Babbitt: An American Life (Twayne's Masterwork Studies)

Babbitt, the tragicomic novel of revolt against smug, middle-class materialism, which earned Sinclair Lewis the 1930 Nobel Prize for literature, is a unique increment in the elevation of American literature to world status. Glen A. Love's unified, in-depth study of Babbitt sets American literary realism in the historical and cultural context of the 1920s - post-World War I liberalism, the Jazz Age, speakeasies, Red scares, the Sacco-Vanzetti case, the Scopes Monkey Trial, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and the collapse of Puritanism - and carries its relevance to the present. A clear, readable discussion of satire, romance, and cultural symbolism, the book moves in concentric circles from the work to its critical reception and outward to its significance as a mocking, yet heroic authentication of Lewis's fanatic American-ness, which is connected to pioneer and frontier mores.
More thorough and wide-ranging than former studies of the novel, Love's interpretation treats Babbitt as a work of realism and satire disguising an urgent, meaningful affirmation of - and appeal to - a nation replete with myriad possibilities. The scope of this multifaceted critique renders it invaluable to students and teachers of the American novel and realism as well as to general readers, critics, and researchers. This concise volume includes chronology, historical context, analysis, plus notes, a selected bibliography, and index.