This has been one of the rare books that I have started with the intention of getting through in order to get rid of the physical book, but ended up being really wrapped up in, and wanting to keep. Babbitt is one of those rare books that truly requires further study and reflection. It’s a book that requires time and mulling. There is effectively no over-arching plot, yet Sinclair Lewis maintains audience attention in captivating self-reflection, parody, and social criticism.

This book came out in 1922, and there are quite a few outmoded and quite racist dialogues and comments in the novel - at least two anti-Semitic passages, and one anti-Black passage. I advise anyone reading that this may be triggering. Usually when I encounter this blatant, unapologetic hatred and derision in literature, I am so uncomfortable that I want to put down the book. This was not the case with Babbitt. Through using Babbitt as a sort of Everyman, middle-class-“good”-citizen-man archetype, Lewis is able to distance himself and his opinions from the novel itself - and present a time capsule image of the cis-white American capitalist man in 1920s prosperity. Presenting this image, ready for criticism, allows the reader to form their own opinions of Babbitt, and more importantly, judge this era and this group of people as they truly were. Rather than brushing over or ignoring the racism of the era, the book represents it - Lewis is not aimed at glorifying anything or belittling it either.

Indeed, Babbitt is not a sympathetic character, and that is the essential quality of the novel. We care not if he succeeds or fails in his endeavors, we are completely outside because Babbitt himself seems to lack an internal life. Although he suffers from shifting aims, and a life without true direction, he lacks the powerlessness that would make a reader empathize with him. Here is a man, fully capable, fully in power, who is not happy. And in this way, we can reflect more on American society, and the structure of the economy that molds and forms such a man, without getting too bogged down with his individuality (which he completely lacks). Babbitt is completely susceptible to the thoughts and actions of those around him, and his temporary allegiances — and in such, he is an amalgamation of all the ‘great’ men of Zenith - even as that definition changes for Babbitt.

So many topics are touched upon in this winding yet captivating novel - religion, citizenship, marriage, morality, friendship, business, law, family. It’d take me a year at least to pick it apart and put back together, but still I’d have no answers. And truly, I love a novel that doesn’t tell you how to think, or provide false hope for our never ending problems. I’d love to teach this book alongside Death of a Salesman, Ethan Frome, and other novels that touch upon labor. For truly, that is the toil of our lives, and it is ignored far too much in literature because it is truly problematic and distressing — yet we should talk about that which we spend the majority of our waking time doing. I mean how long does it take to fall in love - a topic of which there are millions of books on- versus how much time an individual spends working in their life. The mere fact that it is generally ignored, proves to me that there is ugliness abound in that direction.

I think I’ll keep my musty little 70 year old book, ugly as it is.