Title: Babbitt
Description: "Zenith is the finest example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere." Zenith is the Midwestern city where George F. Babbitt lives and works. A successful real estate agent, his business provides all the material trappings and comfort he thinks he ought to have. He is a member of all the right clubs, and unquestioningly shares the same aspirations and ideas as his friends and fellow Boosters. Yet even complacent, conformist Babbitt dreams of romance and escape, and when his best friend does something to throw his world upside down, he rebels, and tries to find fulfilment in romantic adventures and liberal thinking. Hilarious and poignant, Babbitt turns the spotlight on middle America and strips bare the hypocrisy of business practice, social mores, politics, and religious institutions. A brilliant satire, it evokes an era and at the same time exposes a universal social malaise. In his introduction and notes Gordon Hutner explores the novel's historical and literary contexts, and its rich cultural and social references. - Back cover.

With his portrait of George F. Babbit, the conniving, prosperous real-estate man from Zenith, Sinclair Lewis created one of the ugliest, but most convincing, figures in American fiction -- the total conformist. Babbitt's demons are power in his community and the self-esteem he can only receive from others. In his attempts to reconcile these aspirations, he is loyal to whoever serves his need of the moment: time and again he proves an opportunist in business practice and in domestic affairs. Outwardly he conforms with "zip and zowie," is a "big booster" before the public eye; inwardly he converges day by day upon the utter emptiness of his soul -- too filled with rationalizations and sentimentality to sense his own corruption. Babbit gives consummate expression to the glibness and irresponsibility of the hardened, professional social climber. H. G. Wells said of this novel: "I wish I could have written Babbitt."
Subjects: Fiction, Businessmen, Middle-aged men, Conformity, Classic Literature, Real estate agents, City and town life, Businesspeople, Reading Level-Grade 11, Reading Level-Grade 10, Reading Level-Grade 12, American fiction (fictional works by one author), Fiction, psychological, Fiction, satire, Tax administration and procedure, Taxation, Law and legislation, American literature, Married women, Satire, Psychological fiction, American fiction, Men, Fiction, humorous, general, Middle west, fiction, Fiction, historical, general, Middle-aged men--united states--fiction, Businessmen--united states--fiction, Conformity--fiction, Ps3523.e94 b2 1996, 813/.52, Middle-aged men--fiction, Businessmen--fiction, City and town life--middle west--fiction, Ps3523.e94 b2 2010, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Businessmen -- Fiction, Middle-aged men -- Fiction, Conformity -- Fiction
Places: United States, Middle West
Time periods: 1920s