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Title: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, Matthew J. Bruccoli ISBN: 0-7867-0325-3 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers Pub. Date: 01 April, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.94 (32 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Study in Culture Shock
Comment: In "Main Street", Sinclair Lewis analyzes the degree to which a progressively minded individual can become a fish out of water in the typically conservative American rural community. While many characterize "Main Street" as an 'attack' on middle America, I don't think Lewis's intentions were quite so dismissive.
I say this because the character of Carol Kennicott has many of her own 'big city' faults. She can be condescending and elitist when it comes to the small town ways of her adopted home of Gopher Prairie. What "Main Street" is mostly a depiction of is culture shock.
Carol has moved to Gopher Prairie after marrying Dr Will Kennicott. Will is not a particularly ambitious doctor. It seems that his greatest pleasures in life are his family and friends. He enjoys the quiet life of Gopher Prairie and becomes the symbol of rural 'who caresness'.
Carol, on the other hand, is an ambitious reformer. She attempts to re-work the cultural and educational life of Gopher Prairie largely against the wishes of its residents. She is, in effect, trying to make Gopher Prairie something it is not: a city.
"Main Street"'s most important message is 'live where you're comfortable'. It is obvious that Carol is not comfortable living in a rural place like Gopher Prairie and that she longs for the stimulation of urban life. It is her bane that she has married a decent man who has no intention of living in the city. She is faced with the choice of abandoning her husband for the familiarity of the city or living in exile in a place she doesn't fit in.
Rating: 4
Summary: The evolution of Everytown, U.S.A.
Comment: "Main Street": The title alone invokes placid images of the most tranquil pockets of middle America. And Sinclair Lewis could hardly have picked a name more suggestive of rustic simplicity and provinciality than Gopher Prairie for the Minnesota town that is the setting of his novel. Gopher Prairie is supposed to be a prototype of thousands of American small towns in the early decades of the twentieth century, paradise for those who like to cling comfortably to convention, unbearable for those who seek cultural refinement and artistic freedom.
Lewis's protagonist is a bright, pretty, and progressive college-educated girl named Carol Milford who has great dreams of widespread social reform: educating children, aiding the poor, rebuilding and beautifying small towns. Working as a librarian in St. Paul, she meets and falls in love with a visiting country physician named Will Kennicott, who convinces her to marry him and return with him to his native Gopher Prairie, fresh clay to be molded to her heart's delight.
Gopher Prairie turns out to be not much advanced from its days as a frontier settlement. Populated primarily by farmers of Scandinavian descent and a gossipy, judgmental group of white collar townspeople, it is staunchly set in its conservative ways and not very receptive to ideas of change. The town's cultural outlook is dictated by the whitebread tastes of the more outspoken and influential religious leaders, and Carol's efforts to instill a sense of higher culture and broaden people's horizons by starting a theatrical club and getting better books for the library are viewed with suspicion and ridicule. Even Carol's own husband tends to have a nonchalant, dismissive attitude towards her plans. The town's sole rebel is the handyman Miles Bjornstam, a self-described lone wolf and pariah, who likes to taunt the stuffed shirts in town with his defiant disregard for their money, his independence, and his atheistic and socialistic ideas.
Rather than let Carol conquer the town through perseverance, Lewis opts for realism by restraining his heroine's success. After having a baby, she naturally becomes more domesticated and reluctantly gives herself up to the way of life in Gopher Prairie. She has chances to rebel with potential extramarital affairs and a separation from her husband to move to (the less friendly and intimate) Washington, D.C., and get a job, but ultimately she returns to Gopher Prairie, realizing that life is about compromises, and changes and reforms take more time and organization than she has to offer. While her dreams may not be completely fulfilled in her lifetime, there is hope in the future generations.
"Main Street" is ambitious and bold but perhaps does not have quite the impact that Lewis intended. He makes his point relatively early in the novel and spends the remainder of it spinning out variations on his theme of Carol vs. Gopher Prairie, relying on scenes connected episodically rather than on an arching plotline. What Lewis lacks in narrative acumen, he more than makes up for in drawing distinctive characters and scripting sharp dialogue with a good ear for dialect. When he coalesces this skill with a focused story and a strong social statement, as he does in his later, better novel "Elmer Gantry," he proves himself to be a worthy rabble-rouser in American literature.
Rating: 3
Summary: a strange book but a hooker
Comment: Lol. A strange book but I wanted to read it because I live in a hellhole in the Midwest and having come from a more sophisticated town previously this place was kinda a shock. Wanted to see if there were some parallels, but times have changes a lot since then. The Scandinavians reminded me more of Poles then Americans. I guess American culture really has developed into its own flavor. I could relate with Carol but she was too intellectually snub for me at times. She pissed me off with her mouth full of words and her actionless feet. However I suppose a lot of youth can relate with that. We all have these ideals yet fail to live up to them. Perhaps she reached too high? But I had to finish the book because I wanted to know if she would stay in Gopher Prairie. The book is funny at times, yet I'm not up for much sarcasm. It gets on my nerves. I like the part about the public WC being such a jewel in GP, the pride of it. LOl, that was hilarious. I think the book would've been funner if I knew more about the times yet perhaps I was expecting something else. Actually you can be pretty nieve like me and still like it especially if you're a foreinger because many of the charcters reminded me of typical Polish ways, which are so funny at times.
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Title: Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis ISBN: 0553214861 Publisher: Bantam Classics Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis ISBN: 0451522516 Publisher: Signet Classics Pub. Date: 01 February, 1978 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis ISBN: 0451526910 Publisher: Signet Classics Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson ISBN: 055321439X Publisher: Bantam Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, Richard Lingeman ISBN: 0451527607 Publisher: Signet Classics Pub. Date: 10 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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