Babbitt

About this book

George F. Babbitt is a forty-six-year-old real estate agent in the booming Midwestern city of Zenith. He owns a modern house, a car and every new gadget, belongs to the right clubs, gives speeches about pep and progress and believes whatever his newspaper tells him. Yet beneath his satisfaction he feels a vague, aching emptiness, and when his closest friend's life falls apart he attempts his own small rebellion against the rules of his world, and discovers what it costs.

Context and significance

Published in 1922, two years after Main Street, Sinclair Lewis's satire of business culture was so recognisable that 'Babbitt' entered the dictionary as a word for a self-satisfied, conformist businessman. In 1930 Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book's portrait of advertising, boosterism and the fear of standing out still feels current.

About the author