Jefferson Selleck
by Carl Jonas
Category: American fiction

Up to the time of his heart attack, Thomas Jefferson Selleck seemed yo himself and others to be an ordinary small manufacturer, who lived in Gateway City, somewhere in the Middle West. He was a partner in the Yaw-Et-Ag Mfg Co. (Gateway spelled backwards), makers of automobile horns which played popular tunes. He golfed at Sleepy Hollow Country Club, and read almost no fiction with the exception of the Mr. Glencannon stories in the Saturday Evening Post. After his heart attack, Jeff began to take stock, to find out where he had been, where he was now and where he hoped to go. Jefferson Selleck epitomizes a phase of Middle West culture. He is Sinclair Lewis's Babbit thirty years later.