Main Street. Sinclair Lewis.

Main Street
Sinclair Lewis
New York: A Signet Classic: The New American Library. 1920. 1961.

Why read it? Lewis captures the "spirit" of small-town America--its tediousness; self-importance; endless repetition of activities, jokes and stories; conformity; and intolerance of anything that does not conform to its expectations. Carol sets out to reform the town, to introduce it to high culture, but the town eventually reduces her to resigned acceptance of its values. And when she escapes to Washington, D.C., she realizes that Washington and other metropolises are made up of people from small-town America who make Washington life not much different from the lives in the small towns they came from.

Has anything changed in small-town America from the time that Lewis vividly portrayed Carol's small town in Minnesota? How much is Lewis's portrait of small-town America like all of America? Do you recognize any of the traits of Lewis's small town in your own small town or suburban development or city living? To what degree are American people the same no matter where they live?

From: Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. Ed. Bruce Murphy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 1996.

"This book, which first established Lewis's reputation as an important writer, is both a satire and an affectionate portrait of Gopher Prairie, a typical American town, undoubtedly suggested by Sauk Centre, Minnesota, where Lewis was born. The heroine, Carol Kennicott, chafes at the dullness and sterility of her existence as the wife of the local doctor, and she tries unsuccessfully to make the townspeople conscious of culture and refinement. For a time, she leaves to lead her own life but eventually returns to make a kind of peace with 'Main Street.' "

From the book: "Main Street is the climax of civilization. A girl on a hilltop: credulous, plastic, young; drinking the air as she longed to drink life, eternal, aching comedy of expectant youth. Every cell of her body was alive. She did not yet know the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudly dull. Whatever she might become she would never be static. But...how she was to conquer the world--almost entirely for the world's own good--she did not see."