Are We A Nation of Babbitts Yet?
Before reading "Babbitt," a 1920s-era cavalcade of a middle-class social climber's daily life and decline--by one of America's most illimitable muckrackers--ignore, if you can, academic whiners who insist Sinclair Lewis wrote second-rate novels that have lost their luster. Even if you find Lewis' almost chirpy, concise and unusually witty treatment of George Babbitt--booster, scoundrel, moral klutz--offputting and oddly reminiscent of the typical "personality profile" you'd probably find in "People" or "Newsweek"...you'll be amazed at how closely "Babbitt" mirrors the conventional business ethic behind today's headlines.
Eighty years after its initial publication, "Babbitt" resounds with the kind of disgust anti-WTO protesters registered in 2000 against America's empire of "market forces"--and what that kind of misbehavior can do to a person. But perhaps eighty years has been far too long--at least long enough for us to forget Lewis' powerful message. Yes, long after the nation's initial sip of The Gilded Age revealed a dissonant aftertaste--one that resulted in both civil unrest and the eight-hour workday, medical benefits for employees, Social Security and hundreds of other hard-won reforms--the reappearance of a new, lean-and-hungry Babbitt on the cusp of the 21st Century requires that we never forget to remember where avarice, hubris and self-satisfaction have led us before. Babbitt is rich. Now what?
Did we already ask you to take a look at George Babbitt? Well, just take a look at that good old George Babbitt--an orotund, well-dressed farmboy who honestly believes that a smallish fortune in real estate is proof positive that he is "superior" and some kind of Renaissance Man. Really nothing more than a self-deluded social climber desperate to gain more status and lose the private celebrity of a rootlessness he can't grasp, Babbitt is driven by the forces that made him: Having been taught to confuse "consuming" with "power", "real estate" with "substance" and "self-interest" with "morality", Babbitt never seems to understand where his superficial understanding of himself and the world is bound to end. Still, without what constantly elludes and haunts him--what more to expect from a walking market survey?--Babbitt just knows he'd be nothing. Even when opportunity knocks and the reader sees how far out of his league he has managed to malinger, Babbitt the Fool threatens to snowball right into oblivion. His values just aren't up to snuff when it comes to footing the bill in the purchase of his illusions. He's a cross between a bush-league...