Babbitt

By: Sinclair Lewis

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

On the surface, everything is all right with Babbitt’s world of the solid, successful businessman. But in reality, George F. Babbitt is a lonely, middle-aged man. He doesn’t understand his family, has an unsuccessful attempt at an affair, and is almost financially ruined when he dares to voice sympathy for some striking workers. Babbitt finds that his only safety lies deep in the fold of those who play it safe. He is a man who has added a new word to our language: a “Babbitt,” meaning someone who conforms unthinkingly, a sheep.

Public Domain (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“[It is] by its hardness, its efficiency, its compactness that Mr. Lewis’ work excels.” (Virginia Woolf)

surprised!

I'd heard Babbitt referred to as a negative stereotype of a man... but the man, and hisstruggles, are just as relevant today as in the 1920s. human nature well described, mid-life crisis, ... enjoyed it very much.

Started Great

This book was so interesting to me for the first chapters that I immediately checked out Sinclair Lewis' other books. I listened excitedly to the beginning 6 hrs in one sitting. However, it began to drag after that.

For me, when George began acting so negatively toward his wife and seeking an affair with another woman this book took a drastic turn. I kept the book on my phone but I only listened to it between many other books I listened to. After completing another book, if I did not have enough time to "get into" a new book I would fill the rest of my night with Babbit.

It isva shame that all of the other reviewers can so highly praise a book that has a character that seeks to cheat on his wife. It is a sick part of society that obviously all too many relate to.

There are tow reasons I finished this book: (1) I purchased it, (2) the narrator, Grover Gardner, is mesmerizing to listen to. He is the perfect narrator for this book. He has a friendly voice with just a touch of a negative attitude sounding voice.

There are enough redeeming qyalities to merit a rating of a bit over 3.5 (rounded up to 4 because of Gardner's performance).

Jonathan Franzen, circa 1922

Any additional comments?

For a lot of the time I read this, I found myself thinking of Jonathan Franzen. Is it possible he is the 21st century’s answer to Lewis?

That’s not an insult, even if we have mostly forgotten Lewis and what he meant to American literature. He was, after all, the first U.S. author to win a Nobel Prize in literature, and he created a vocabulary for talking about American culture that lasted until I was a kid in the 1970s. People were still describing someone as an “Elmer Gantry” and, yes, as a “Babbitt.” Each was effective shorthand for describing someone warped by the excesses of American culture, someone who, unknowingly infected by the sorts of desires Theodore Dreiser most famously drew, sets out to infect others with the same ones.

If Franzen isn’t drawing characters as memorable in their essentials as Gantry or Babbitt, he is showing people who are similarly complicit in the same system that plagues them. If Lewis’s characters got casually drunk in the middle of Prohibition, Franzen’s get casually stoned today. If Lewis’s were bewildered by what the dawn of the automobile and telephone age meant for the way we live in it, Franzen’s do the same for the effects of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle.

All of that seems relevant because I can’t quite decide how highly I regard Franzen. At the worst he is just what Lewis was: arguably the foremost chronicler of American dissatisfaction of his age. And yet, that said, Lewis was far from a hack. He made Naturalism relevant at the dawn of the Modern moment. We forget how impressive he was because his work comes out just a few years before Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner rewrite the boundaries of what’s possible in the novel.

There are some impressive technical moves here. For one thing, there really is no plot. It’s episodic, showing us a succession of portraits of George Babbitt, a man with pretensions to individuality who finds he can’t function unless he’s reassured that he’s doing just what everyone else is doing. That’s experimental; it’s pushing the limits of what we think fiction is.

For another, there’s a capacity for mockery that lingers almost 90 years later. To the degree we remember Lewis today, we have him cast as middlebrow, as someone people read if they couldn’t quite handle the cutting edge of Gertrude Stein or Virginia Woolf. That may be true, but there’s also a Modernist bias: we tend to admire novels that excavate the self over those that plumb the nature of the overall city. I share that bias; I like novels rooted in character, especially if the exploration of character takes place from odd angles.

I’ll criticize Babbitt and Elmer Gantry because, in the end, Lewis has no affection for his characters; he holds himself above them, thinks of the “real writer” as exempt from what he sees. And that’s what brings me back to Franzen. There are some today who rank him alongside Foster Wallace and Lethem, just as there were some who saw Lewis as the equal of Dos Passos or Fitzgerald.

So, bottom line, Lewis still has some relevance today for his method and his real if not-so-subtle insight, but he’s also interesting for what he suggests about the literary politics of then and now. Yeah, this drags in spots (but The Corrections doesn’t?). Still, it’s worth a look on its own terms and for its echoes today.

great voixing

a classic. must read (listen). especially relevant today given the current situation. check it out!

Surprisingly enjoyable!

I didn't think this book would keep my attention but the writing was outstanding and the ending was meaningful.

brilliant satire

The greatest satire of the 1920s - such a brilliant diagnosis of American capitalism. Grover Gardner's reading is also wonderful.

Thank you Grover Gardner

Grover's rendition of Sinclair Lewis' classic is bang on. He makes George Babbitt relatable and human.

Took me to my grandparents' time...

It's a very well-written story that, for me, never morphed out of the novel that it is-- a story of a man who lived during a particular time and place in America with certain values and morals. Babbitt lived these values and morals with all his thoughts and capabilities.

Everything I looked up about this book before reading starts off with "It's a satire..." on [conformist, materialistic, anti-intellectual way of life.] Even so, who knows who would have been just like George Babbitt in 1922, also seeking to preserve and defend what was important to him and his family and neighbors.

I appreciated being trapped in the mind of George Babbitt for while. I didn't love George but I did root for him to do the right thing. This book took place during the time when my grandparents were young 25-30 year-olds. Neither of them were Babbitts, nor did they live in a city like Zenith, but the values were the same and I think they're still the same now.

When was this written???

What a wonderful read! Despite being written almost a century ago, Sinclair has captured the essence of the American human condition, with humor and clever writing, that holds up so very well in the 21st century!
You will enjoy spending time w/ good ole George and might recognize a bunch of folks you already know!

Sadly, could be written today

Always love Grover Gardner as narrator. Good book. History repeats itself. Kind of sad really.