Novel
Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis · 1922
Opening lines
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.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In Zenith, a Midwestern city, in April 1920, George F. Babbitt, a forty-six-year-old real estate agent, wakes up with a headache, shaves with a blunt blade, argues with his wife about towels and his suit, takes his car, sells houses for more than people can afford to pay and has lunch at the club with his friend Paul Riesling, who is stifling in his marriage. The first seven chapters fit into a single day; the rest covers two years of banquets, speeches and elections, during which he begins to ask himself what he is doing with his life.
Context
Its author prepared his books like investigations: he drew eighteen maps of Zenith, the house and office of his hero, wrote the biography of each character and kept notebooks of the language of businessmen, gathered in the towns of the Midwest. The novel, dedicated to Edith Wharton, appeared on 14 September 1922, two years after a first success about a small town, and sold nearly one hundred and forty-one thousand copies in its first year; the hero's name is attested as a common noun from 1923. The service clubs saw it as an attack and defended the Babbitts in their magazines and on the radio.
Who it is for
A fairly long novel, with a direct satire and no tight plot, following two years of a life. One needs to know what business ballyhoo was. French translation by Maurice Rémon, since 1930.
Prizes and reception
A bestseller from its publication; in English, babbitt still means the self-satisfied conformist, and the book weighed in the 1930 Nobel.
Sources for this page 9
The pages consulted to check this page.