000			04288cam a2200529 i 4500
001			ocm25245462
003			OCoLC
005			20240726102001.0
008			910904s1992 nyu 000 1 eng
010			_a91058224
020			_a9780940450615
040			_aDLC _beng _erda _cDLC _dBAKER _dBTCTA _dYDXCP _dCUV _dKAAUA _dUAB _dU5D _dO3A _dCIRBC _dBDX _dSBI
043			_an-us-mn
049			_aSBIM _aCIKB
050	0	4	_aPS3523
050	0	4	_aPS3523.L676.M356 1992
100	1		_aLewis, Sinclair, _d1885-1951., _e1
240	1	0	_aMain Street
245	1	0	_aMain Street & Babbitt / _cSinclair Lewis. _hPR
260			_aNew York : _bLibrary of America, _c(c)1992.
300			_a898 pages ; _c21 cm.
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_aunmediated _bn _2rdamedia
338			_avolume _bnc _2rdacarrier
490	1		_aThe Library of America ; _v59
504			_a1 (pages 885-898).
505	0	0	_aMain Street--Babbitt.
520	0		_aIn Main Street and Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis drew on his boyhood memories of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to reveal as no writer had done before the complacency and conformity of middle-class life in America. These remarkable novels combine brilliant satire with a lingering affection for the men and women who, as Lewis wrote of Babbitt, want "to seize something more than motor cars and a house before it's too late."
520	8		_aMain Street (1920), Lewis's first triumph, was a phenomenal event in American publishing and cultural history. Lewis's idealistic, imaginative heroine, Carol Kennicott, longs "to get [her] hands on one of these prairie towns and make it beautiful," but when her doctor husband brings her to Gopher Prairie, she finds that the romance of the American frontier has dwindled to the drab reality of the American Middle West. Carol first struggles against and then flees the social tyrannies and cultural emptiness of Gopher Prairie, only to submit at last to the conventions of village life. The great romantic satire of its decade, Main Street is a wry, sad, funny account of a woman who attempts to challenge the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of her community.
520	8		_a"I know of no American novel that more accurately presents the real America," wrote H.L. Mencken when Babbitt appeared in 1922. "As an old professor of Babbittry I welcome him as an almost perfect specimen. Every American city swarms with his brothers. He is America incarnate, exuberant and exquisite." In the character of George F. Babbitt, the boisterous, vulgar, worried, gadget-loving real estate man from Zenith, Lewis fashioned a new and enduring figure in American literature - the total conformist. Babbitt is a "joiner," who thinks and feels with the crowd. Lewis surrounds him with a gallery of familiar American types - small businessmen, Rotarians, Elks, boosters, supporters of evangelical Christianity. In bitingly satirical scenes of club lunches, after-dinner speeches, trade association conventions, fishing trips, and Sunday School committees, Lewis reproduces the noisy restlessness of American commercial culture.
520	8		_aIn 1930 Sinclair Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, largely for his achievement in Babbitt. These early novels not only define a crucial period in American history - from America's "coming of age" just before World War I to the dizzying boom of the twenties - they also continue to astonish us with essential truths about the country we live in today.
530			_a2
650		0	_aWomen college graduates _vFiction.
650		0	_aPhysicians' spouses _vFiction.
650		0	_aCity and town life _vFiction.
650		0	_aMarried women _vFiction.
650		0	_aMiddle-aged men _vFiction.
650		0	_aBusinessmen _vFiction.
655		0	_aSatire.
830		0	_aThe Library of America ; _v59.
856	4	2	_3Contributor biographical information _uhttp://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1206/91058224-b.html
907			_a.b10796423 _b10-07-12 _c01-22-08
942			_cBK _hPS _m1992 _e _i2018-07-14 _k0.00
998			_abcm _accst _acik _acim _avcr _b10-06-12 _cm _da _e _feng _gnyu _h0
994			_aC0 _bSBI
945			_g1 _i31923001555974 _j2 _lcimc _o- _p0.00 _q- _r- _s- -- _t61 _u0 _v0 _w0 _x0 _y.i18832416 _z06-20-11
999			_c31347 _d31347
902			_a1 _bCynthia Snell _c1 _dCynthia Snell