Babbitt
Table of Contents
FROM THE PAGES OF BABBITT
Title Page
Copyright Page
SINCLAIR LEWIS
THE WORLD OF SINCLAIR LEWIS AND BABBITT
Introduction
Dedication
CHAPTER I
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER II
I
II
CHAPTER III
I
II
III
CHAPTER IV
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER V
I
II
III
CHAPTER VI
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER VII
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
CHAPTER VIII
I
II
III
CHAPTER IX
I
II
CHAPTER X
I
II
III
CHAPTER XI
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER XII
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XIII
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
CHAPTER XIV
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XV
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER XVI
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XVII
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER XVIII
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER XIX
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER XX
I
II
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
I
II
III
CHAPTER XXIII
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XXIV
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XXV
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XXVI
I
II
III
CHAPTER XXVII
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XXX
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER XXXI
I
II
CHAPTER XXXII
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER XXXIII
I
II
CHAPTER XXXIV
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
INSPIRED BY THE WORKS OF SINCLAIR LEWIS
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
FOR FURTHER READING
FROM THE PAGES OF
BABBITT
His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six 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. (page 4)
A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. (page 10)
To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his motor car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his pirate ship but the car his perilous excursion ashore. (page 23)
Babbitt 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 they 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. (page 65)
“I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. It is one big railroad station—with all the people taking tickets for the best cemeteries.” (page 91)
For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom. (page 119)
“It’s the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round!” (page 164)
She had become secretary to Mr. Gruensberg of the Gruensberg Leather Company; she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them; but she was one of the people who give an agitating impression of being on the point of doing something desperate—of leaving a job or a husband—without ever doing it. (page 203)
“Culture has become as necessary an adornment and advertisement for a city to-day as pavements or bank-clearances. It’s Culture, in theaters and art-galleries and so on, that brings thousands of visitors to New York every year and, to be frank, for all our splendid attainments we haven’t yet got the Culture of a New York or Chicago or Boston—or at least we don’t get the credit for it. The thing to do then, as a live bunch of go-getters, is to capitalize Culture; to go right out and grab it.” (page 236)
Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. (page 270)
“George, when it comes right down to a struggle between decency and the security of our homes on the one hand, and red ruin and those lazy dogs plotting for free beer on the other, you got to give up even old friendships. ‘He that is not with me is against me.’ ” (page 309)
All of them agreed that the working-classes must be kept in their place; and all of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary. (page 347)
“I’ve never done a single thing I’ve wanted to in my whole life! I don’t know’s I’ve accomplished anything except just get along.” (page 356)
Published by Barnes & Noble Books
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Babbitt was first published in 1922.
Published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction,
Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions,
and For Further Reading.
Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright © 2005 by Kenneth Krauss.
Note on Sinclair Lewis, The World of Sinclair Lewis and Babbitt,
Inspired by the Works of Sinclair Lewis, and Comments & Questions
Copyright © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
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Babbitt
ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-267-3
ISBN-10: 1-59308-267-3
eISBN : 978-1-411-43180-5
LC Control Number 2005922116
Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher
Printed in the United States of America
QM
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
FIRST PRINTING
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Harry Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, an immigrant farming village with a population of little more than a thousand. When he was six years old, his mother died; his father, a country doctor, remarried a year later. Lewis’s early experiences living in a rural midwestern town would influence much of his writing; Main Street’s Gopher Prairie, for example, is modeled after Sauk Centre and features many of the community organizations in which his stepmother participated.
In 1903 Lewis moved east to attend Yale University, where he began contributing regularly to the Yale Literary Magazine. He became dissatisfied with college life, however, and dropped out in 1906 to work as a janitor in the utopian community Helicon Hall. Founded by Upton Sinclair, Helicon Hall was a mecca for progressive thinkers of the time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lewis left after two months and spent the next few years working at odd jobs before returning to Yale to graduate in 1908.
Lewis traveled around the country for two years, and then settled in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a center for avant-garde artists and writers.
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