Babbitt
1922
Meet George F. Babbitt: forty-six years old, prosperous, respectable, and quietly desperate. He's a real estate broker in the fictional city of Zenith, a man who has everything the American Dream promised, and none of it satisfies. Lewis gives us access to Babbitt's private thoughts, and that's where the comedy lives: he knows his life is hollow, he dreams of rebellion, and then he immediately talks himself out of it. The novel follows his failed attempts at nonconformity, his quarrels with his wife, his friendships with other businessmen who speak entirely in clichés, and his slow, inevitable return to the comfortable prison of conformity. Babbitt is both a savage indictment of middle-class American life and a strangely moving portrait of a man who can see the cage but can't bring himself to leave it. The word 'Babbitt' entered the English language for good reason: we all know this man. We might even be this man.
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“You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.””
— Sinclair Lewis
“Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.””
— Sinclair Lewis
“Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself.””
— Sinclair Lewis
“But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.””
— Sinclair Lewis
“You," Said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want -- and what I want now is a drink.””
— Sinclair Lewis
“Well, if that’s what you call being at peace, for heaven’s sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?””
— Sinclair Lewis
“The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in their trousers-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever.””
— Sinclair Lewis
“The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires”
— Sinclair Lewis
“There’s no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who’ll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!””
— Sinclair Lewis
