Babbitt. Sinclair Lewis.

Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis.
New York: The New American Library, 1922/1961.

Babbitt is a satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis. It presents a portrait of George Follansbee Babbitt, a middle-aged realtor, booster, and joiner in Zenith, the Zip City. He is unimaginative, self-important, and hopelessly middle class. Withal, he is vaguely dissatisfied and tries to alter the pattern of his life by flirting with liberalism and by entering a liaison with an attractive widow, only to find that his dread of ostracism is greater than his desire for escape. He does, however, encourage the rebellion of his son, Ted. [Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. Fourth Edition. Ed. Bruce Murphy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.]

Babbitt is a study of the complacent American whose individuality has been sucked out of him by Rotary clubs, business ideals, and general conformity. The name Babbitt has passed into general usage to represent the optimistic, self-congratulatory, middle-aged businessman whose horizons are bounded by his village limits. Encyclopedia Britannica.

Babbitt is not an unsympathetic character. In many ways he is just like you and me--well, me, anyhow. He blames his wife for everything, including his hangovers. He is an avowed conservative. His perfect lawn and his big car and his other possessions make him think he is perfectly happy. He thinks everything should be run like a business. He takes pride in being able to parallel park. And he hustles. And he was always going to quit smoking, but never could stop. And he aways wanted to escape the routine of his life to go live in Maine.

As Mark Shorer says, Babbitt's tragedy is that he cannot escape being Babbitt. He sees his survival in his conformity to everyone else. Occasionally, when his friend is arrested for murder and when he has a fling, he senses that there is a different existence out there. But he must return to being Babbitt. It's all he knows how to do. In the end, he tells his son who has eloped not to be as he had been, but to live his own life.

Best sentence:
"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."