’em, why, the sooner he’ll get on the job and produce—produce—produce! That’s what the country needs, and not all this fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the working man and gives his kids a lot of notions above their class. And you—if you’d tend to business instead of fooling and fussing—All the time! When I was a young man I made up my mind what I wanted to do, and stuck to it through thick and thin, and that’s why I’m where I am to-day, and—Myra! What do you let the girl chop the toast up into these dinky little chunks for? Can’t get your fist onto ’em. Half cold, anyway!
Ted Babbitt, junior in the great East Side High School, had been making hiccup-like sounds of interruption. He blurted now, Say, Rone, you going to—
Verona whirled. Ted! Will you kindly not interrupt us when we’re talking about serious matters!
Aw punk,
said Ted judicially. Ever since somebody slipped up and let you out of college, Ammonia, you been pulling these nut conversations about what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths. Are you going to—I want to use the car tonight.
Babbitt snorted, Oh, you do! May want it myself!
Verona protested, Oh, you do, Mr. Smarty! I’m going to take it myself!
Tinka wailed, Oh, papa, you said maybe you’d drive us down to Rosedale!
and Mrs. Babbitt, Careful, Tinka, your sleeve is in the butter.
They glared, and Verona hurled, Ted, you’re a perfect pig about the car!
Course you’re not! Not a-tall!
Ted could be maddeningly bland. You just want to grab it off, right after dinner, and leave it in front of some skirt’s house all evening while you sit and gas about lite’ature and the highbrows you’re going to marry—if they only propose!
"Well, Dad oughtn’t to ever let you have it! You and those beastly Jones boys drive like maniacs. The idea of your taking the turn on Chautauqua Place at forty miles an hour!"
Aw, where do you get that stuff! You’re so darn scared of the car that you drive up-hill with the emergency brake on!
I do not! And you—Always talking about how much you know about motors, and Eunice Littlefield told me you said the battery fed the generator!
You—why, my good woman, you don’t know a generator from a differential.
Not unreasonably was Ted lofty with her. He was a natural mechanic, a maker and tinkerer of machines; he lisped in blueprints for the blueprints came.
That’ll do now!
Babbitt flung in mechanically, as he lighted the gloriously satisfying first cigar of the day and tasted the exhilarating drug of the Advocate-Times headlines.
Ted negotiated: Gee, honest, Rone, I don’t want to take the old boat, but I promised couple o’ girls in my class I’d drive ’em down to the rehearsal of the school chorus, and, gee, I don’t want to, but a gentleman’s got to keep his social engagements.
Well, upon my word! You and your social engagements! In high school!
Oh, ain’t we select since we went to that hen college! Let me tell you there isn’t a private school in the state that’s got as swell a bunch as we got in Gamma Digamma this year. There’s two fellows that their dads are millionaires. Say, gee, I ought to have a car of my own, like lots of the fellows.
Babbitt almost rose. A car of your own! Don’t you want a yacht, and a house and lot? That pretty nearly takes the cake! A boy that can’t pass his Latin examinations, like any other boy ought to, and he expects me to give him a motor-car, and I suppose a chauffeur, and an areoplane maybe, as a reward for the hard work he puts in going to the movies with Eunice Littlefield! Well, when you see me giving you—
Somewhat later, after diplomacies, Ted persuaded Verona to admit that she was merely going to the Armory, that evening, to see the dog and cat show. She was then, Ted planned, to park the car in front of the candy-store across from the Armory and he would pick it up. There were masterly arrangements regarding leaving the key, and having the gasoline tank filled; and passionately, devotees of the Great God Motor, they hymned the patch on the spare inner-tube, and the lost jack-handle.
Their truce dissolving, Ted observed that her friends were a scream of a bunch-stuck-up gabby four-flushers.
His friends, she indicated, were disgusting imitation sports, and horrid little shrieking ignorant girls.
Further: It’s disgusting of you to smoke cigarettes, and so on and so forth, and those clothes you’ve got on this morning, they’re too utterly ridiculous—honestly, simply disgusting.
Ted balanced over to the low beveled mirror in the buffet, regarded his charms, and smirked. His suit, the latest thing in Old Eli Togs, was skin-tight, with skimpy trousers to the tops of his glaring tan boots, a chorus-man waistline, pattern of an agitated check, and across the back a belt which belted nothing. His scarf was an enormous black silk wad. His flaxen hair was ice-smooth, pasted back without parting. When he went to school he would add a cap with a long vizor like a shovel-blade. Proudest of all was his waistcoat, saved for, begged for, plotted for; a real Fancy Vest of fawn with polka dots of a decayed red, the points astoundingly long. On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school button, a class button, and a fraternity pin.
And none of it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes (which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: Yes, I guess we’re pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our new necktie is some smear!
Babbitt barked: It is! And while you’re admiring yourself, let me tell you it might add to your manly beauty if you wiped some of that egg off your mouth!
Verona giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great Wars, which is the family war. Ted looked at her hopelessly, then shrieked at Tinka: For the love o’ Pete, quit pouring the whole sugar bowl on your corn flakes!
When Verona and Ted were gone and Tinka upstairs, Babbitt groaned to his wife: Nice family, I must say! I don’t pretend to be any baa-lamb, and maybe I’m a little cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the way they go on jab-jab-jabbering, I simply can’t stand it. I swear, I feel like going off some place where I can get a little peace. I do think after a man’s spent his lifetime trying to give his kids a chance and a decent education, it’s pretty discouraging to hear them all the time scrapping like a bunch of hyenas and never—and never—Curious; here in the paper it says—Never silent for one mom—Seen the morning paper yet?
No, dear.
In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs. Babbitt had seen the paper before her husband just sixty-seven times.
"Lots of news. Terrible big tornado in the South. Hard luck, all right. But this, say, this is corking! Beginning of the end for those fellows! New