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Main Street: Library Edition
Carol Kennicott, caught between her desires for social reform and happiness, reflects the dilemma of America's early emancipated woman. Main Street attacks the complacency of those who are under the illusion that they have chosen their tradition.
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First published October 23, 1920
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About the author
Sinclair Lewis
511 books1,104 followersNovelist Harry Sinclair Lewis satirized middle-class America in his 22 works, including
Babbitt
(1922) and
Elmer Gantry
(1927) and first received a Nobel Prize for literature in 1930.
Middle-class values and materialism attach unthinking George F. Babbitt, the narrow-minded, self-satisfied main character person in the novel of Sinclair Lewis.
People awarded "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."
He knowingly, insightfully, and critically viewed capitalism and materialism between the wars. People respect his strong characterizations of modern women.
Henry Louis Mencken wrote, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade...it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclai...
Middle-class values and materialism attach unthinking George F. Babbitt, the narrow-minded, self-satisfied main character person in the novel of Sinclair Lewis.
People awarded "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."
He knowingly, insightfully, and critically viewed capitalism and materialism between the wars. People respect his strong characterizations of modern women.
Henry Louis Mencken wrote, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade...it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclai...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,496 reviews
September 10, 2014
On page 25 I thought – this guy is brilliant.
On page 50 I thought – this guy is exhaustively brilliant.
On page 100 I thought – I’m exhausted.
On page 150 I thought – I’ll never get out of this novel alive.
On page 200 I thought – so who knew there could be so much DETAIL about every last possible aspect of one teensy Minnesotan town lodged inside the Tardis-like head of Sinclair Lewis?
On page 213 my eye fell upon this :
It’s the worst defeat of all. I’m beaten. By Main Street. I must go on. But I can’t!
Surprisingly Godotesque, and I imagine many readers of this large opus nodding their heads and smiling grimly.
On page 350 I thought – you know, I think the plot is picking up a little bit. If I’m reading this right, two things have actually happened in the last 70 pages.
THE DIRENESS OF SMALL TOWNS
Well, that’s what this novel is ALL about.
“Tell you, Carrie : there’s just three classes of people : folks that haven’t got any ideas at all; the cranks that kick about everything; and Regular Guys, the fellows with sticktuitiveness that boost and get the world’s work done.”
It (what's so bad about a small town) is a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment…the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living of the restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is negation canonised as the one positive virtue. It is slavery self-taught and self-defended. It is dullness made God.
There’s a point on page 249 where Sinclair is ONCE again recounting how much his heroine hates Gopher Prairie, and kind of breaks down into a general jeremiad without even trying to put his thoughts into her mind. He just starts foaming and ranting.
The universal similarity – that is the physical expression of the philosophy of dull safety. Nine-tenths of American small towns are so alike that it is the completest boredom to wander from one to the other. Always there is the same lumber yard, the same railroad station, the same Ford garage, the same creamery, the same…. (etc etc for a long paragraph).
THE VICIOUS GOSSIP OF SMALL TOWNS
“Have you heard the scandal about this Miss Mullins and Cy Bogart?”
“I’m sure it is a lie.”
“Oh, it probably is.” Maud’s manner indicated that the falsity of the story was an insignificant flaw in its general delightfulness.
DIALECT : NOT A GOOD IDEA
“Vell, so you come to town,”
“Ya. Ay get a yob."
”Vell…you got a fella now?”
“Ya, Yim Yacobsen.”
“Vell. I’m glat to see you. How much you vant a veek?”
“Sex dollar.”
“There ain’t nobody pay dat. Vait! Dr Kennicott. I t’ink he marry a girl from de Cities. Maybe she pay dat. Vell, You go take a valk.”
Authors, don’t do this. You are giving the impression that anyone who speaks with an accent is tuppence short of a shilling.
AMY ADAMS FOR CAROL, I’D SAY
This is a novel about a perky and by all accounts fairly drop dead young woman named Carol who marries a guy who is a country doctor and is so eyejabbingly tedious that I was surprised she was still alive at the end of one year of marriage when there was in the small town of Gopher Prairie a full supply of sharp agricultural implements, guns with live ammo, and even a couple of four storey buildings which would surely bust your neck should you spring from their tops.
She sashays into the her hubby's home town with grand but vague ideas of "improving" it. Well, you know that expression "don't let the bastards grind you down? Turns out the bastards live in Gopher Springs. Whole town is full of them.
This is a novel where the idea is like James Joyce said with Ulysses, that if Dublin burned to the ground they could rebuild it by consulting his book. In this case it’s all small towns in the north of the USA and all the interiors of every building - every square inch of Minnesota is gone over with utter thoroughness.
I LIKE A GOOD LIST
Sinclair Lewis is very big on lists.
Fur coats, fur caps, fur mittens, overshoes buckling almost to the laces, grey knitted scarves ten feet long, thick woollen socks, canvas jackets lineed with yellow wool like the plumage of ducklings, moccasins, red flannel wristlets for the blazing chapped wrists of boys…
The Commercial Club banquet and the Minniemashie House, an occasion for menus printed in gold (but injudiciously proof-read) for free cigars, soft damp slabs of Lake Superior whitefish served as fillet of sole, drenched cigar-ashes gradually filling the saucers of coffe cups, and oratorical references to Pep, Punch, Go, Vigour, Enterprise, Red Blood, He-Men, Fair Women, God’s Country, James J Hill, the Blue Sky, the Green Fields, the Bountiful Harvest, Increasing Population, Fair Return on Investments, Alien Agitators who Threaten the Security of our Institutions, the Hearthstone the Foundation of the State, Senator Knute Nelson, One Hundered Per Cent Americanism, and Pointing with Pride.
When you follow a character into a room in Main Streetyou are lucky to escape without a complete inventory of furnishings and fixtures
The trouble is that often grinding down poor Carol becomes indistinguishable from grinding down the poor reader. Sinclair Lewis falls into the trap that John Lennon did in his primal scream phase, say, on Cold Turkey and Mother. In his case it was yelling and moaning about what psychic pain he was in. In this case it’s boring us half to death in protest about the psychological suffocation anyone with half a brain will suffer in these innumerable burgs. Cries of “All right already!” and “You’ve already said that twenty-five times Mr Lewis” may be heard escaping involuntarily from the reader’s pursing lips.
TWO MORE MOANERS
1. Surely a direct descendant of Main Street is Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, also located in Minnesota. Yes, GK paints his town with a wry avuncular affection, but in his first novel GK has his stand-in denounce Lake Wobegon remarkably bitterly in terms Sinclair Lewis would have thought he’s written (except that GK is funnier). These come in a passage called 95 Theses 95. Here’s three examples:
You have subjected me to endless boring talk about the weather, regularity, back problems, and whether something happened in 1938 or 1939, insisting that I sit quietly and listen to every word.
"How's it going with you?" you said. "Oh, about the same," you replied. "Cold enough for you?" It was always cold, always about the same.
You have taught me to value a good night's sleep over all else including adventures of love and friendship, and even when the night is charged with magic, to be sure to get to bed. If God had not meant everyone to be in bed by ten-thirty, He would never have provided the ten o'clock newscast.
You have provided me with poor male role models, including the Sons of Knute, the Boosters Club and others whose petulance, inertia, and ineptitude are legendary. I was taught to respect them: men who clung to tiny grudges for decades and were devoted to vanity, horsefeathers, small potatoes--not travel but the rites of trunk-loading and map-reading and gas mileage; not faith but the Building Committee; not love but supper.
2. Bizarrely, I could not but think of Thomas Bernhardt, whose legendary hatred of his own country Austria is poured forth in novel after novel. Main Street is in the same ball park. Except there’s no love in Austria.
IMMERSIVE NOVELS
Are not read for the plot but for the forensic detail of lives lived. Because of that they run the risk of boring us rigid; they’re the slow heavy beasts, the dray horses of literature – The Old Wives’ Tale and A House for Mr Biswas; and now, Main Street. The whole thing is in the immense accretion of detail. They have to win you over. Main Street won me over. In the end I loved it. Whew. Ain’t going to read another Sinclair Lewis novel any time soon, but... yeah.
On page 50 I thought – this guy is exhaustively brilliant.
On page 100 I thought – I’m exhausted.
On page 150 I thought – I’ll never get out of this novel alive.
On page 200 I thought – so who knew there could be so much DETAIL about every last possible aspect of one teensy Minnesotan town lodged inside the Tardis-like head of Sinclair Lewis?
On page 213 my eye fell upon this :
It’s the worst defeat of all. I’m beaten. By Main Street. I must go on. But I can’t!
Surprisingly Godotesque, and I imagine many readers of this large opus nodding their heads and smiling grimly.
On page 350 I thought – you know, I think the plot is picking up a little bit. If I’m reading this right, two things have actually happened in the last 70 pages.
THE DIRENESS OF SMALL TOWNS
Well, that’s what this novel is ALL about.
“Tell you, Carrie : there’s just three classes of people : folks that haven’t got any ideas at all; the cranks that kick about everything; and Regular Guys, the fellows with sticktuitiveness that boost and get the world’s work done.”
It (what's so bad about a small town) is a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment…the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living of the restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is negation canonised as the one positive virtue. It is slavery self-taught and self-defended. It is dullness made God.
There’s a point on page 249 where Sinclair is ONCE again recounting how much his heroine hates Gopher Prairie, and kind of breaks down into a general jeremiad without even trying to put his thoughts into her mind. He just starts foaming and ranting.
The universal similarity – that is the physical expression of the philosophy of dull safety. Nine-tenths of American small towns are so alike that it is the completest boredom to wander from one to the other. Always there is the same lumber yard, the same railroad station, the same Ford garage, the same creamery, the same…. (etc etc for a long paragraph).
THE VICIOUS GOSSIP OF SMALL TOWNS
“Have you heard the scandal about this Miss Mullins and Cy Bogart?”
“I’m sure it is a lie.”
“Oh, it probably is.” Maud’s manner indicated that the falsity of the story was an insignificant flaw in its general delightfulness.
DIALECT : NOT A GOOD IDEA
“Vell, so you come to town,”
“Ya. Ay get a yob."
”Vell…you got a fella now?”
“Ya, Yim Yacobsen.”
“Vell. I’m glat to see you. How much you vant a veek?”
“Sex dollar.”
“There ain’t nobody pay dat. Vait! Dr Kennicott. I t’ink he marry a girl from de Cities. Maybe she pay dat. Vell, You go take a valk.”
Authors, don’t do this. You are giving the impression that anyone who speaks with an accent is tuppence short of a shilling.
AMY ADAMS FOR CAROL, I’D SAY
This is a novel about a perky and by all accounts fairly drop dead young woman named Carol who marries a guy who is a country doctor and is so eyejabbingly tedious that I was surprised she was still alive at the end of one year of marriage when there was in the small town of Gopher Prairie a full supply of sharp agricultural implements, guns with live ammo, and even a couple of four storey buildings which would surely bust your neck should you spring from their tops.
She sashays into the her hubby's home town with grand but vague ideas of "improving" it. Well, you know that expression "don't let the bastards grind you down? Turns out the bastards live in Gopher Springs. Whole town is full of them.
This is a novel where the idea is like James Joyce said with Ulysses, that if Dublin burned to the ground they could rebuild it by consulting his book. In this case it’s all small towns in the north of the USA and all the interiors of every building - every square inch of Minnesota is gone over with utter thoroughness.
I LIKE A GOOD LIST
Sinclair Lewis is very big on lists.
Fur coats, fur caps, fur mittens, overshoes buckling almost to the laces, grey knitted scarves ten feet long, thick woollen socks, canvas jackets lineed with yellow wool like the plumage of ducklings, moccasins, red flannel wristlets for the blazing chapped wrists of boys…
The Commercial Club banquet and the Minniemashie House, an occasion for menus printed in gold (but injudiciously proof-read) for free cigars, soft damp slabs of Lake Superior whitefish served as fillet of sole, drenched cigar-ashes gradually filling the saucers of coffe cups, and oratorical references to Pep, Punch, Go, Vigour, Enterprise, Red Blood, He-Men, Fair Women, God’s Country, James J Hill, the Blue Sky, the Green Fields, the Bountiful Harvest, Increasing Population, Fair Return on Investments, Alien Agitators who Threaten the Security of our Institutions, the Hearthstone the Foundation of the State, Senator Knute Nelson, One Hundered Per Cent Americanism, and Pointing with Pride.
When you follow a character into a room in Main Streetyou are lucky to escape without a complete inventory of furnishings and fixtures
The trouble is that often grinding down poor Carol becomes indistinguishable from grinding down the poor reader. Sinclair Lewis falls into the trap that John Lennon did in his primal scream phase, say, on Cold Turkey and Mother. In his case it was yelling and moaning about what psychic pain he was in. In this case it’s boring us half to death in protest about the psychological suffocation anyone with half a brain will suffer in these innumerable burgs. Cries of “All right already!” and “You’ve already said that twenty-five times Mr Lewis” may be heard escaping involuntarily from the reader’s pursing lips.
TWO MORE MOANERS
1. Surely a direct descendant of Main Street is Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, also located in Minnesota. Yes, GK paints his town with a wry avuncular affection, but in his first novel GK has his stand-in denounce Lake Wobegon remarkably bitterly in terms Sinclair Lewis would have thought he’s written (except that GK is funnier). These come in a passage called 95 Theses 95. Here’s three examples:
You have subjected me to endless boring talk about the weather, regularity, back problems, and whether something happened in 1938 or 1939, insisting that I sit quietly and listen to every word.
"How's it going with you?" you said. "Oh, about the same," you replied. "Cold enough for you?" It was always cold, always about the same.
You have taught me to value a good night's sleep over all else including adventures of love and friendship, and even when the night is charged with magic, to be sure to get to bed. If God had not meant everyone to be in bed by ten-thirty, He would never have provided the ten o'clock newscast.
You have provided me with poor male role models, including the Sons of Knute, the Boosters Club and others whose petulance, inertia, and ineptitude are legendary. I was taught to respect them: men who clung to tiny grudges for decades and were devoted to vanity, horsefeathers, small potatoes--not travel but the rites of trunk-loading and map-reading and gas mileage; not faith but the Building Committee; not love but supper.
2. Bizarrely, I could not but think of Thomas Bernhardt, whose legendary hatred of his own country Austria is poured forth in novel after novel. Main Street is in the same ball park. Except there’s no love in Austria.
IMMERSIVE NOVELS
Are not read for the plot but for the forensic detail of lives lived. Because of that they run the risk of boring us rigid; they’re the slow heavy beasts, the dray horses of literature – The Old Wives’ Tale and A House for Mr Biswas; and now, Main Street. The whole thing is in the immense accretion of detail. They have to win you over. Main Street won me over. In the end I loved it. Whew. Ain’t going to read another Sinclair Lewis novel any time soon, but... yeah.
July 11, 2024
The action of this more than 400-page pavement takes place before and shortly after the First World War, in a small town in Minnesota called Gopher Prairie, where one might think that Sinclair Lewis has put a lot of his native background.
For his people and Dr. William Kennicott, when he describes it to Carol Milford, whom he met in St. Paul, Illinois, and whom he dreams of marrying, Gopher Prairie is the most beautiful city in the world. Deep America. A whole, deep city, cheerfully colored, carefully maintained, and populated by a small, lively, cultivated, and warm earth.
When Carol, now Mrs. Kennicott, arrives in Gopher Prairie after their honeymoon in Colorado, she strives to see the city as her husband has presented it to her—and as he sees it.
But Carol is anti-conformist-born and romantic, too, and imagines that good intentions, new ideas, a little youth, and immense goodwill will overcome the a priori. The idioms and laziness of this small town where sidewalks go up the "high street" are still in wood, as in the time of the pioneers. Despite its horror, ready to love, Gopher Prairie prepared to sympathize sincerely with its inhabitants. It will soon realize that all this is more difficult than expected; good intentions are not enough when they clash with conformism and well-thought.
Sinclair Lewis draws the portrait of a rigorous and stuck American society in a tongue-in-cheek way that allows the reader to take a critical distance - sometimes too much. He was born there, lived there, and then, somewhere, he is attached. But no proverb says, "Who likes to chastise well?"
Here are the pillars of the significant relationship between money and social success already held by the Americans of the time: worship for a single Bible and only church, fear, and contempt for the old continent. The pioneers came from the terrible empire of the "what do we say" (not specific, that one, it is true, small US cities) and a macho and patriarchal world vision to which Carol will finally, though reluctantly, submit.
It should be noted that, from the beginning, Lewis posits as a principle that Carol's sex is an additional burden in the fight she intends to lead.
For his people and Dr. William Kennicott, when he describes it to Carol Milford, whom he met in St. Paul, Illinois, and whom he dreams of marrying, Gopher Prairie is the most beautiful city in the world. Deep America. A whole, deep city, cheerfully colored, carefully maintained, and populated by a small, lively, cultivated, and warm earth.
When Carol, now Mrs. Kennicott, arrives in Gopher Prairie after their honeymoon in Colorado, she strives to see the city as her husband has presented it to her—and as he sees it.
But Carol is anti-conformist-born and romantic, too, and imagines that good intentions, new ideas, a little youth, and immense goodwill will overcome the a priori. The idioms and laziness of this small town where sidewalks go up the "high street" are still in wood, as in the time of the pioneers. Despite its horror, ready to love, Gopher Prairie prepared to sympathize sincerely with its inhabitants. It will soon realize that all this is more difficult than expected; good intentions are not enough when they clash with conformism and well-thought.
Sinclair Lewis draws the portrait of a rigorous and stuck American society in a tongue-in-cheek way that allows the reader to take a critical distance - sometimes too much. He was born there, lived there, and then, somewhere, he is attached. But no proverb says, "Who likes to chastise well?"
Here are the pillars of the significant relationship between money and social success already held by the Americans of the time: worship for a single Bible and only church, fear, and contempt for the old continent. The pioneers came from the terrible empire of the "what do we say" (not specific, that one, it is true, small US cities) and a macho and patriarchal world vision to which Carol will finally, though reluctantly, submit.
It should be noted that, from the beginning, Lewis posits as a principle that Carol's sex is an additional burden in the fight she intends to lead.
February 24, 2019
Sinclair Lewis explores his love and hate of small midwestern American towns as women's fiction.
March 17, 2017
"A bomb to blow up smugness" is what one woman hopefully calls her child in Sinclair Lewis's broadside attack on mainstream America, and that's surely what this book is.
I didn't know a book can be quiet and bombastic at the same time, but Lewis has written it. It covers just over a decade in Carol Milford's life, as her dreams are repeatedly drowned. She comes to Main Street, America, with grand plans to mean something in a dimly socialist way. Main Street is having none of it.
Lewis has a message. It's about socialism, and it joins Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath as one of the few socialist novels that aren't terrible. And it's about accepting difference, class struggle, and more than anything, feminism. He's trying to create a feminist hero here. He gets a little heavy-handed about it at times, but just a little. It's not enough to make this less than a five-star book; it's just enough to keep it off my top Novels Written For Grown-Ups list. Ishiguro's Remains of the Day is tighter.
The message here has something in common with Middlemarch. Here's Eliot's thing, right?
Which, I mean, the danger of an unexceptional life is that it makes boring reading, and one criticism of Main Street has been that it's plotless. I get that, but I think it's a narrow definition of plot. I thought of Madame Bovary while reading this, because they're both intimate looks at dissatisfied women by men who don't totally get it; that book has the dramatic events people are missing here. But I think it's a worthy achievement to pull off a novel without the help of big pageturning drama, and I think Lewis has done it.
To his credit, Lewis doesn't make anyone an obvious archetype. Carol is his hero, but she's flighty, changing, a pain in the ass. A lesser writer might have written her husband as an oppressor, but Kendicott is a terrific guy: his ambitions are different than hers, but he does his very best. Even the terrible ladies of Main Street have depth and shading.
Main Street is often funny. It's brilliantly written: just in terms of making sentences, Sinclair Lewis is gorgeous. It's much less obvious than it could have been, but still a bit thudding here and there. It's feminist without totally getting women.
It was a smash hit when it was published, somewhat surprisingly given its full-frontal attack on half the country, but then that's sortof the point of Main Street: we all live on it, but many of us consider ourselves, smugly, above it.
ps Years later, I tried to convince my wife that a great middle name for our kid would be "Bomb To Blow Up Smugness." She disagreed.
I didn't know a book can be quiet and bombastic at the same time, but Lewis has written it. It covers just over a decade in Carol Milford's life, as her dreams are repeatedly drowned. She comes to Main Street, America, with grand plans to mean something in a dimly socialist way. Main Street is having none of it.
Lewis has a message. It's about socialism, and it joins Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath as one of the few socialist novels that aren't terrible. And it's about accepting difference, class struggle, and more than anything, feminism. He's trying to create a feminist hero here. He gets a little heavy-handed about it at times, but just a little. It's not enough to make this less than a five-star book; it's just enough to keep it off my top Novels Written For Grown-Ups list. Ishiguro's Remains of the Day is tighter.
The message here has something in common with Middlemarch. Here's Eliot's thing, right?
"The effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."And here's Carol Milford:"I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith."
She had fancied that her life might make a story. She knew that there was nothing heroic or obviously dramatic in it, no magic of rare hours, nor valiant challenge, but it seemed to her that she was of some significance because she was commonplaceness, the ordinary life of the age, made articulate and protesting.These are characters who find fulfillment in making it through a real life with a semblance of self-respect. That's grown-up stuff. I mean, not that I'd know, but that's what I hear from old people.
Which, I mean, the danger of an unexceptional life is that it makes boring reading, and one criticism of Main Street has been that it's plotless. I get that, but I think it's a narrow definition of plot. I thought of Madame Bovary while reading this, because they're both intimate looks at dissatisfied women by men who don't totally get it; that book has the dramatic events people are missing here. But I think it's a worthy achievement to pull off a novel without the help of big pageturning drama, and I think Lewis has done it.
To his credit, Lewis doesn't make anyone an obvious archetype. Carol is his hero, but she's flighty, changing, a pain in the ass. A lesser writer might have written her husband as an oppressor, but Kendicott is a terrific guy: his ambitions are different than hers, but he does his very best. Even the terrible ladies of Main Street have depth and shading.
Main Street is often funny. It's brilliantly written: just in terms of making sentences, Sinclair Lewis is gorgeous. It's much less obvious than it could have been, but still a bit thudding here and there. It's feminist without totally getting women.
It was a smash hit when it was published, somewhat surprisingly given its full-frontal attack on half the country, but then that's sortof the point of Main Street: we all live on it, but many of us consider ourselves, smugly, above it.
ps Years later, I tried to convince my wife that a great middle name for our kid would be "Bomb To Blow Up Smugness." She disagreed.
October 13, 2015
This was Lewis first novel, published in 1920, and it was a huge success, both critically and commercially. It made him a rich man and launched a career that would include the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930. Lewis felt that Main Street should have won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921 but was edged out by Edith Wharton's, The Age of Innocence. It so incensed Lewis that when he did win it in 1925 for Arrowsmith, he refused to accept the award.
Main Street was the first major novel that featured small town America, and the public loved it. While his contemporaries, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wharton were writing about New York and Paris and the upper crust aristocracy, Lewis focused on the heartland. Willa Cather probably came as close to Lewis as anyone in capturing the essence of the period and the people in the expanding Midwest.
Main Street was the first major novel that featured small town America, and the public loved it. While his contemporaries, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wharton were writing about New York and Paris and the upper crust aristocracy, Lewis focused on the heartland. Willa Cather probably came as close to Lewis as anyone in capturing the essence of the period and the people in the expanding Midwest.
March 9, 2021
I enjoyed Age of Innocence better than Main Street so I guess I have to agree with the final Pulitzer decision on this one. Sinclair Lewis was so pissed off to lose this one that he refused the prize three years later for Arrowsmith. Main Street is interesting, but for me, a frustrating read as I had a hard time really connecting with its protagonist. I found her idealism a bit vapid and that she gave up rather easily. Her husband was a boob and I think that in Arrowsmith, it is a far more interesting portrayal of a middle-class couple. I enjoyed the various families and their small-town almost Proustian/Combray pretentiousness, but the narrative kind of dragged on. Fortunately, I really enjoyed Babbit and am not enjoying Arrowsmith otherwise, had I based my opinion of Sinclair Lewis just on this book, I may not have continued reading him.
May 31, 2018
I definitely liked this book and recommend it to others. There is so much to think about; it can be discussed from many different angles. So what are its topics? First of all, life in small towns versus life in cities. This is what the book is said to be about. Love is another theme. It is not a soppy love story though! Maturing, becoming an adult, figuring out how to live in a real world, not a world of only idealistic dreams. It is about growing up, not the teen years, but the years after that. Figuring out who you are and how you are going to live your life and how you are going to meld dreams with reality. It is about relationships. It is about women's rights and all individuals’ need for fulfillment. And it’s about appreciating culture and art and the value of beauty. Yeah, it’s about friendship too. I guess I could keep adding more to the list!
For me, what I liked best about the book is that opposing views are fairly portrayed. You see the pluses and the minuses of both sides.
It comes down to this. What do you do when husband and wife don't want to live in the same place? Is one wrong and the other right? How do you compromise so both can live a satisfying life? You have one life; you have to be satisfied with that one life. More than just being satisfied, you have to like it!
This is a great book for group reads. Views will certainly diverge. Lots to discuss. Debate, I am sure, will be lively.
So why only three stars? It should have been tightened. Parts drag. A third could/should have been eliminated, not particularly in the beginning nor at the end but throughout. I came to understand both the husband's and the wife's and their friends' views perfectly. Fewer examples could surely have been given.
The narration of the audiobook by Brian Emerson was fine.... but you do know what that really means. It means that while I didn't love it I have no serious complaints. The narrator almost sings the words. You could say I didn't like the melody. I wish he had just plain read the words. Still I understood everything and the speed was perfect. The narration is not a reason to avoid the audiobook. I just didn't love it.
I must say I was hesitant to read this. I love life out in the country, but I do know how petty small towns' folk can behave. I also love life in a big city. I value art and culture and design and beauty. Beauty has value. I was unsure if both sides could, in an unbiased and fair manner, be accurately drawn.
This book was published in 1920, and the author received the Nobel Prize in 1930. He was in fact the first US recipient. Sinclair Lewis was way ahead of his time. The book doesn’t feel dated. I think this is because human needs then and now are the same even if societal standards and circumstances have changed.
For me, what I liked best about the book is that opposing views are fairly portrayed. You see the pluses and the minuses of both sides.
It comes down to this. What do you do when husband and wife don't want to live in the same place? Is one wrong and the other right? How do you compromise so both can live a satisfying life? You have one life; you have to be satisfied with that one life. More than just being satisfied, you have to like it!
This is a great book for group reads. Views will certainly diverge. Lots to discuss. Debate, I am sure, will be lively.
So why only three stars? It should have been tightened. Parts drag. A third could/should have been eliminated, not particularly in the beginning nor at the end but throughout. I came to understand both the husband's and the wife's and their friends' views perfectly. Fewer examples could surely have been given.
The narration of the audiobook by Brian Emerson was fine.... but you do know what that really means. It means that while I didn't love it I have no serious complaints. The narrator almost sings the words. You could say I didn't like the melody. I wish he had just plain read the words. Still I understood everything and the speed was perfect. The narration is not a reason to avoid the audiobook. I just didn't love it.
I must say I was hesitant to read this. I love life out in the country, but I do know how petty small towns' folk can behave. I also love life in a big city. I value art and culture and design and beauty. Beauty has value. I was unsure if both sides could, in an unbiased and fair manner, be accurately drawn.
This book was published in 1920, and the author received the Nobel Prize in 1930. He was in fact the first US recipient. Sinclair Lewis was way ahead of his time. The book doesn’t feel dated. I think this is because human needs then and now are the same even if societal standards and circumstances have changed.
August 18, 2016
I was dimly aware of Sinclair Lewis but completely unfamiliar with his work when I read John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America a couple of years ago. Steinbeck, who admired Lewis, wanted to find his way from St Paul to Sauk Centre, Lewis' Minnesota hometown and the town on which the fictional location of this novel, Gopher Prairie, is based. He recounts his conversation with a waitress in a diner who gave him directions to the town: "They got a sign up. I guess quite a few folks come to see it. It does the town some good." The diner's cook volunteered that he didn't think "what's-his-name" was there anymore. Steinbeck recollected how negatively Sauk Centre had reacted to Lewis and to "Main Street" when it was published in 1920 and commented "Now he's good for the town. Brings in some tourists. He's a good writer now." The way Sauk Centre embraced Sinclair Lewis is similar to the way in which the Salinas Valley embraced Steinbeck, after its initial hugely negative reaction to the publication of The Grapes of Wrath.
A reader's response to this novel and in particular to its main character will depend to a large extent on their experience of and feelings towards life in a small town. Did you grow up in a small town or now live in one and absolutely love it? Then you'll probably dislike Carol Kennicott, a young librarian who in 1912 marries a dull but competent doctor, goes to live in Gopher Prairie and wants to change it and the people who live there. Can you imagine nothing worse than living in a place where everyone knows and judges everyone else? Then you'll understand Carol and feel for her, even if she also frustrates and annoys you. Having spent most of my life in a large city, I'm in the latter camp. Although I didn't find Carol particularly likeable - at least not all the time - I responded sympathetically to her. Had I been in her situation, I would probably have reacted as she did.
Lewis captured all that he saw as negative in small town life and called it Main Street: narrow-mindedness, provincialism, bigotry, hypocrisy, self-satisfaction and resistance to change. However, his portrayal of those who encapsulate those characteristics is not exclusively negative. Nor is his portrayal of Carol Kennicott overwhelmingly positive. The plot may be rambling, the style uneven and the satire and social commentary broad and unsubtle, but Lewis' rendering of his central characters is not without nuance. In my view, that's where much of the strength of the work resides. This is one of those works which I'm glad I've read, even if it hasn't left me particularly anxious to read more of its writer's work. A 3.5 star literary experience with a few 5 star moments.
September 16, 2018
Classics Cleanup Challenge #11
Audio #159
I didn’t like all of the arguing. For some reason it really upset me.
Audio #159
I didn’t like all of the arguing. For some reason it really upset me.
March 30, 2021
This book was intensely personal to me – so much so that I found myself closing the book so I could just stare at the wall and think at points. The plot concerns the struggles of a woman, Carol, against the strange omniscience and rigidity of a small Midwestern town. She is a city-girl who marries a country doctor and optimistically sets out for a new life on the prairie, circa World War I. Upon settling in, she realizes that her ideas for “improving” the town through the introduction of high culture, town planning, and the generally sophisticated example of her own conduct are completely without any hope of succeeding. She is shocked to find that the citizens of Gopher Prairie are not only resistant to her improving influence, they are actually quite happy to wallow in their rusticity. And so begins her decline.
Her ideas and ambitions seem silly and condescending in a 21st century view, but there is so much of Carol that reminds me of myself as a teenager it almost makes me uncomfortable. I spent a large part of my adolescence planning my escape from my own Gopher Prairie; Europe and the East Coast were my Promised Lands like they were Carol’s, and I felt that somehow I had been born in the Midwest by some cruel accident of fate.
But Carol and I diverge at one important point; I have the isolated fields and towns of the Midwest in my blood, and Carol did not. And because of this, I spent equal parts of the book sympathizing with her and feeling indignant that she could never find the good in anything around her. I naturally find my own feelings on the desperation of living in such a place excusable, but it doesn’t seem fair to hear them from an outsider.
I condemned Carol all the way through the second half of the novel, including her moping, rather pathetic attempt at a love affair, and dull try at a life of emancipation in DC. Surely at some point she would grow up and realize that a person can have ideals, practice them, and still not make herself and everyone around her miserable. And she does come around at the end, but not in a very satisfying way; I felt that her return at the end of the book was more an act of settling than of finding peace with the place.
It was only after I had finished and had time to properly digest the story that I began to feel rather sorry for being so harsh. I’ve come to appreciate my hometown through the benefit of time and distance, and look forward to moving back someday. But poor Carol had none of my coping mechanisms; no Goodreads, BBC World News, Football365, Masterpiece Classics on PBS, interlibrary loan, free nights & weekends cell phone plans, a profession, email, Barnes&Noble.com, quick travel, or - most importantly - an income and checking account. In Carol’s time and place I might have gone crazy as well. The Midwest now has the appeal of geographic isolation without the horror of isolation from thought and influence from the outside world.
I’m giving this book five stars because it made me think.
Her ideas and ambitions seem silly and condescending in a 21st century view, but there is so much of Carol that reminds me of myself as a teenager it almost makes me uncomfortable. I spent a large part of my adolescence planning my escape from my own Gopher Prairie; Europe and the East Coast were my Promised Lands like they were Carol’s, and I felt that somehow I had been born in the Midwest by some cruel accident of fate.
But Carol and I diverge at one important point; I have the isolated fields and towns of the Midwest in my blood, and Carol did not. And because of this, I spent equal parts of the book sympathizing with her and feeling indignant that she could never find the good in anything around her. I naturally find my own feelings on the desperation of living in such a place excusable, but it doesn’t seem fair to hear them from an outsider.
I condemned Carol all the way through the second half of the novel, including her moping, rather pathetic attempt at a love affair, and dull try at a life of emancipation in DC. Surely at some point she would grow up and realize that a person can have ideals, practice them, and still not make herself and everyone around her miserable. And she does come around at the end, but not in a very satisfying way; I felt that her return at the end of the book was more an act of settling than of finding peace with the place.
It was only after I had finished and had time to properly digest the story that I began to feel rather sorry for being so harsh. I’ve come to appreciate my hometown through the benefit of time and distance, and look forward to moving back someday. But poor Carol had none of my coping mechanisms; no Goodreads, BBC World News, Football365, Masterpiece Classics on PBS, interlibrary loan, free nights & weekends cell phone plans, a profession, email, Barnes&Noble.com, quick travel, or - most importantly - an income and checking account. In Carol’s time and place I might have gone crazy as well. The Midwest now has the appeal of geographic isolation without the horror of isolation from thought and influence from the outside world.
I’m giving this book five stars because it made me think.
April 6, 2022
Painfully true in all its dreary details! The Gopher Prairies of the world are suffocating even in their fictional form. Carol has not the slightest chance. She should have stayed away when she had her chance. The devil came in the shape of security and routine.
May 15, 2011
Small-town America. Ah, the scent of pine. The musty ramshackle old hardware store.
But what is this? Something amiss in one of these romanticized burgs? Something dark and sinister?
"I never imagined something like this would happen in our town," says the half-toothless talking head on the six o'clock news about the murder, even though you've seen this very thing happen in small towns 10,000 times in your life on the six o'clock news.
Small-town America is supposed to be different somehow; supposed to be better.
Fuck small-town America!
The real murder is not the cheerleader of Podunkville High who was raped and slain. The real murder is something more sinister and pervasive--not even a loss of innocence, because the innocence remains; dazed and confused, but always there; always cluelessly upbeat, always blaming the wrong causes for its woes. The real murder on Main Street America is a suicide; the suicide of small-town America; the murder of small-town America by its own hands.
Let the values voters of small-town America's Main Street keep on shooting themselves in the foot and dragging the rest of us down with them by electing right-wing corporate-puppet elites who don't give a tinker's damn about them or anybody else. Let the crackerbarrel bigots of Main Street stew in the backwash of their own hate. Let Walmart keep grinding into dust their shitty little stores. Let the untrammeled free-enterprise that you Main Streeters voted for put you out of work. Let you pull yourselves up by your bootstraps; the ones caked with McDonald's hamburger grease from the burgers you're now flipping for $5 an hour. Let the top 1 percent's mantra reign supreme: "What's good for us is good for the nation, and the world! (Oh, and thank you Main Street America, you suckers!)"
Let them continue to confuse ignorance for truth, faith for knowledge, creationism for science, heterosexuality as love's exclusive domain, poverty for charity, hope for ruthlessness. Let them believe that theirs is a self-righteousness and arrogance earned, not by reflection or learning but merely by believing and never budging and by insisting that you are wrong and the God is on their side only. Let the red states cover us with their nasty redness.
When Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street nearly a century ago now, Main Street was thriving, the commercial pulse of the nation. A veritable galaxy of hubbub dots across the map.
Lewis did not predict the demise of Main Street in this formidable novel, but in capturing its soul, a soul bereft of healthy curiosity, of a sense of its own promise, of a desire to see itself in the bigger picture, he tells us how it sowed the seeds of its own destruction, and by extension the decline of America.
Carol Kennicott, the city girl with the dreams and ideals of youth, the desire to share and to energize, the beautiful naivete of a progressive who wants to leave the world a better place than she found it, is Main Street's protagonist, a lovely soul after my own heart; a woman who wants to put the soul into a soulless place that wants none of it.
In fact, I love love love Carol Kennicott.
I could read an entire novel in which Carol Kennicott does nothing but prepare a tea service, or pick furniture, or shop for canned goods.
Well, actually, a lot of Main Street seems to be about just that: Carol Kennicott fixating on ever-tinier rituals within a domestic universe that shrinks to ever-smaller dollhouse-sized proportions. Full of world-beating notions out of college and fragrant with a modicum of sophistication, Carol marries a decent, reliable, uninspiring Midwestern doctor from the sticks of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. Sold a bill of goods about the goodness of the town, the two go off to live there and Carol's dread of being domiciled within it is painfully rewarded with corroborating verification. The place is backward, banal, quietly venal, stiflingly tasteless, mercilessly moral and hypocritical, and deeply suspicious of city girls and city ideas. Gopher Prairie exists in the real 1920s; the 1920s of Zane Grey novels, not the 1920s of James Joyce or The New Yorker.
The novel is about Carol's struggle to fit into this place, to negotiate between her desires to be individual and to conform, to be true to herself or to be popular, to reflect credit on her husband while aiming mightily to drag the town kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Instead, it drags her down into the dusty dregs of conformity. Beaten down by homogeneity, as a raison d'etre eludes her, as higher youthful ideals decompose via bacterial reality, Carol becomes a tragic figure; a symbol of spayed pre-liberated womanhood, a Stepford Wife of the sticks. In a reality devoid of greater meaning or purpose, her world-beating ideas are reduced to finding doilies with patterns that best match those on the sofa armrest.
Lewis' book is a masterwork, too little read by today's readers. Main Street takes place in a world that may seem as appealing to engage as an arcane, tropical article in a yellowing magazine. But its world is essentially unchanged from today. The masses were asses then and they are still asses now; just as pliable, just as gullible, just as lazy, just as venal and just as lulled into low expectations.
It's hardly a piquant or ingenious observation that Sinclair Lewis is unsubtly contemptuous of this rural menagerie, but he shoots fish in a barrel with an impressively embroidered firearm. He bores deeply into this town, this world, and this woman's place in it.
The thing took me forever to read--many months--but the effort was worthwhile. It's a classic.
Now, go out and canvass for Sarah Palin. Whoopeee!
But what is this? Something amiss in one of these romanticized burgs? Something dark and sinister?
"I never imagined something like this would happen in our town," says the half-toothless talking head on the six o'clock news about the murder, even though you've seen this very thing happen in small towns 10,000 times in your life on the six o'clock news.
Small-town America is supposed to be different somehow; supposed to be better.
Fuck small-town America!
The real murder is not the cheerleader of Podunkville High who was raped and slain. The real murder is something more sinister and pervasive--not even a loss of innocence, because the innocence remains; dazed and confused, but always there; always cluelessly upbeat, always blaming the wrong causes for its woes. The real murder on Main Street America is a suicide; the suicide of small-town America; the murder of small-town America by its own hands.
Let the values voters of small-town America's Main Street keep on shooting themselves in the foot and dragging the rest of us down with them by electing right-wing corporate-puppet elites who don't give a tinker's damn about them or anybody else. Let the crackerbarrel bigots of Main Street stew in the backwash of their own hate. Let Walmart keep grinding into dust their shitty little stores. Let the untrammeled free-enterprise that you Main Streeters voted for put you out of work. Let you pull yourselves up by your bootstraps; the ones caked with McDonald's hamburger grease from the burgers you're now flipping for $5 an hour. Let the top 1 percent's mantra reign supreme: "What's good for us is good for the nation, and the world! (Oh, and thank you Main Street America, you suckers!)"
Let them continue to confuse ignorance for truth, faith for knowledge, creationism for science, heterosexuality as love's exclusive domain, poverty for charity, hope for ruthlessness. Let them believe that theirs is a self-righteousness and arrogance earned, not by reflection or learning but merely by believing and never budging and by insisting that you are wrong and the God is on their side only. Let the red states cover us with their nasty redness.
When Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street nearly a century ago now, Main Street was thriving, the commercial pulse of the nation. A veritable galaxy of hubbub dots across the map.
Lewis did not predict the demise of Main Street in this formidable novel, but in capturing its soul, a soul bereft of healthy curiosity, of a sense of its own promise, of a desire to see itself in the bigger picture, he tells us how it sowed the seeds of its own destruction, and by extension the decline of America.
Carol Kennicott, the city girl with the dreams and ideals of youth, the desire to share and to energize, the beautiful naivete of a progressive who wants to leave the world a better place than she found it, is Main Street's protagonist, a lovely soul after my own heart; a woman who wants to put the soul into a soulless place that wants none of it.
In fact, I love love love Carol Kennicott.
I could read an entire novel in which Carol Kennicott does nothing but prepare a tea service, or pick furniture, or shop for canned goods.
Well, actually, a lot of Main Street seems to be about just that: Carol Kennicott fixating on ever-tinier rituals within a domestic universe that shrinks to ever-smaller dollhouse-sized proportions. Full of world-beating notions out of college and fragrant with a modicum of sophistication, Carol marries a decent, reliable, uninspiring Midwestern doctor from the sticks of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. Sold a bill of goods about the goodness of the town, the two go off to live there and Carol's dread of being domiciled within it is painfully rewarded with corroborating verification. The place is backward, banal, quietly venal, stiflingly tasteless, mercilessly moral and hypocritical, and deeply suspicious of city girls and city ideas. Gopher Prairie exists in the real 1920s; the 1920s of Zane Grey novels, not the 1920s of James Joyce or The New Yorker.
The novel is about Carol's struggle to fit into this place, to negotiate between her desires to be individual and to conform, to be true to herself or to be popular, to reflect credit on her husband while aiming mightily to drag the town kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Instead, it drags her down into the dusty dregs of conformity. Beaten down by homogeneity, as a raison d'etre eludes her, as higher youthful ideals decompose via bacterial reality, Carol becomes a tragic figure; a symbol of spayed pre-liberated womanhood, a Stepford Wife of the sticks. In a reality devoid of greater meaning or purpose, her world-beating ideas are reduced to finding doilies with patterns that best match those on the sofa armrest.
Lewis' book is a masterwork, too little read by today's readers. Main Street takes place in a world that may seem as appealing to engage as an arcane, tropical article in a yellowing magazine. But its world is essentially unchanged from today. The masses were asses then and they are still asses now; just as pliable, just as gullible, just as lazy, just as venal and just as lulled into low expectations.
It's hardly a piquant or ingenious observation that Sinclair Lewis is unsubtly contemptuous of this rural menagerie, but he shoots fish in a barrel with an impressively embroidered firearm. He bores deeply into this town, this world, and this woman's place in it.
The thing took me forever to read--many months--but the effort was worthwhile. It's a classic.
Now, go out and canvass for Sarah Palin. Whoopeee!
March 2, 2025
Sinclair Lewis (1885 – 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first author from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His 1925 novel, Arrowsmith, also received the Pulitzer Prize (which Lewis declined). Lewis was influenced by other contemporary American authors including H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton, and Theodore Dreiser, author of Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. Lewis considered Dreiser "as a master without whom his own career would probably not have been possible." Lewis was born February 7, 1885, in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota which is the basis for the fictionalized town of Gopher Prairie, the setting for Main Street.
Main Street satirizes small town life and is probably Lewis's most famous novel. It was at the top of the best-seller lists when it was published in 1920 and was the best-selling novel for the period 1900-1925. The protagonist of the novel is Carol Kennicott, a librarian living in Saint Paul who marries Will Kennicott, a doctor from Gopher Prairie. Carol agrees to live in the small town with Will with the idea that she will be able to change the town for the better. She joins clubs, holds parties, and even organizes a somewhat disastrous play. But she is ultimately trapped in the small town and confronted with suspicion and hostility especially by the women there. She does find some comfort with other outsiders including a young effeminate man who works as a tailor who seems to fall for Carol. However, these "friends" all fail to meet up to Carol's expectations.
The novel takes place during the 1910s including the years prior to and during WWI. It criticizes the issues of the times including isolationism, socialism, religion, business and welfare as they are seen through the small-town mentality of the residents of Gopher Prairie. This was a rather long novel at over 500 pages but it is worth reading to get a realistic view of the cultural divide among Americans that is still very prevalent today.
Main Street satirizes small town life and is probably Lewis's most famous novel. It was at the top of the best-seller lists when it was published in 1920 and was the best-selling novel for the period 1900-1925. The protagonist of the novel is Carol Kennicott, a librarian living in Saint Paul who marries Will Kennicott, a doctor from Gopher Prairie. Carol agrees to live in the small town with Will with the idea that she will be able to change the town for the better. She joins clubs, holds parties, and even organizes a somewhat disastrous play. But she is ultimately trapped in the small town and confronted with suspicion and hostility especially by the women there. She does find some comfort with other outsiders including a young effeminate man who works as a tailor who seems to fall for Carol. However, these "friends" all fail to meet up to Carol's expectations.
The novel takes place during the 1910s including the years prior to and during WWI. It criticizes the issues of the times including isolationism, socialism, religion, business and welfare as they are seen through the small-town mentality of the residents of Gopher Prairie. This was a rather long novel at over 500 pages but it is worth reading to get a realistic view of the cultural divide among Americans that is still very prevalent today.
November 8, 2020
I finally finished, took over 6 months. I understand the bliss of mundane, sometimes I have been known to seek it, but this one gave me a headache. Don't get me wrong, it has it's brilliance.
"I think perhaps we want a more conscientious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of always deferring hope to the next generation. We're tired of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we'll produce it; trust us; we're wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now - and we're going to try our hands at it. All we want is - everything for all of us! For every housewife and every longshoreman and every Hindu nationalist and every teacher. We want everything. We sha'n't get it. So we sha'n't ever be content -”
"I think perhaps we want a more conscientious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of always deferring hope to the next generation. We're tired of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we'll produce it; trust us; we're wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now - and we're going to try our hands at it. All we want is - everything for all of us! For every housewife and every longshoreman and every Hindu nationalist and every teacher. We want everything. We sha'n't get it. So we sha'n't ever be content -”
November 2, 2018
I read this many, many years ago and remember that I didn't like it at all. Boring.
November 23, 2013
Main Street is more of a social commentary than a novel. While not great art, it is thought provoking and offers a revealing historical perspective. It made me realize sadly just how persistent is the stagnation of the human spirit that afflicts so much of America.
Lewis straightforwardly tells his satiric story of life in Gopher Prairie Minnesota in which a city girl who marries a country doctor is constantly thwarted in her efforts to rise above the townspeople’s dreary existence. These passages sum it up pretty well. “It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment…contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their relentless walking. It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery self-taught and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterword coatless and thoughtless…and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.” He goes on, “…the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is easy to come by. To be ‘intellectual’ or ‘artistic’ or, in their own words, to be ‘highbrow’ is to be priggish and of dubious virtue…The cloud of supreme ignorance submerges them in unhappiness and futility.”
What is striking and disturbing is how easily we recognize the pettiness in Main Street 100 years later. The thinking of Gopher Prairie’s inhabitants of a century ago still exists in countless towns today where 19th century concepts of God and country predominate and disdain for “highbrow” ideas still resonates. The Tea Party provides ample evidence that the rural-urban divide is stronger than ever.
At the end Carrie, the scrappy heroine who finally succumbs to the banal life, talks of her new daughter living until the year 2000 in a new enlightened world when people may be flying to Mars. She got it half right. Technology would advance dramatically, but people not nearly so much. Lewis would have undoubtedly been very disappointed if he could see how little we have changed.
Lewis straightforwardly tells his satiric story of life in Gopher Prairie Minnesota in which a city girl who marries a country doctor is constantly thwarted in her efforts to rise above the townspeople’s dreary existence. These passages sum it up pretty well. “It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment…contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their relentless walking. It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery self-taught and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterword coatless and thoughtless…and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.” He goes on, “…the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is easy to come by. To be ‘intellectual’ or ‘artistic’ or, in their own words, to be ‘highbrow’ is to be priggish and of dubious virtue…The cloud of supreme ignorance submerges them in unhappiness and futility.”
What is striking and disturbing is how easily we recognize the pettiness in Main Street 100 years later. The thinking of Gopher Prairie’s inhabitants of a century ago still exists in countless towns today where 19th century concepts of God and country predominate and disdain for “highbrow” ideas still resonates. The Tea Party provides ample evidence that the rural-urban divide is stronger than ever.
At the end Carrie, the scrappy heroine who finally succumbs to the banal life, talks of her new daughter living until the year 2000 in a new enlightened world when people may be flying to Mars. She got it half right. Technology would advance dramatically, but people not nearly so much. Lewis would have undoubtedly been very disappointed if he could see how little we have changed.
March 8, 2022
I figured it was about time, after sixty years on planet earth, that I read a book by Sinclair Lewis. Probably one of the reasons I never did, was because after all the literature classes I took none of his work was ever discussed.
In 1930, Mr. Lewis won the Nobel Prize for literature, and "Main Street," was mentioned as one of his great accomplishment.
Mr. Lewis is the type of writer I am usually attracted to. His writing is very descriptive like many of my favorite writers like Conrad, Proust, and Fitzgerald, yet the first 100 pages of "Main Street," were like looking at a one minute sequence of a car passing down the same street 100 times. I was seriously thinking of putting it down when it seriously exploded off the pages and the main character, Carol Kennicott, starts to really come to life...almost having an affair with a young tailor whose ambition is to be some type of artist.
She originally moved to the town of 'Gopher Prairie,' when she married her husband Will Kennicott, a wonderful and dedicated doctor and a lifelong resident of the town. He's smart but in none of the ways that Carol is interested in. He's interested in medicine, making money, and taking care of cars. Carol loves to read the poetry of Keats and Shelley, and many of the famous authors of her era which is the early 1900's and before.
What Will sees as wonderful, she sees as dull. She wants to change the character and substance of the town, but all the residence are like Will and see little wrong with their lovely town that Carol finds dull and backwards.
Mr Lewis' ability to create a small town in Minnesota is almost picture perfect, and after the first one hundred pages when the characters become energized, with conscious feelings about sex, lost of youth, and complacence, and the real evil that can be caused by gossip and false beliefs come to a boiling head I was hoping the book would go on for another one hundred pages.
In 1930, Mr. Lewis won the Nobel Prize for literature, and "Main Street," was mentioned as one of his great accomplishment.
Mr. Lewis is the type of writer I am usually attracted to. His writing is very descriptive like many of my favorite writers like Conrad, Proust, and Fitzgerald, yet the first 100 pages of "Main Street," were like looking at a one minute sequence of a car passing down the same street 100 times. I was seriously thinking of putting it down when it seriously exploded off the pages and the main character, Carol Kennicott, starts to really come to life...almost having an affair with a young tailor whose ambition is to be some type of artist.
She originally moved to the town of 'Gopher Prairie,' when she married her husband Will Kennicott, a wonderful and dedicated doctor and a lifelong resident of the town. He's smart but in none of the ways that Carol is interested in. He's interested in medicine, making money, and taking care of cars. Carol loves to read the poetry of Keats and Shelley, and many of the famous authors of her era which is the early 1900's and before.
What Will sees as wonderful, she sees as dull. She wants to change the character and substance of the town, but all the residence are like Will and see little wrong with their lovely town that Carol finds dull and backwards.
Mr Lewis' ability to create a small town in Minnesota is almost picture perfect, and after the first one hundred pages when the characters become energized, with conscious feelings about sex, lost of youth, and complacence, and the real evil that can be caused by gossip and false beliefs come to a boiling head I was hoping the book would go on for another one hundred pages.
October 10, 2021
So Carol is a kind of both romantic (as in someone who loves beautiful things) and idealist - the two things that disconnect you from the world. Her attempts to change her small town are thus often Quioxitic - seeing the futility of her efofrts to change her town exhausts her and she gives up. Very quickly. Again and again. But that is the case with most (but not all) such dreamers.
I just wish it was a bit shorter work.
I just wish it was a bit shorter work.
February 3, 2023
Sinclair Lewis's first acknowledged classic, Main Street remains a timeless indictment of the prejudices and complacency of small-town America. His protagonist, Carol Kennicott, is an educated, progressive-minded city girl who marries a dull doctor, then relocates to the tiny burg of Gopher Falls. Carol is quickly disillusioned of her husband's tiresome friends and narrow-minded neighbors, all outward charm and inward condemnation, finding that they stomp upon even the mildest suggestions of individuality as amoral or subversive. She forms fleeting friendships with Miles Bjornstam, a strapping farmer disdained by the townspeople for his radical politics, and Erik Valborg, a bookish young man who is ruthlessly gay-baited for his appearance and taste for books - neither lasts, leaving Carol more unfulfilled than before. Lewis's book is not easy reading: there's some sardonic humor strewn throughout, but most of his narrative showcases the slow, painful smothering of Carol's personality, as she debates the merits of libraries, the suitability of Bernard Shaw for dramatic performance and the role of women in society with "friends" who wield gossip and sneering imprecation as weapons. Some readers will grow frustrated with Carol's reluctance to rebel; for all her outsider status, most of her transgressions are minor, but that's the point. The conformist impulses of Main Street, along with the institutions of marriage and motherhood (Carol's marriage is unhappy although she cherishes her children), destroy the desire to rebel. Easier to go along than get along, even if doing so costs your soul. Main Street ends with an explosive denouement which finally allows Carol a chance to display her independence...only to find that escaping Gopher Falls isn't as easy as she should imagine. A devastating, deeply-felt indictment of conservatism in its most insidious manifestation - not loudmouthed demagogues or reactionary politicians, but the simple, unmovable stodginess of everyday life.
November 29, 2018
I actually only came upon this wonderful read/listen that is Sinclair's classic novel titled "Main Street" because it happened to be a monthly choice for my library book club.
I thoroughly enjoyed this particular piece of work by Lewis, and after reading, completely see why he was the first author to ever receive the "Literary Nobel Prize."
However, most of my fellow book club members were not as enthralled with this particular work, and I guess he may not suit everyones' tastes. "Different strokes for different folks." as they say.
My impressions of Main Street was that it is exceptionally Smart, enjoyable and entertaining start to finish, as well as chock full of satirical, dry humor. That being said, Lewis's humor has a clear purpose, carrying strong, wonderfully descriptive messages on human nature.
It is clear that Mr. Sinclair had immense appreciation and fondness for the people and places he brings to us in his stories, and yet he pulls no punches in outing them for being the flawed, insecure people they are. He does a terrific job pointing out that humans are not all good or bad, most having moral/ethical sides as well as egotistical/self-centered and condescending propensities. Sinclair did not miss a beat in creating believable, realistic and relatable statements about human nature.
This book is as relatable today as it must have been when Lewis finished penning it back in 1920. #Classic
I thoroughly enjoyed this particular piece of work by Lewis, and after reading, completely see why he was the first author to ever receive the "Literary Nobel Prize."
However, most of my fellow book club members were not as enthralled with this particular work, and I guess he may not suit everyones' tastes. "Different strokes for different folks." as they say.
My impressions of Main Street was that it is exceptionally Smart, enjoyable and entertaining start to finish, as well as chock full of satirical, dry humor. That being said, Lewis's humor has a clear purpose, carrying strong, wonderfully descriptive messages on human nature.
It is clear that Mr. Sinclair had immense appreciation and fondness for the people and places he brings to us in his stories, and yet he pulls no punches in outing them for being the flawed, insecure people they are. He does a terrific job pointing out that humans are not all good or bad, most having moral/ethical sides as well as egotistical/self-centered and condescending propensities. Sinclair did not miss a beat in creating believable, realistic and relatable statements about human nature.
This book is as relatable today as it must have been when Lewis finished penning it back in 1920. #Classic
December 10, 2014
actually kinda won me over at the end, once the main character actually, y'know, DID SOMETHING. but the first 200 or so pages of "small-town satire," which is just a buncha dad-bern idjits talkin' like this is some of the most annoying shit i've ever read in my life.
beyond comprehension that this guy won a nobel prize. though i guess english wasn't the jury's first language.
beyond comprehension that this guy won a nobel prize. though i guess english wasn't the jury's first language.
August 27, 2018
Set in the second decade of the 20th century, this is a reflection on small town life and an exploration of the restrictions women face. A young, college educated woman who has lived and worked in St. Paul, marries a small town doctor and moves to a provincial town of 3,000 people. Her first impression is that the town is ugly, the people dull and the atmosphere clostrophobic. But with her experience of city life, a college education and a libral upbringing, she sets out to reform and modernize this community. The town regards her efforts as patronizing, her attitude as superior and her vision as threatening their way of life. Lewis captures these people adeptly, from the gossipy card circle to the sanctimonious elderly neighbor, from the spinster school teacher to the critical eye of the handiman who lives on the edge of the town. I am especially surprised at how sensitively Lewis captures the ambitions and frustrations, the desire to fit in and the desire to transform, the marital tension and the power of social standing felt by the female protagonist. Even though this is primarily Carol’s story, the town seen from her perspective, Lewis manages to show the reader the humanity of these small-minded, parochial towns folk also. I was surprised by its relevance and its outstanding character development. Initially, I thought it was going to get bogged down in flowery descriptions, but the lovely picture of turn-of-the-century Midwestern landscapes soon gave way to humorous, tender, ambitious, misunderstood, complex lives.
March 12, 2020
I can see why this is a classic, beloved and much studied work of American literature. I can see why it knocked the Great Gatsby off the best seller list at the time of publication. I can see why Lewis was awarded the Nobel.
I loved this book. With a tone reminiscent of East of Eden, it evokes the American mid west reality of the time. Carol Kenticott is a phenomenal character...not as enigmatic as Jay Gatsby perhaps, but she is more tangible and more relatable. This is because we as readers are privy to her innermost thoughts, minute by minute meditations and pondering, undulating emotions, thwarted hopes and dreams, triumphs and trials. She is transparent to us, but still humanely complex.
We can emphasise with her disquiet and restless spirit - her dissatisfaction and distaste for mediocrity and small mindedness and the monotony of the life she has become trapped in - like so many women of her time. We celebrate her unwavering morals and determination to reject conformity, to yield her character to be subsumed by the will of the masses and gender bias. It is her will and steeliness that shape her future in this small prairie town, that lead to changes to social morality in Gopher Prairie, to personal growth in her husband her neighbours and townsfolk, and that promulgate her own maturity that eventuates in her ultimate contentment with the life she has chosen. Finally a classic with a happy ending!
Note to self - read more Lewis!!!
I loved this book. With a tone reminiscent of East of Eden, it evokes the American mid west reality of the time. Carol Kenticott is a phenomenal character...not as enigmatic as Jay Gatsby perhaps, but she is more tangible and more relatable. This is because we as readers are privy to her innermost thoughts, minute by minute meditations and pondering, undulating emotions, thwarted hopes and dreams, triumphs and trials. She is transparent to us, but still humanely complex.
We can emphasise with her disquiet and restless spirit - her dissatisfaction and distaste for mediocrity and small mindedness and the monotony of the life she has become trapped in - like so many women of her time. We celebrate her unwavering morals and determination to reject conformity, to yield her character to be subsumed by the will of the masses and gender bias. It is her will and steeliness that shape her future in this small prairie town, that lead to changes to social morality in Gopher Prairie, to personal growth in her husband her neighbours and townsfolk, and that promulgate her own maturity that eventuates in her ultimate contentment with the life she has chosen. Finally a classic with a happy ending!
Note to self - read more Lewis!!!
February 6, 2008
Kept feeling like a disappoving old lady reading this book: "This young man writes very well, but I don't like his tone." Smug. Unutterably smug, and he doesn't seem to like or care about any of his characters, which makes the whole exercise rather cold. I suppose, ninety years later, the "small towns are narrow-minded and hypocritical" theme has been done to death, and Lewis deserves credit for pioneering the genre, but on the whole I didn't like it.
March 4, 2008
I had just moved to a small town in Minnesota - with the same aspirations as this classic charater of many years before me, yet my thoughts and run ins were very much the same 50 years later. It was a reminder that one fits or one doesn't fit but to spend your life trying to change the engrained to your likely only means you will spend your life in turmoil, in hopes others after you, long after you will find the place more to your liking. Shortly afterwards - I moved.
October 6, 2016
This book went on too long for me -- I ended up losing interest in and patience with Carol. I felt like I should sympathize with her but didn't in fact do so.
Lloyd James was very good with the narration which did help me persevere through.
Lloyd James was very good with the narration which did help me persevere through.
March 22, 2024
This book describes life in the small town of Gopher Plains, Minnesota, during the period 1912 – early 1920. Minneapolis resident and protagonist Carol marries an older man, Doctor W.P. Kennicott, and moves from the city to his small town, where he practices medicine. She is much more progressive than the townspeople. She is interested in art, literature, politics, and world issues. The small town is more focused on family, church, and the community. She is subjected to gossip, which she finds out from a local busybody that people are disparaging her. She is criticized for wanting to change the town and not attending church regularly. She tries to inject some of her own views and personality into her interactions with the townspeople, such as throwing themed parties and attempting to get the poetry group to actually read poetry rather than focus on the lives of the poets. She tries to inject a few changes, but she is fighting an uphill battle with no reinforcements.
It is a character-driven book about a woman who does not fit into the conservative small-town society. She has held a job and abhors asking her husband for money to buy household supplies. It was an era when women did not have the right to vote at the national level, and were called “Mrs. So-and-So,” as if they had no identity away from their husbands. The plot is slim, and the characters are well-developed. The storyline follows Carol’s many attempts to change her environment to achieve the life she desires. The arguments between Carol and the doctor are particularly realistic. It was published in 1920 and I always find it interesting to read about life in the past written by authors who lived it.
It is a character-driven book about a woman who does not fit into the conservative small-town society. She has held a job and abhors asking her husband for money to buy household supplies. It was an era when women did not have the right to vote at the national level, and were called “Mrs. So-and-So,” as if they had no identity away from their husbands. The plot is slim, and the characters are well-developed. The storyline follows Carol’s many attempts to change her environment to achieve the life she desires. The arguments between Carol and the doctor are particularly realistic. It was published in 1920 and I always find it interesting to read about life in the past written by authors who lived it.
May 20, 2025
I finished this four days ago. I’m left still thinking about what to say about it. Sinclair Lewis brought many dynamics into this small town, could be any small town, USA. I appreciated the read even more when I learned John Steinbeck was traveling from St. Paul to the town Gopher Prairie is based on, Sauk Centre, in the book “Travels with Charley”, because he admired Lewis.
As Anna Bogen describes in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, “Lewis’s prose is by turns caustic and emotionally charged, making the novel at once very funny and extremely serious.” I found it more serious, but tried to lighten up and laugh at humanity, as it centers around free-spirited Carol trying to find her way and make a difference in a place pretty well set in its ways. Mary, Martha… free-spirit, rational… heart, mind…this is how I saw most of it with all that lies between. Two of the townspeople kind of summed it up for me.
“ [Vida and Raymie] were exhilarated to find that they agreed in confession of faith: ‘People like Sam Clark and Harry Haydock aren’t earnest about music and pictures and eloquent sermons and really refined movies, but then, on the other hand, people like Carol Kennicott put too much stress on all this art. Folks ought to appreciate lovely things, but just the same, they got to be practical and —- they got to look at things in a practical way.’” So, the dilemma.
Very grateful for this read. It felt long at times but definitely worth it for me. Despite no real plot, Main Street and these people are extraordinarily real and now as we pass through small towns on our travels through Wyoming to Sinclair Lewis’s Minnesota, I look for Carol. I’m pretty sure I saw her outside The Court House the other day, carrying a clipboard and pointing out plans to a small group of people as we rode past.
I think I must change my 4 star rating to 4.75 stars rounded to 5.
As Anna Bogen describes in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, “Lewis’s prose is by turns caustic and emotionally charged, making the novel at once very funny and extremely serious.” I found it more serious, but tried to lighten up and laugh at humanity, as it centers around free-spirited Carol trying to find her way and make a difference in a place pretty well set in its ways. Mary, Martha… free-spirit, rational… heart, mind…this is how I saw most of it with all that lies between. Two of the townspeople kind of summed it up for me.
“ [Vida and Raymie] were exhilarated to find that they agreed in confession of faith: ‘People like Sam Clark and Harry Haydock aren’t earnest about music and pictures and eloquent sermons and really refined movies, but then, on the other hand, people like Carol Kennicott put too much stress on all this art. Folks ought to appreciate lovely things, but just the same, they got to be practical and —- they got to look at things in a practical way.’” So, the dilemma.
Very grateful for this read. It felt long at times but definitely worth it for me. Despite no real plot, Main Street and these people are extraordinarily real and now as we pass through small towns on our travels through Wyoming to Sinclair Lewis’s Minnesota, I look for Carol. I’m pretty sure I saw her outside The Court House the other day, carrying a clipboard and pointing out plans to a small group of people as we rode past.
I think I must change my 4 star rating to 4.75 stars rounded to 5.
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November 16, 2011I can't properly rate this book, because I did not enjoy it (or finish it yet), but I appreciate the satire and how its "commentary" on small minded people still holds true today.
To me, Lewis didn't try to build deep, interesting characters, he built representations about everything that reeks in society. This is a book that says, "You think you can change the way people think? Well, follow me to Main Street, and we will see about that." He treated the protagonists and antagonists with the same sarcastic take, even though we know his world view was similar to Carol's.
I see why this book has a place in literature as a classic, but my reading time is so precious, I want to enjoy the book. This bogged me down too much. A definite read for "American Literature 101" in your first year of college, but not for a working mom who wants to curl up with a good book after the kids are in bed. I guess I got sucked in to what Lewis warned us about. I am 40, I get it. I went to my rallys at UMASS. I wore my heart on my sleeve and screamed at the injustice of it all. Now I am too damn tired to give a sh*%. Life does that to you.
To me, Lewis didn't try to build deep, interesting characters, he built representations about everything that reeks in society. This is a book that says, "You think you can change the way people think? Well, follow me to Main Street, and we will see about that." He treated the protagonists and antagonists with the same sarcastic take, even though we know his world view was similar to Carol's.
I see why this book has a place in literature as a classic, but my reading time is so precious, I want to enjoy the book. This bogged me down too much. A definite read for "American Literature 101" in your first year of college, but not for a working mom who wants to curl up with a good book after the kids are in bed. I guess I got sucked in to what Lewis warned us about. I am 40, I get it. I went to my rallys at UMASS. I wore my heart on my sleeve and screamed at the injustice of it all. Now I am too damn tired to give a sh*%. Life does that to you.
September 24, 2011
I wanted to like this book but the overt condescension of the author was difficult to get through. I also struggled to relate to the whining malcontent of a protagonist or to the unlikeable, small-minded gossips Lewis peoples the town with. This book may have its place in the history of literature but frankly it's a joyless, tedious read.
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