Welcome to Gopher Prairie

The report on the next installment of my tutorial's tour of the Gilded Age: Sinclair Lewis' Main Street. Before now, I had only read one of Lewis' books; Babbitt is an interesting portrayal of a type of middle manager from the early 20th century. Mencken uses the term Babbitt to refer to that entire class of people frequently in his writings, so I read the novel back when I discovered Mencken.

Main Street came right before Babbitt; same general idea, different class of people. This novel mocks either 1) small town America or 2) those who want to reform Small Town America to make it more sophisticated. Or maybe it is mocking both. It is hard to tell.

It's an odd book; I would have said that it was terribly tedious--nearly 500 pages of Carol, our protagonist, alternating between whining about how small-minded the citizens of Gopher Prairie are and deciding to enjoy life in the town--but interestingly, Main Street was a best-seller in its day. So, obviously, at the time people thought it was great reading. Why? I am not entirely sure, but I suspect it appealed to the Eastern Elite of the day as a vehicle for confirming their prejudices about how terrible life was in Middle America. Read that way, it is a mocking satire on small-town life. On the other hand, Carol was a horrible bore; perhaps I have too much sympathy for the fine citizens of Gopher Prairie--despite the fact that I have a hard time imagining being friends with anyone who lives in the town.

The most fascinating thing from the tutorial discussion was that nobody in the room had much patience for Gopher Prairie; everyone seemed to think the people in the town were rather small-minded and dull. But, the last book we read was The Age of Innocence, and nobody thought the members of the New York Aristocracy about whom that book revolved were small minded or dull. Yet, it is very hard to figure out any difference between the New York Aristocracy and the Gopher Prairie yokels except that former are richer and dress in more glamorous clothing. Elitism runs deep.

On the whole, I think Babbitt is the better book.