socorrobaptista's review against another edition
3.0
Honestamente, eu esperava muito mais de um livro do qual me falavam tanto. Fiquei meio decepcionada.
bradgibbon's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
cdlindwall's review against another edition
5.0
Imagine a book making fun of narrow-minded conservatives except using colloquial 20s dialogue. Um, hilarious? Yes.
It's basically a satire telling the story of a stereotyped business man from a conformity-driven city called Zenith in the 1920s. It makes fun of his consumerism, Republican-ideals, superficiality, and hypocrisy.
I would've thought reading about the mid-life crisis of a suburban business man would make me miserable as hell. BUT the satire was done so well and the funny one-liners so on-point, I actually forgot about my pledge to hate all "woe is me" middle-America books. This book is sharper. Wittier. The observations more spot-on. The caricatures more interesting and diverse. I mean, Lewis was the first American to ever win the Nobel Prize in literature for this novel, so.
I guess one thing I would criticize Lewis for, though, was maybe not being lenient enough on Zenith. Conformist culture maybe doesn't represent the peak of human intellect, sure. Sometimes Babbitt likes to talk in abstractions about things he doesn't know much about. Sometimes Babbitt doesn't know what he wants and is too self-congratulatory and has no self-control and his values are a little fucked up, yeah. But a lot of people who probably act like Babbitt and live in places like Zenith are just trying to get by. Expectations for everyone to be free-thinking intellectuals who scorn sameness and revel in the joy of non-material pleasures and achieve the meaningful lives they've dreamed for is maybe a bit much. We're human. I like having opinions on things I don't know much about and I like some self-congratulation every once in a while, too. Just saying.
But anyway.........yeah this book is really good, read it!!!
It's basically a satire telling the story of a stereotyped business man from a conformity-driven city called Zenith in the 1920s. It makes fun of his consumerism, Republican-ideals, superficiality, and hypocrisy.
I would've thought reading about the mid-life crisis of a suburban business man would make me miserable as hell. BUT the satire was done so well and the funny one-liners so on-point, I actually forgot about my pledge to hate all "woe is me" middle-America books. This book is sharper. Wittier. The observations more spot-on. The caricatures more interesting and diverse. I mean, Lewis was the first American to ever win the Nobel Prize in literature for this novel, so.
I guess one thing I would criticize Lewis for, though, was maybe not being lenient enough on Zenith. Conformist culture maybe doesn't represent the peak of human intellect, sure. Sometimes Babbitt likes to talk in abstractions about things he doesn't know much about. Sometimes Babbitt doesn't know what he wants and is too self-congratulatory and has no self-control and his values are a little fucked up, yeah. But a lot of people who probably act like Babbitt and live in places like Zenith are just trying to get by. Expectations for everyone to be free-thinking intellectuals who scorn sameness and revel in the joy of non-material pleasures and achieve the meaningful lives they've dreamed for is maybe a bit much. We're human. I like having opinions on things I don't know much about and I like some self-congratulation every once in a while, too. Just saying.
But anyway.........yeah this book is really good, read it!!!
sbenzell's review against another edition
5.0
Lol I wrote a long review but it got deleted. Short version
Babbit is a man who drank a particular version of American Nationalism direct from the hose. He is therefore a source of insight into the mental lives of the Good Citizen/Regular Guy/Booster upper-middle class Republican voting manager from a small American city. What do we learn about these people? That they’re on the constant precipice of mental breakdown and dramatic ideological fluctuation. I think this novel provides great insight into why so many people did what they did on 1/6.
Here is a great book review by the Baffler in 1997. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/babbitt-rex I think this sentiment in particular is particularly important, framing Babbit as an interminable (but fundamentally silly and a narcissism of small differences because the practical implications are so minor) internal and external struggle between Babbit in straight-laced, conformity-enforcing, good citizen mode, and Babbit in “rebellious”, “bohemian”, “socialist-sympathizing”, good-citizen mode:
“As the republic of business extends its benevolent shade over the globe, the minor differences between the Elks Club variant of Babbitt and his China Club cousin—like the distance between radicchio and iceberg or between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole—will expand with it, until that fine day when the Babbitt Equation, the imaginary war of boob and boho, ingenue and ironist, philistine and connoisseur, will be the only public choice we have left.”
Where does this leave us? First, we need to give Q-anons some room to retreat. Babbit so wants to be accepted and loved by everyone. Don’t force him and he’ll return to good order. Second, increasing prosperity — even surprisingly rapid increases — are only temporary panaceas against instability. Babbit, born into a simple faith that he is American and Americans are Perfect and Good Regular Guys, will never be able to overcome (or really even understand) the hedonic treadmill. Finally, it suggests that as globalization and prosperity have spread, politics has increasingly become a culture war, a sort of game that have no real consequences to the leading participants (i.e. the middle and upper classes). As this happens, may be destined to become cooky-er and cooky-er. The era of high strangeness in politics may have only just begun.
Babbit is a man who drank a particular version of American Nationalism direct from the hose. He is therefore a source of insight into the mental lives of the Good Citizen/Regular Guy/Booster upper-middle class Republican voting manager from a small American city. What do we learn about these people? That they’re on the constant precipice of mental breakdown and dramatic ideological fluctuation. I think this novel provides great insight into why so many people did what they did on 1/6.
Here is a great book review by the Baffler in 1997. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/babbitt-rex I think this sentiment in particular is particularly important, framing Babbit as an interminable (but fundamentally silly and a narcissism of small differences because the practical implications are so minor) internal and external struggle between Babbit in straight-laced, conformity-enforcing, good citizen mode, and Babbit in “rebellious”, “bohemian”, “socialist-sympathizing”, good-citizen mode:
“As the republic of business extends its benevolent shade over the globe, the minor differences between the Elks Club variant of Babbitt and his China Club cousin—like the distance between radicchio and iceberg or between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole—will expand with it, until that fine day when the Babbitt Equation, the imaginary war of boob and boho, ingenue and ironist, philistine and connoisseur, will be the only public choice we have left.”
Where does this leave us? First, we need to give Q-anons some room to retreat. Babbit so wants to be accepted and loved by everyone. Don’t force him and he’ll return to good order. Second, increasing prosperity — even surprisingly rapid increases — are only temporary panaceas against instability. Babbit, born into a simple faith that he is American and Americans are Perfect and Good Regular Guys, will never be able to overcome (or really even understand) the hedonic treadmill. Finally, it suggests that as globalization and prosperity have spread, politics has increasingly become a culture war, a sort of game that have no real consequences to the leading participants (i.e. the middle and upper classes). As this happens, may be destined to become cooky-er and cooky-er. The era of high strangeness in politics may have only just begun.
jeansbooks's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
wah38's review against another edition
5.0
Take note, Upton Sinclair: THIS is how you ridicule the American upper classes while making socialism seem like a viable alternative in the 1920s. You don't need to have every single left-leaning character be brutalized for making unanswerable arguments for socialism. All you need is completely realistic characters like the inimitable Babbitt and the other rich folks in Zenith who make Babbitt look like Eugene V. Debs. By the end of the book I wondered why America hadn't gone socialist in the 20s just to drive these terrible Harding types from power; by contrast by the end of Oil! I realized only too well why America didn't take to self-satisfied leftists like Upton Sinclair.
The best part is that Sinclair Lewis knew how terrible Upton Sinclair was: see "It Can't Happen Here" for some digs at Upton Sinclair.
The best part is that Sinclair Lewis knew how terrible Upton Sinclair was: see "It Can't Happen Here" for some digs at Upton Sinclair.
jodarroch4's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Could've been a much more enjoyable read but came off as terrifically under-edited.
lookhome's review against another edition
5.0
Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt is unputdownable.
A hundred years after its initial publication and many of the themes and subjects it explores remain
utterly relevant and true.
Here is a man whose life goal was to amass wealth and success from a societal rather than personal point of view. A man whose greatest joy in life was taken time away from these very same successes in order to chat, unencumbered and undisturbed, in the wilderness with his oldest and best friend Paul.
A man whose spent his whole life settling upwards, playing little part in the central seat of his own life accepting the impositions of others because 'it was the right thing to do'...
In Babbitt, Lewis takes the time to explore how quickly a series of choices made by others and accepted by a 'Man' (namely you, in your life journey) can lead to a seemingly fixed road or path we simply cannot happily follow.
Likewise, Lewis explores the difficulties of accumulated comfort and societal roles. He points out how often we lie to ourselves about life in order to make other people around us more comfortable. That, who we become rather than who we are becomes the expected and welcomed social Identity. To disturb this is to disturb the balance of things. To be true is to be untrue in the 'truth' of society....
To say more is to take away from the book's journey.
I can't say wether or not I should have read this earlier or later in life, but I am happy that I read it now. It's most likely also easily available now it is in the public domain.
-Side note, I finally picked this up because of a Joseph Campbell interview where he mentions a real life encounter with a Babbitt at a diner.
-----
His name was George F. Babbitt. He was 46 years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of Selling Houses for more than people could afford to pay.8
He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appear this sleeping porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectable grass plots, a cement drive, and a corrugated iron garage yet Babbitt was again dreaming of the Faerie child, a dream more romantic than Scarlet pagodas by silver sea 8
He's sulkily admitted now that there was no more escape, but he lay and attested the grind of the real estate business, and disliked his family, and disliked himself for disliking them.9
In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt House: it was not a home.18
They sooner a man learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn’t expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flip flop and doodads for his kids unless he earns ‘em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and produce-produce- produce! 19
No deer in 23 years of married life, mrs. Babbitt had seen the paper before her husband just 67 times 22 oh Lord, sometimes I'd like to quit the whole game. And the office worry and details just as bad. And I act cranky and – I don't mean to, but I get – so darn tired 24
It was big- and Babbitt respected bigness and anything; in mountains, Jewels, muscles, wealth, or word. He was, for spring Enchanted moment, the lyric and almost unselfish lover of zenith 30
Now, as he calculated the cost of repapering the Styles house, he was Restless again, discontented about nothing and everything, ashamed of his discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl. 35
Good Lord, I don't know what ‘rights’ a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about 10 times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admits it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for 60 years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of Eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun 57
He had enormous and poetic admiration, though very little understanding, of all mechanical devices. They were his symbols of Truth and Beauty. Regarding each new intricate mechanism – metal lathe, two-jet carburetor, machine gun, oxyacetylene welder – he learned one good realistic-sounding phrase, and used it over and over, with a delightful feeling being Technical and initiated 59
Let me tell you, Stan, if your girl is worth her salt, she'll be glad to know you're out hustling, making some money to furnish the home Nest, instead of doing the lovey-dovey. The kind of fellow that kicks about working overtime, that wants to spend his evenings reading trashy novels or spooning and exchanging a lot of nonsense and foolishness with some girl, he ain't the kind of upstanding, energetic young man, with a future – and with vision! – that we want here. How about it? What's your ideal, anyway? Do you want to make money and be a responsible member of the community, or do you want to be a loafer, with no inspiration or pep? 61
Stop it did not often squabble with his employees. He liked to like the people about him; he was dismayed when they did not like him. It was only when attacked the sacred purse that he was frightened into Fury, but then, being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue. Today he had so passionately indulged in self-approval that he wondered whether you'd been entirely just 62
he hated to expose his back to their laughter, and in his effort to be casually merry he stammered and was raucously friendly and choose wretchedly out of the door 62
privately he meditated that it was agreeable to have it known throughout the neighborhood that he was so prosperous that his son never worked around the house 63
It was more than a study of Transportation. It was an aspirator for Knightly rank. In the city of Zenith, and the barbarous 20th century, the family's motor indicated social rank precisely. Where Babbitt as a boy had aspired to the presidency, his son Ted aspired to a Packard twin 6 and an established position in the motor Gentry 64
Engaged? It was his first hint of it. His affection for his brown tender woman thing went cold and fearful, but he could not hurt her, could not escape her trust. He mumbled something about waiting, and escaped. He walked for an hour, trying to find a way of telling her that it was a mistake. Often, in the month after, he got near to telling her, but it was pleasant to have a girl in his arms, and less and less could he insult her by blurting that he didn't love her. He himself had no doubt. The evening before his marriage was an Agony, and the morning wild with the desire to flee.
She made him what is known as a Good Wife. She was loyal, industrious, and at rare times merry. She passed from the feeble disgust at their closer relations into what promised to be Ardent affection, but it dropped into bored routine. Yet she existed only for him and then for the children, and she was as sorry, as worried as himself, when he gave up the law and trudged on in a rut of the listing real estate. 75
His feet were allowed on the steps as he clumped upstairs at the end of this great and treacherous day of veiled rebellions. (79)
The standard advertised wares- toothpaste, socks, tyres, cameras, instantaneous hot water heaters – where is symbols and proofs of excellence; at first the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom. (80)
For many minutes, for many hours, for a Bleakk eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to a primitive Terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom (108)
She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it. To the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough melodramatic, egoistic humility. (112)
Which of them said which has never been determined, and does not matter, since they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance. (115)
They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of manufacturing a Plough or brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the Romantic Hero is no longer than knight, the wandering poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young District attorney, but the great sales manager, who had an analysis of merchandising problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility was go-getter, and who devoted themselves and all his young samurai to the Cosmic purpose of selling – not of selling anything in particular, for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling. 117
Though he was a player of violins in an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman of tar roofing 117
I’d just like to sit here – the rest of my life – and carve wood – and sit. and never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in the ‘phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh! he patted Paul’s shoulder. how does it strike you, old Snoozer ? It's Darn good, Georgie. There's something sort of eternal about it’ For once, Babbitt understood him.
As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering, ‘guess better hustle’. All about him the city was hustling, for hustling sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trains, with another train a minute behind, and to leap from the trains, to gallop across the pavement, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down food which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, ‘Jus’ shave me once over. Gotta hustle.’. Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors in offices adorned with the signs, ‘ This is my busy day and ‘the lord created the world in six days- You can spiel all you got to say in six minutes.’ Men who had made five thousand m the year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they night make twenty thousand this year, and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacation which the hustling doctors had ordered. 126
Though he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no more conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat sleeves 179
Throughout, with the internal human genius for arriving by the worst possible routes at surprisingly tolerable goals, Babbitt loves his son and warmed to his companionship and would have sacrificed everything for him – if you could have been sure proper credit. (181)
I simply can’t understand why it is the more some folks love people,the harder they try to make’em miserable (204)
Oh, I know. I do go and get mean sometimes, and I’m sorry afterwards. But, oh, Georgie, Paul is so aggravating! Honestly, I’ve tried awfully hard, these last few years, to be nice to him, but just because I used to be spiteful- or seemed so; I wasn’t, really, but I used to speak up and say anything that came into my head- and so he made up his mind taht everything was my fault. Everything can’t always be my fault, can it? And now if I get to fussing, he just turns silent- Oh,you righteous men!1 How wicked you are! How rotten wicked! (204)
There’s nothing left. Some day I’m going to break away from her. Somehow. (205)
Babbitt returned to the office to realized that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless (214)
He tramped in forlorn and unwanted freedom. Fog hid the house now. The world was uncreated, a chaos without turmoil or desire (216)
He was thinking. It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practised it was futile; that heaven as portrayed by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was neither probable nor very interesting, that he hadn’t much pleasure out of making money, that it was doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children. What was it all about? What did he want? 217
As he fell asleep on the sofa he felt that he had found something in life, and that he had made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal (218)
Babbit knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. And as he pondered on his way home, something in his own self seemed to have died: a loyal vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of public disfavour, a pride in success. He was glad his wife was away, he admitted without justifying it. He did not care (223)
Babbitt wondered afterwards if she was made up, but no man living knew less of such arts 223
Misery and shame- the shame of being treated as an offensive small boy ragamuffin like Ida Putiak!And yet- Always he came back to and yet, Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd (233)
He dared not hurt her by letting a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of meeting her and looking joyful (233)
Honestly! Why not really live- (235)
Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs seemed to go on by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the sweat which stung his eyes 237
Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself (238)
Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable, cynical, holding behind apparent changes is essential purpose. 243
He who had once controlled or seemed to control his life in a progress unimpassioned but diligent and sane was for that fortnight borne on a current of desire and very bad whiskey and all the complications of new acquaintances, those furious new intimates who demand so much more attention than old friends. Each morning he gloomily recognized his idiocies of the evening before. (263)
He did not deny that he had been a fool; but anything,he struggled,was better than going back to a life of barren heartiness. Zt four he wanted a drink. .. 269
Sometimes I get so darn sick and tired of all this routine and accounting at the office and expenses at home fussing and stewing and fretting and wearing myself out worrying over a lot of junk that doesn’t really mean a doggone thing, and being so careful… 278
I dont know whether it is or not! Personally I don’t see a whole difference. In both cases they’re trying to get away from themselves- most everybody is, these days, I guess. And I’d certainly get a whole more out of hoofing it in a good lively dance, even in some dive, than sitting looking as if my collar was too tight, feeling too scared to spit, and listening to Opal chewing her words’ 283
A hundred years after its initial publication and many of the themes and subjects it explores remain
utterly relevant and true.
Here is a man whose life goal was to amass wealth and success from a societal rather than personal point of view. A man whose greatest joy in life was taken time away from these very same successes in order to chat, unencumbered and undisturbed, in the wilderness with his oldest and best friend Paul.
A man whose spent his whole life settling upwards, playing little part in the central seat of his own life accepting the impositions of others because 'it was the right thing to do'...
In Babbitt, Lewis takes the time to explore how quickly a series of choices made by others and accepted by a 'Man' (namely you, in your life journey) can lead to a seemingly fixed road or path we simply cannot happily follow.
Likewise, Lewis explores the difficulties of accumulated comfort and societal roles. He points out how often we lie to ourselves about life in order to make other people around us more comfortable. That, who we become rather than who we are becomes the expected and welcomed social Identity. To disturb this is to disturb the balance of things. To be true is to be untrue in the 'truth' of society....
To say more is to take away from the book's journey.
I can't say wether or not I should have read this earlier or later in life, but I am happy that I read it now. It's most likely also easily available now it is in the public domain.
-Side note, I finally picked this up because of a Joseph Campbell interview where he mentions a real life encounter with a Babbitt at a diner.
-----
His name was George F. Babbitt. He was 46 years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of Selling Houses for more than people could afford to pay.8
He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appear this sleeping porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectable grass plots, a cement drive, and a corrugated iron garage yet Babbitt was again dreaming of the Faerie child, a dream more romantic than Scarlet pagodas by silver sea 8
He's sulkily admitted now that there was no more escape, but he lay and attested the grind of the real estate business, and disliked his family, and disliked himself for disliking them.9
In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt House: it was not a home.18
They sooner a man learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn’t expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flip flop and doodads for his kids unless he earns ‘em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and produce-produce- produce! 19
No deer in 23 years of married life, mrs. Babbitt had seen the paper before her husband just 67 times 22 oh Lord, sometimes I'd like to quit the whole game. And the office worry and details just as bad. And I act cranky and – I don't mean to, but I get – so darn tired 24
It was big- and Babbitt respected bigness and anything; in mountains, Jewels, muscles, wealth, or word. He was, for spring Enchanted moment, the lyric and almost unselfish lover of zenith 30
Now, as he calculated the cost of repapering the Styles house, he was Restless again, discontented about nothing and everything, ashamed of his discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl. 35
Good Lord, I don't know what ‘rights’ a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about 10 times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admits it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for 60 years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of Eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun 57
He had enormous and poetic admiration, though very little understanding, of all mechanical devices. They were his symbols of Truth and Beauty. Regarding each new intricate mechanism – metal lathe, two-jet carburetor, machine gun, oxyacetylene welder – he learned one good realistic-sounding phrase, and used it over and over, with a delightful feeling being Technical and initiated 59
Let me tell you, Stan, if your girl is worth her salt, she'll be glad to know you're out hustling, making some money to furnish the home Nest, instead of doing the lovey-dovey. The kind of fellow that kicks about working overtime, that wants to spend his evenings reading trashy novels or spooning and exchanging a lot of nonsense and foolishness with some girl, he ain't the kind of upstanding, energetic young man, with a future – and with vision! – that we want here. How about it? What's your ideal, anyway? Do you want to make money and be a responsible member of the community, or do you want to be a loafer, with no inspiration or pep? 61
Stop it did not often squabble with his employees. He liked to like the people about him; he was dismayed when they did not like him. It was only when attacked the sacred purse that he was frightened into Fury, but then, being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue. Today he had so passionately indulged in self-approval that he wondered whether you'd been entirely just 62
he hated to expose his back to their laughter, and in his effort to be casually merry he stammered and was raucously friendly and choose wretchedly out of the door 62
privately he meditated that it was agreeable to have it known throughout the neighborhood that he was so prosperous that his son never worked around the house 63
It was more than a study of Transportation. It was an aspirator for Knightly rank. In the city of Zenith, and the barbarous 20th century, the family's motor indicated social rank precisely. Where Babbitt as a boy had aspired to the presidency, his son Ted aspired to a Packard twin 6 and an established position in the motor Gentry 64
Engaged? It was his first hint of it. His affection for his brown tender woman thing went cold and fearful, but he could not hurt her, could not escape her trust. He mumbled something about waiting, and escaped. He walked for an hour, trying to find a way of telling her that it was a mistake. Often, in the month after, he got near to telling her, but it was pleasant to have a girl in his arms, and less and less could he insult her by blurting that he didn't love her. He himself had no doubt. The evening before his marriage was an Agony, and the morning wild with the desire to flee.
She made him what is known as a Good Wife. She was loyal, industrious, and at rare times merry. She passed from the feeble disgust at their closer relations into what promised to be Ardent affection, but it dropped into bored routine. Yet she existed only for him and then for the children, and she was as sorry, as worried as himself, when he gave up the law and trudged on in a rut of the listing real estate. 75
His feet were allowed on the steps as he clumped upstairs at the end of this great and treacherous day of veiled rebellions. (79)
The standard advertised wares- toothpaste, socks, tyres, cameras, instantaneous hot water heaters – where is symbols and proofs of excellence; at first the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom. (80)
For many minutes, for many hours, for a Bleakk eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to a primitive Terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom (108)
She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it. To the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough melodramatic, egoistic humility. (112)
Which of them said which has never been determined, and does not matter, since they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance. (115)
They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of manufacturing a Plough or brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the Romantic Hero is no longer than knight, the wandering poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young District attorney, but the great sales manager, who had an analysis of merchandising problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility was go-getter, and who devoted themselves and all his young samurai to the Cosmic purpose of selling – not of selling anything in particular, for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling. 117
Though he was a player of violins in an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman of tar roofing 117
I’d just like to sit here – the rest of my life – and carve wood – and sit. and never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in the ‘phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh! he patted Paul’s shoulder. how does it strike you, old Snoozer ? It's Darn good, Georgie. There's something sort of eternal about it’ For once, Babbitt understood him.
As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering, ‘guess better hustle’. All about him the city was hustling, for hustling sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trains, with another train a minute behind, and to leap from the trains, to gallop across the pavement, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down food which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, ‘Jus’ shave me once over. Gotta hustle.’. Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors in offices adorned with the signs, ‘ This is my busy day and ‘the lord created the world in six days- You can spiel all you got to say in six minutes.’ Men who had made five thousand m the year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they night make twenty thousand this year, and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacation which the hustling doctors had ordered. 126
Though he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no more conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat sleeves 179
Throughout, with the internal human genius for arriving by the worst possible routes at surprisingly tolerable goals, Babbitt loves his son and warmed to his companionship and would have sacrificed everything for him – if you could have been sure proper credit. (181)
I simply can’t understand why it is the more some folks love people,the harder they try to make’em miserable (204)
Oh, I know. I do go and get mean sometimes, and I’m sorry afterwards. But, oh, Georgie, Paul is so aggravating! Honestly, I’ve tried awfully hard, these last few years, to be nice to him, but just because I used to be spiteful- or seemed so; I wasn’t, really, but I used to speak up and say anything that came into my head- and so he made up his mind taht everything was my fault. Everything can’t always be my fault, can it? And now if I get to fussing, he just turns silent- Oh,you righteous men!1 How wicked you are! How rotten wicked! (204)
There’s nothing left. Some day I’m going to break away from her. Somehow. (205)
Babbitt returned to the office to realized that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless (214)
He tramped in forlorn and unwanted freedom. Fog hid the house now. The world was uncreated, a chaos without turmoil or desire (216)
He was thinking. It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practised it was futile; that heaven as portrayed by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was neither probable nor very interesting, that he hadn’t much pleasure out of making money, that it was doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children. What was it all about? What did he want? 217
As he fell asleep on the sofa he felt that he had found something in life, and that he had made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal (218)
Babbit knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. And as he pondered on his way home, something in his own self seemed to have died: a loyal vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of public disfavour, a pride in success. He was glad his wife was away, he admitted without justifying it. He did not care (223)
Babbitt wondered afterwards if she was made up, but no man living knew less of such arts 223
Misery and shame- the shame of being treated as an offensive small boy ragamuffin like Ida Putiak!And yet- Always he came back to and yet, Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd (233)
He dared not hurt her by letting a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of meeting her and looking joyful (233)
Honestly! Why not really live- (235)
Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs seemed to go on by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the sweat which stung his eyes 237
Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself (238)
Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable, cynical, holding behind apparent changes is essential purpose. 243
He who had once controlled or seemed to control his life in a progress unimpassioned but diligent and sane was for that fortnight borne on a current of desire and very bad whiskey and all the complications of new acquaintances, those furious new intimates who demand so much more attention than old friends. Each morning he gloomily recognized his idiocies of the evening before. (263)
He did not deny that he had been a fool; but anything,he struggled,was better than going back to a life of barren heartiness. Zt four he wanted a drink. .. 269
Sometimes I get so darn sick and tired of all this routine and accounting at the office and expenses at home fussing and stewing and fretting and wearing myself out worrying over a lot of junk that doesn’t really mean a doggone thing, and being so careful… 278
I dont know whether it is or not! Personally I don’t see a whole difference. In both cases they’re trying to get away from themselves- most everybody is, these days, I guess. And I’d certainly get a whole more out of hoofing it in a good lively dance, even in some dive, than sitting looking as if my collar was too tight, feeling too scared to spit, and listening to Opal chewing her words’ 283