Babbitt
"Zenith is the finest example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere." Zenith is the Midwestern city where George F. Babbitt lives and works. A successful real estate agent, his business provides all the material trappings and comfort he thinks he ought to have. He is a member of all the right clubs, and unquestioningly shares the same aspirations and ideas as his friends and fellow Boosters. Yet even complacent, conformist Babbitt dreams of romance and escape, and when his best friend does something to throw his world upside down, he rebels, and tries to find fulfilment in romantic adventures and liberal thinking. Hilarious and poignant, Babbitt turns the spotlight on middle America and strips bare the hypocrisy of business practice, social mores, politics, and religious institutions. A brilliant satire, it evokes an era and at the same time exposes a universal social malaise. In his introduction and notes Gordon Hutner explores the novel's historical and literary contexts, and its rich cultural and social references. - Back cover. With his portrait of George F. Babbit, the conniving, prosperous real-estate man from Zenith, Sinclair Lewis created one of the ugliest, but most convincing, figures in American fiction -- the total conformist. Babbitt's demons are power in his community and the self-esteem he can only receive from others.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
4mentions
4people
2014–2026years
25% recommend75% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For anyone struck by the modern relevancy of this piece I suggest you check out Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. It's also from the 1920s and the American culture that it describes (and critiques) is very similar to today.
- same logic applies to using drugs to self-soothe. if you're high all the time, you have no time to realistically engage with the material realities of your socio-emotional life and health. instead of taking the time to reflect on past actions and develop insight on how you're relating with others or living your life, you just work instead. and, in the meantime, dissonance compounds as background radiation
eventually that just leads to an even bigger crashout, burnout, break. Sinclair Lewis parodied this as early as 1922 in Babbitt [0], depicting a man who is economically satisfied and fits perfectly the mold of the white picket life and yet is devoid of meaning and satisfaction. he then spends his years in the wilderness crashing out before stumbling back into conformity because he knows nothing else
you can find meaning outside of work in so many ways. joining a small organizing group, help run mutual aid efforts, even dipping a toe into civic engagement. disentangle achieving goals that signify success from living your values and you'll be on your way to a better regulated life [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_(novel)
[1] https://psychwire.com/free-resources/expert-insights/resourc...
- I kind of feel Fitzgerald gets a lot more press than his contemporaries like Dresier, John O' Hara and Sinclair Lewis. How does Gatsby hold up against 'Sister Carrie' or 'An American Trajedy' or 'Main Street' or 'Babbitt'?
- The origin of the phrase is like something out of Lewis Sinclair's Babbitt.
In 1911 on a rainy morning, TJ Watson met with the advertising and sales teams at the National Cash Register Corporation (pre-IBM). Frustrated by the lack of new submissions Watson went into a tirade:
THINK is the original ABC. Think Alec Baldwin spittling on a bunch of sales guys not meeting their numbers in Glengarry Glen Ross and you've got it. It's not some lofty command to invent the future. It's an order to close more sales.The trouble with every one of us is that we don't THINK enough. We don't get paid for working with our feet - we get paid for working with our heads. Feet can never compete with brains. Thought has been the father of every advance since time began. Knowledge is the result of thought, and thought is the keynote of success in this business, or in any business. Any man on the selling force today could make two dollars where he now makes one, if he would but THINK along the right lines. It is our job to help the man in the field think right. It is our job to place make them think about what a Cash Register will do for them. 'I didn't think', has cost the world millions of dollars. Mr. Olwell, I wish you would have a big placard made with that word Think on it in bold letters, and have it on the wall of this department tomorrow morning. I suggest also that we adopt the word Think as a motto or slogan, keeping it before us at all times in as many different ways as we can.A year later, Watson was convicted of anti-competitive sales tactics and sentenced to a year in prison. Two years after that he was fired from the National Cash Register Corporation and went to join IBM.
