Main Street A Satirical Novel Sinclair Lewis 9781519717931 Books
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Main Street
By
Sinclair Lewis
Main Street is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis, and published in 1920.
Carol Milford is a liberal, free-spirited young woman, reared in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the state capital. She marries Will Kennicott, a doctor, who is a small-town boy at heart.
When they marry, Will convinces her to live in his home-town of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota (a town modeled on Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the author's birthplace). Carol is appalled at the backwardness of Gopher Prairie. But her disdain for the town's physical ugliness and smug conservatism compels her to reform it.
She speaks with its members about progressive changes, joins women's clubs, distributes literature, and holds parties to liven up Gopher Prairie's inhabitants. Despite her friendly but ineffective efforts, she is constantly derided by the leading cliques.
She finds comfort and companionship outside her social class. These companions are taken from her one by one.
In her unhappiness, Carol leaves her husband and moves for a time to Washington, D.C., but she eventually returns. Nevertheless, Carol does not feel defeated
I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith.
Main Street A Satirical Novel Sinclair Lewis 9781519717931 Books
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Main Street A Satirical Novel Sinclair Lewis 9781519717931 Books Reviews
A bit tedious at times for me but the character development and description of the town transported me to Gopher Prairie every time I picked up the book. The same attitudes towards anyone “different†exist today as they did nearly 100 years ago.
If you think the weirdness and extremism of the Tea Party is a contemporary phenomenon, follow Sinclair Lewis to the snappy little berg of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.and listen in on a conversation Ezra Stowbody, the president of the Ionic Bank, is having regarding the merit of labor unions with a main character Carol Kennicott sometime in the 1920s
Carol Do you approve of union labor?
Ezra Me? I should say not! It's like this I don't mind dealing with my men if they think they've got any grievances--though Lord knows what's come over workmen, nowadays--don't appreciate a good job. But still, if they come to me honestly, as man to man, I'll talk things over with them. But I'm not going to have any outsider, any of these walking delegates, or whatever fancy names they call themselves now--bunch of rich grafters living on the ignorant workmen! Not going to have any of those fellows butting in and telling me how to run my business!
Straight out of the Mitt Romney Bible of Economic Theory. Lewis is a great American writer. I read "Main Street" in college and I appreciated the work the and even more now as I re-read it as a keen insight as to the origins of our political and social weirdness as a country.
People took fiction more seriously back then, I think. Hard to think of a novel stirring so much outrage today. The specific preoccupations of small-town America have changed a bit, but I do not think the overall attitudes and the small mindedness have. There would definitely be the same inferiority complex as regards 'the East'. Today's equivalent book might be something like "Deerhunting with Jesus". Although not hugely exciting, I read this book through to the end, so it held my attention; that and the fact that it is a "classic" and tells something of social history, gets it the four stars. It is polemical, the plot is the setup or the synopsis as given in the description, the various plot twists do not make for an exciting story but rather are pieces that back up the intention. In a way we get to know the main protagonist, Carol, intimately. in another way she is a cipher to be cast aside once the point has been made, and this becomes particularly evident at the end, where the culminating events are dealt with briefly (she tries out independence by moving to Washington DC with her young son) in comparison to what has gone before, as if the author, once he had made his points, did not have to bother much more with his heroine. So in a way we feel we hardly know her although we have spent so many pages in her company.
Rereading this classic after many years has shown me how relevant this story still is though the narrow minded and fearful small town people live in all kinds of places now, but even after all these years Lewis" description of the kind of thinking that leads to extreme fear and conservatism is totally relevant. Worth reading if you have come up against small minded and bigoted people. Lewis description of their mental processes is very insightful. In addition it is just a good story and a well written classic novel. Be sure to get an unabridged edition. I noticed the ones on had different numbers of pages....from over 200 pages to over 400 pages. I got the longest version thinking it would be the most accurate to the original and though I have no basis for comparison, I believe it is the entire original version. Very interesting and entertaining classic with a strong intellect behind it. Lewis holds up well.
Main Street is an American classic that I somehow missed until now, despite growing up in Minnesota. (I'm now reading Babbit!) I know there was a lot of antagonism against Lewis for his portrayal of life in small town Minnesota, and maybe that's why I don't recall any discussion of him or his fiction in high school in the early 60's despite the fact that he was Minnesota's and the USA's first Nobel laureate for literature (Bob Dylan is the latest). Given this controversy, I was surprised to find that the novel is as much or more about the main protagonist, Carol Kennecott, as about the narrowness of small town life. Raised in the Universalist Church in Saint Paul, Minn., college-trained daughter of a judge, she is very much a fish out of water when she marries a country doctor and moves with him to his home town of Gopher Prairie sometime around 1912. Most of the book is about her struggles to both fit into and to reform the social life and amenities of the town. Ultimately, after working with the women's movement in Washington, DC, she returns to Gopher Prairie and her husband, who is really a very decent man, having learned her limitations without conceding defeat.
One of the fascinating things about reading this book is seeing continuities between then and now. Small business men are still (mostly) anti-union Republicans; socialism is still seen as a menace by many, immigrants (Swedes then, Somalis now) are still derided or treated with suspicion by many in the area, and poverty is still seen by many as due solely to laziness. A hundred years later, things haven't really changed all that much.
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