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Customer Reviews (11)

Is this About the Book or about Touting
I believe I counted 11, count 'em, 5 stars for this book, and it appeared that all 11 reviews were from the same person, all in glowing terms.Maybe this book is good; maybe it is bad.Maybe it is great scholarship.However, until I go to the University of Scranton and look at this work, I am highly suspect of 11 glowing reviews, and nothing else, on one book, and from one reviewer, who acts as his own football team.I will change my review after I look at the book, or after I see some convincing proof that the hydra-headed praise here is independently warranted.

Research Made Interesting
This book was a lifesaver. As a book collector, I cannot tell you how important a bibliography formatted like Pastore's can be. I wish he would write more. BRAVO to him for writing and to AMAZON.COM for carrying thisbook.

Honest and concise
This book provides the most honest and concise bibliography of one of the foremost authors of our time and Mr. Pastore has essentially re-engineered how a bibliography should be written - that "thin" can be betterthan "fat".

REFRESHING AND INTELLIGENT
All (ALL!!) bibliographies should be this clear and TO THE POINT. I hope this bibliographer works on some other authors. What value!!!

Clear and concise
Intelligent and thoughtful analysis of a very difficult author. Quite nice, really and beautifully presented. ... Read more

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Thirteen stories selected by Lewis himself which illustrate the wide range of his art and interests. Without his writing one cannot imagine modern American literature. --Mark Schorer ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Selectedboring stories
Sorry, I didn't enjoy of these stories.Over involved about stuff and situations that are way out-dated, I guess. ... Read more

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The Rise of Sinclair Lewis examines the making of Lewis's best-selling novels Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and Elmer Gantry their sources, composition, publication, and subsequent critical reception. Drawing on thousands of pages of material from Lewis s notes, outlines, and drafts most of it never before published James M. Hutchisson shows how Lewis selected usable materials and shaped them, through his unique vision, into novels that reached and remained part of the American literary imagination. Hutchisson also describes for the first time how large a role was played by Lewis s wives, assistants, and publishers in determining the final shape of his books. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1915.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Can eden be re-entered after the fall?
Carl Ericson, born in the same 1885 and in the same small town Minnesota as Sinclair Lewis, is the hero of Lewis's second novel, THE TRAIL OF THE HAWK (1915). Early on,mentors at home and in college convince Carl that there is something better than routine, conformity and merely making a living. Somewhere out on a long trail, possibly a trail with no end, there is a goal, a state of being, that will leave anyone contented, happy and living at the outermost limit of his talents.

Carl Ericson has a bent for mechanical things: automobiles, gliders. After being expelled from mediocre Plato College for defending an unorthodox teacher, he wanders for many months through countries and occupations. Nothing holds him for long until, in California, he senses that he was meant to be a pilot. He proves one of the best of the flying pioneers, is called a "Hawk of the Birdmen" and is transformed into Hawk Ericson, hero to rich and poor, to common people and aristocrats. All but inevitably, however, in those dangerous early days of racing and barnstorming monoplanes and biplanes, the Hawk crashes and goes into hospital.

Prudence damps down his soaring. He finds a job with an automobile manufacturer, invests his flying winnings in the company's efforts to create an early "RV," and proves a solid craftsman and leader of men doing important work. But Carl was now "a dethroned prince. He had been accustomed to a more than royal court of admirers. Now he was a nobody the moment he went twenty freet from his desk" (Ch. XXIV).

Was there anything that would prevent Hawk from bolting once again from on the job hum drum? From hitting the trail all alone once more yearning for something higher and better? It might be that love of the right woman would give him excitement off the job. He had several choices, Gertie, his old boyhood pal, soft, plump, stable or Ruth, a thin aristocratic friend made in New York. Ruth sparkles, is amusing and shares with Hawk the heart of a carefree vagabond. Gertie is unwilling even to walk out into the snow with Hawk. Ruth, by contrast, is willing to run off with him to the South Seas. Ruth, in the end, becomes the female "playmate" that Carl has always needed. One kiss (Ch.XXXIX) "and Carl knew that life's real adventure is not adventuring, but finding the playmate with whom to quest life's meaning." The coming of World War One in August 1914 overcomes the rich girl's doubts about living what may be a life of privation and Hawk and Ruth wed.

They have a vocation they can clearly share, "keeping clear of vocations" (Ch XLII). They sail in February 1915 for Argentina aboard the S.S. Sangrael (Holy Grail). In Buenos Aires, Hawk will sell American automobiles, at least for a while. After that, Hawk and Ruth Ericsonwill hit the upward trail together and stay on it as long as they can, spreading "Madness among the Respectable."

In Carl (Hawk) Ericson there is presented the recurring Sinclair Lewis male hero who is never content for long where he is, who must always roam "somewhere else," to "greener pastures." Only once does a Lewis protagonist, Dr. Arrowsmith, find something close to paradise and that only by renouncing ordinary human man-woman love for life in an ascetic community of celibate males. Contentment is not something likelyto be found on this earth or in anything this world offers.

One of the Lewis's First
Trail of the Hawk is one of Lewis's first works.It the story of the life of Carl "Hawk" Ericson, from rural Minnesota.Carl is an enterprising young man whose passion in life revolves around engines.Heis a wandering heart and his life's story takes the reader to manydifferent places.

The bulk of the story takes place in his late teens andtwenties during the 1910's.He attends college where eventually he isbooted out for supporting a socialistic teacher.Carl turns this to hisadvantage as he tramps about the country doing jobs for short periods oftime and seeing America.Eventually, though, his interest is taken in bythe burgeoning airplane industry.With some saved money, he invests inlessons.

Lewis captures the excitement of the airplane era -- tossingabout names like the Wright brothers and predicts what planes will do inthe future (which we take for granted today).Ericson becomes a premierepilot and races nationally.His fame becomes wide-spread.

Fearing themortal dangers of flying an airplane, he retires.However, he meets Ruth,a woman who he falls in love with.Ultimately, they marry, but Carl has awandering heart.After some turmoil, he and his wife learn to avoid thestaticness of marriage and the another day another dollar routine.

Lewisgoes everywhere in this book.Socialism, one of his persistent plots,plays a minor role in this book and doesn't jump out at the reader likeBabbitt.Also, some parts of the book were extremely dull and rambling. However, Lewis's main focal point is that people should live life and avoidthe dullness people get into.He states it best in the closing line: "How bully it is to be living, if you don't have to give up living inorder to make a living." ... Read more

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Thank you, Sinclair Lewis
If you made a short list of notable literary efforts from America's first Nobel Prize in Literature winner, the inestimable Sinclair Lewis, titles such as "Main Street," "Babbitt," and "Elmer Gantry" would probably sit near the top. More discerning fans of the master satirist might throw in "Dodsworth," "It Can't Happen Here," and "Kingsblood Royal." What you wouldn't find anywhere on this speculative list are the short stories between the pages of "If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis." Why? According to the intricate yet astoundingly informative introduction by Anthony Di Renzo, none of the fifteen stories contained in the anthology have been republished since their original appearance between the years 1915-1921 in magazines like "The Saturday Evening Post." If you stagger under the knowledge that works of a Nobel Prize winner have been out of print that long, you'll really have a fit once you read this collection. Every one of the tales in this book is wonderful. Everything you know about Lewis-his scathing wit, his boundless cynicism tempered with a secret hope for the triumph of humanity, his spot on ability to recreate the American vernacular-infuses every page of every story.

If I had to pick a specific story as my personal favorite, I would pick the four stories that make up what is the Lancelot Todd cycle. Lewis spent many years of his life working in advertising, loathed the profession, and promptly took his revenge with stories like "Snappy Display," "Slip It to 'Em," "Getting His Bit," and "Jazz." These four tales document the unsavory career of Lancelot Todd, America's premier advertising guru and an unbridled charlatan. Always on the lookout for the perfect con, Todd spends his days writing peppy newsletters for large business concerns and spewing out self-help books designed to teach the workingman how to get ahead. He devotes his free time to seeking a higher position in society and cultivating a cirrhotic liver. Lewis scathingly paints a picture of Todd's machinations only to bring him down in the end as his latest caper falls apart. The best example is "Slip It to 'Em," where Todd runs a car company into the ground only to find he must transport his latest wealthy conquest to an important meeting in one of the lemons his company foisted on the public. You haven't laughed until you have read a Lancelot Todd story. The only thing I could think of after these four stories was where I could get my hands on more of them.

All of the stories in the collection pertain to issues still relevant today. In "If I Were Boss," salesman Charley McClure strives to make a name for himself at his firm only to discover the same issues he excoriated his own boss for come back to haunt him years later when he runs the show. "Honestly-If Possible" explores the sometimes painful relationship between men and women in the office place. So does "A Story with a Happy Ending," but in a different way. Leonard Price eventually undergoes the humiliating experience of working for a woman he initially hired years before. The confusing experience of workplace conflicts finds expression in "Way I See It," where Lewis uses a shifting perspective to examine the contentious relationship between a rental agent and his boss. Even corporate takeovers and office backstabbing get a spotlight in "The Whisperer," an unnerving tale about a fast buck quack obliterating his internal opposition in his bid for the top spot at an unprofitable pharmaceutical company. Repeatedly, I was amazed at how the many issues Lewis raises in these stories continue to have importance in today's corporate world. It would seem we haven't advanced very far since the 1910s and 1920s, at least regarding gender roles and business ethics.

Don't think for a minute that Lewis completely despises his subjects. In "The Good Sport," the author brings one of those fly by night, wiseacre salesman who run from job to job down to earth in a particularly humbling yet ennobling way. "A Matter of Business" finds a businessman agonizing over whether to remain loyal to a local supplier or whether to buy trendy yet shoddy products from a national concern. The last story, "Number Seven to Sagapoose," is a truly beautiful heart wrencher about a traveling shoe salesman's ability to make a huge difference in the lives of certain individuals and, by extension, humanity as a whole. It is in these stories that we see Lewis's caustic barbs and deep cynicism stripped away to reveal a man who fervently hoped that mankind could overcome its ridiculous social constructions and petty trappings in order to achieve a higher, nobler purpose.

As I closed the cover to "If I Were Boss" for the final time, I felt a deep kinship with Sinclair Lewis, realizing that he and I share many of the same thought processes and beliefs. I couldn't help but think that I would have gotten along just fine with Lewis if I had personally known him. I think I understand him as a person, however misguided that assumption might be, and now realize how difficult his life must have been. When one sees humanity in the way Lewis sees it, when one recognizes the pettiness and banalities we surround ourselves with, one quickly understands how difficult it is to function in life. That's why I think Lewis relied so heavily on humor in his stories: if you cannot laugh at the utter ridiculousness of modern life, you will quickly find yourself screaming with rage. These insights on my part hint at the powerful qualities of the author's stories and his writing ability. If you're the eternal cynic who can still laugh, pick this book up right away.

Marvelous Stories Display a Little-Known Side of Lewis
While I have enjoyed Lewis's novels, I have also found them to be somewhat angry and bitter.These stories are a different matter.Several of them are uproariously funny, in many ways reminiscent of Ring Lardner's best, where the outrage is hidden behind a mask of humor.

The introduction provides an interesting background in terms of both America's history and the events of Lewis's own life.

Excellent Collection of Short Stories
I was surprised at how relevant the stories were to the current times.Despite being written between 1915 and the early 1920's, workers ( and employers ) were faced with problems of sexual harrasment, boredom,stealing employees, and office politics.

Definately, you can detect partsof Babbit in many of the characters in the book.

All of the stories wereworth reading.Some are amusing, some sad, and a few happy.All of them,however are thought provoking.

Overall, a great book to get a hold of,especially if you are a Sinclair Lewis fan.

I hope we are entering a Sinclair renaisance...
"Honestly, if Possible" may quite possibly be the most wonderful short story I've ever read. Like other newer Sinclair readers, I'm amazed with the currency of all his work, and even more amazed that he isn't more widely known. I'm doing my best to get the story out-I've got a lot of PEP!

Surprisingly timely.
Lewis' early magazine pieces, printed here for the first time since their original publication in 1915-23, unmistakably contain the seeds of his later Pulitzer Prize-winning satirical novels and are irresistible in their own right.
The language is dated, and the modern reader may find some usage jarring (e.g., "love-making" for what we might call "flirting"), but it is remarkable in this postmodern age of Dilbert and e-mail that so little has changed in human nature, especially as expressed in office romances and politics. Look closely and you may see in some of Lewis' hucksters someone looking back at you; someone uncomfortably familiar.
(P) (The "score" rating is an ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.) ... Read more

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CASS TIMBERLANE- A NOVEL OF HUSBANDS AND WIVES by SINCLAIR LEWIS.The scene of this story, the small city of Grand Republic in Central Minnesota, is entirely imaginary, as are all the characters. But I know tJiat the diameters will be identified, each of them with several different real persons in each of the Minne sota cities in which I have happily lingered: in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Winona, St. Cloud, Mankato, Fergus Falls and par ticularly, since it is only a little larger than Grand Republic and since I live there, in the radiant, sea-fronting, hillside city of Duluth. All such guesses will be wrong, but they will be so convincing that even the writer will be astonished to learn how exactly he has drawn some judge or doctor or banker or housewife of whom he has never heard, or regretful to discover how poison ously he is supposed to have described people of whom he is particularly fond. I UNTIL JINNY MARSHLAND was called to the stand, the Judge was deplorably sleepy. The case of Miss Tilda Hatter vs. the City of Grand Republic had been yawning its way through testimony about a not very interesting sidewalk. Plaintiffs attorney desired to show that the city had been remarkably negligent in leaving upon that side walk a certain lump of ice which, on February 7, 1941, at or about the hour of 9: 37 P. M., had caused the plaintiff to slip, to slide, and to be prone upon the public way, in a state of ignominy and sore pain. There had been an extravagant amount of data as to whether the lump of ice had been lurking sixteen, eighteen, or more than eighteen feet from the Clipper Hardware Store. And all that May afternoon the windows had been closed, to keep out street noises, and the court room had smelled, as it looked, like a schoolroom. Timberlane, J., was in an agony of drowsiness. He was faith ful enough, and he did not miss a word, but he heard it all as in sleep one hears malignant snoring. He was a young judge: the Honorable Cass Timberlane, of the Twenty-Second Judicial District, State of Minnesota. He was forty-one, and in his first year on the bench, after a term in Congress. He was a serious judge, a man of learning, a believer in the majesty of the law, and he looked like a tall Red Indian. But he was wishing that he were out bass-fishing, or at home, reading Walden or asleep on a cool leather couch. Preferably asleep. All the spectators in the room, all five of them, were yawning and chewing gum. The learned counsel for the plaintiff, Mr. Hervey Plint, the dullest lawyer in Grand Republic, a middle aged man with a miscellaneous sort of face, was questioning Miss Hatter. He was a word-dragger, an uh'er, a looker to the ceiling for new thoughts. Uh Miss Hatter, now will you tell us what was the uh the purpose of ^ our going out, that evening I mean, I mean 3 how did you happen to be out on an evening which I think all the previous testimony agrees that it was, well, I mean, uh, you might call it an inclement evening, but not such as would have prevented the, uh, the adequate cleaning of the thorough* fares - ' Jekshn leading quest, said the city attorney. Jekshn stained, said the Court. I will rephrase my question/' confided Mr. Flint. He was a willing rephraser, but the phrases always became duller and duller and duller. Sitting above them on the bench like Chief Iron Cloud, a lean figure of power, the young father of 'his people, Judge Timberlane started to repeat* the list of presidents, a charm which usually would keep him awake. He got through it fairly well, stumbling only on Martin Van Buren and Millard Fill more, as was reasonable, but he remained as sleepy as ever. Without missing any of Miss Hatter's more spectacular state ments, His Honor plunged ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

of merit
Most argue that the late Sinclair Lewis works shows an author whose powers have seriously declined. Though I don't disagree, I still think Cass Timberlane is worth reading. It serves as an interesting contrast to the earlier novels. Lewis still has his acrid and acerbic view of American life - he skewers Minnesota and New York City with equal ease. However, he seems to see, at the end of his career, that there is some redemptive moment in life. True, you might find this rather sentimental, but I see it as a synthesis of his earlier Menckenism with the later romance of the swing era. Indeed, this book has many elements of the twenties, but they are tempered by the forties. Having just read Wolfe's Of Time and the River, I noticed that Wolfe was apparently influenced by Lewis. Even as Wolfe surpassed Lewis in achievement, he also brought his novels to a resolution that left an impression of hope and survival.

Cass Timberlane

This book is masterfully written and reveals a tremendous insight into the nature of human beings by its author, Sinclair Lewis.Cass Timberlane, a middle-aged, divorced judge in a moderate-sized city in Minnesota, is smitten by a pretty twenty-something girl who passes through his court room one fine day.While Jinny has good looks, youth and, a personality all her own, the Judge readily grafts his own ideal of his perfect mate onto this attractive not-so-blank slate.He never wavers in his perfect vision of this imperfect person and the seeds of discontent and relationship failure are sown from the moment they met.Jinny, for her part, tries to tell the Judge who she really is but he will not see it.Unfortunately, she is both seduced by the opportunity he represents for her and lacks the strong sense of self (and, selfishly, desire) necessary to shake him from his illusion.This culminates in a disasterous and doomed marriage.The author plays this out in a brilliant, witty and realistic manner that makes for a fascinating read.Interspersed throughout the novel are vignettes of couples and people whom we meet along the way.It is often said that the only people who truly know what happens in a relationship are the two who are in it.To read these shorts is to extend that knowledge to a silent, invisible, third party observer.Many of them are unpleasant and not all of them work but they offer a peek behind the veneer of contentment and normalcy that couples present to the rest of the world.As Cass and Jinny spiral out of control and the arguments come faster and faster without logic or reason, the author offers up the explanation that "But of them all, there was only one cause; they did not know what they wanted." While it would appear that most who have reviewed this book think their relationship ends in a triumph of love, I beg to differ.At the end, Cass still sees Jinny as unrealistically as he always has and Jinny has been beaten down to the point of being "...mildly sad about it, just enough to assert her non-existent independence...".She cannot make love to him because the love of another man still holds her heart.When she comes into his bedroom because she is too cold from the Minnesota night, he sees it as an act of reconcilation and, finally, requited love.However, she swears she'll fix her storm windows so she can go back to her bedroom and so the cycle will go on and on with two people who are hopelessly caught by each other.

What makes a marriage work?

Near the end of this novel Sinclair Lewis writes, "If the world ever learns that it knows nothing yet about what keeps men and women loving each other, then will it have a chance for some brief happiness before the eternal frozen night set in?" In relating the married life of Judge Cass Timberlane and his wife Jinny, Lewis ponders the question and offers nothing more than "patience" as a possible answer.

Cass Timberlane, 41 and divorced, falls for Jinny Marshland, a girl from the other side of the tracks who is half his age. Everyone, just about, tries to dissuade him from what they see as a romantic fling with little chance of permanence resulting, but Timberlane is determined to marry her. And he does. And she flies the coop. She falls in love with Bradd Criley and runs off to NYC with him. But she becomes deathly ill there, and Timberlane "rescues" her and she realizes she loves her husband after all. Interspersed throughout the novel are a number of "assemblages," very short snapshots of various good and bad marriages (mostly bad), Lewis's commentary on the marriage situation in middle-class America. He has the chauvinistic view that most bad marriages are the fault of the woman. At the end of one early assemblage, though, he espouses a pretty clear view about successful marriages: "My experience" [Dr. Drover says] "is that it's all nonsense to say that marriage is difficult just because of complicated modern life on top of the fundamental clashes of the sexes. It's all perfectly easy if the husband just understands women and knows how to be patient with their crazy foibles. You bet!" It's exactly what Timberlane is able to do with Jinny and thus keep their marriage together. Lewis's writing is breezy and natural, especially the dialogue. Other than for the rather old-fashioned and melodramatic ending, the book is pretty good.
... Read more

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This study provides readers with a comprehensive view of novelist Sinclair Lewis as an avid reader and literary critic. ... Read more

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1926. Lewis, was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Possibly the greatest satirist of his age, Lewis wrote novels that present a devastating picture of middle-class American life in the 1920s. Although he ridiculed the values, the lifestyles, and even the speech of his characters, there is often affection behind the irony. Lewis began his career as a journalist, editor, and hack writer. He became an important literary figure with the publication of Main Street. His seventh novel, Babbitt, is considered by many critics to be his greatest work. One of his major works The Job begins: Captain Lew Golden would have saved any foreign observer a great deal of trouble in studying America. He was an almost perfect type of the petty small-town middle-class lawyer. He lived in Panama, Pennsylvania. He had never been captain of anything except the Crescent Volunteer Fire Company, but he owned the title because he collected rents, wrote insurance, and meddled with lawsuits. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

In 1915 women had few resources for rising above menial office work
In ten years, 1905 - 1915, Miss Una Goldman, heroine of Sinclair Lewis's 1917 novel THE JOB, moves from24 year old economic nobody in backwater Panama, Pennsylvania to success in business at age 34 in cutthroat New York City.She is not pretty, not well educated. How then does she rise in a man's world?

First, she is friendly and makes enough affable acquaintances and a few friends (increasinglythey are women) that she creates a booster or referral network which she can call on and does call on. Networking, beginning with contacts in a New York City commercial school, from time to time help her find a better job: first just stenographic, then secretarial and lightly supervisory and finally with real responsibility for selling real estate. On her own she markets herself to her final employer who takes her into his recently formed and expanding chain of hotels as a manager of several departments.

Along the way Una Golden forms a crush on a man who leaves New York for a better job in Omaha. She later marries unsuitably an alcoholic womanizer much older than she. Him she dumps eventually as he becomes more and more a lazy sponger. In the end she is reunited, most implausibly, at age 34 with her first love and the implication is that they will marry, have children and both continue to work -- something her old fashioned husband forbade Una to do once he was back on his feet economically.

Unlike ELMER GANTRY or THE GOD SEEKER, Sinclair Lewis's THE JOB is relentlessly, single-mindedly, depressingly secular and this worldly. Here are some of the very few references of any kind to organized religion.

Of Una's father just before he dies at novel's beginning:"He believed that all Parisians, artists, millionaires, and socialists were immoral. His entire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, which he never read, and the Methodist Church, which he rarely attended; and he desired no system of economics beyond the current platform of the Republican party." ( Ch. I).

On their first dinner date, Una's first boyfriend (who returns in triumph at novel's end) asks "Which god do you favor at present -- Unitarian or Catholic or Christian Science or Seventh-Day Advent?" Una thought that they all worshipped the same God. He says that the same God can't both approve candles and music in an Episcopal Church and reveal to the Plymouth Brotherhood the wickedness of organs and candles." Una agrees that she really does not care which church is right. He goes on to say that church buildings are touted as God's houses but are allowed by congregants to be ugly. But he admits that his real thoughts about almost anything are critical and negative. End of discussion. (Ch V)

Another suitor spoke with Una after "(s)he had been to church; had confessed indeterminate sins to a formless and unresponsive deity. She felt righteous and showed it." (Ch. IX)

Una moved into a rather posh and nominally strict boarding house for working women that as a matter of policy admitted "East Side Jews" but "no agnostics or Catholics." Yet Una's roommate, a Roman Catholic, had got away with telling the landlady that she was a "Romanist Episcopalian." Una's encounters with Jewish men and women in various levels of New York business were invariably friendly and productive. Decisively helpful later in Una's business rise was her lame Jewish boarding housemate Miss Mamie Magen, who was brilliant and increasingly well connected in charitable circles. (Ch. XI) Mamie was scornful of "half-churches, half-governments, half-educations." Mamie explained New York to Una, brought the metropolis to life. Thanks to Mamie Magen, Una found a two week temporary job with thejobbing firm of Herzfeld and Cohn, two white-bearded Orthodox Jews. Una had had nebulous prejudices of the Jews thenbeginning to conquer New York business. Yet the two partners had merry eyes, gestures of sympathy and created a pleasant, companionable office environment. They were not tyrants but patriarchs, elder workers. They made their office "a joyous adventure." Una looked forward each day to her work and learned lessons she would later apply elsewhere about how to humanize the work place. (Ch. XIV) In her next to last office, the dynamic Jewish partner in a real estate office proposed marriage, but Una merely admired him, did not love him. (Ch. XVI)

With her Catholic roommate Una "attended High Mass at the Spanish church on Washington Heights ... ; felt the beauty of the ceremony; admired the simple, classic church; adored the padre; and for about one day planned to scorn Panama Methodism and become a Catholic, after which day she forgot about Methodism and Catholicism." (Ch. XII) In the first two years of her marriage, Una's salesman husband was out of town 2/3 of the time and she herself did not work. To keep her shorthand alive, she took down "the miscellaneous sermons -- by Baptists, Catholics, Reformed rabbis, Christian scientists, theosophists, High Church Episcopalians, Hindu yogis, or anyone else handy -- with which she filled up her dull Sundays. ... Except as practice in stenography she found their conflicting religions of little value to lighten her life. The ministers seemed so much vaguer than the hard-driving business men with whom she had worked; and the question of what Joshua had done seemed to have little relation to what Julius Schwirtz (her husband) was likely to do. The city had come between her and the Panama belief that somehow, mysteriously, one acquired virtue by enduring dull sermons." (Ch. XVI)

In THE JOB Sinclair Lewis shows little belief in religion as able to uplift and change lives of his characters. And those lives emphatically need uplifting from the relentlessly dull, stressful, slave-like conditions most women face in their low-paying office jobs. Sinclair Lewis's women generally see only two ways out of having to work: to marry or to die in harness. A few women such as Una Golden and Mamie Magen break out of their pre-ordained ruts and create a third possibility: doing better work than their men colleagues and convincing progressive bosses to give them a chance to prove themselves.

-OOO-

of some interest, perhaps
I found this to be somewhat inferior to his other early novels (i.e., before Main Street). He is more slick in that professional writer's way here; I like him better when he was willing to take some stylistic risks;but nothing like that happens here. Main Street may not be a masterpiece,but it is certainly more interesting and unusual than this one.

Decent account of Women in the workplace.
Sinclair's first critically successful work has similar soundings to MainStreet and Ann Vickers.The novel describes the adventures of Una Goldenas she learns to survive the daily grind of working for a living in deadend jobs.

Lewis vividly describes the dullness and hopelessnesssurrounding typical "women's work" in the early 1900's.Lewisalso shows that marrying can also be a dead end in itself, especially whenone marries to simply escape working.

I liked this book quite a bit. However, it lacked the bite and suspense of Ann Vickers or even MainStreet.This book should be read by Lewis fans or those with an interestin the early 20th century workplace. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

I don't know who George F. Babbitt is.
I just spent fourteen hours over the last couple of weeks with George F. Babbitt, listening to the audio version of Babbitt.I wouldn't recommend his company to anyone.He is a joiner, follower, flaky, unreliable and a man of no agency.Things happen to him and he acts or reacts trying to sound out what he thinks others might think best of him.

George F. Babbitt is not my friend, no matter how much time I have spent with him recently.I wouldn't suspect you want to be his friend either.I suppose that this is a credit to what I think of your character.As for Babbitt though, he is an interesting character, but I don't know if Lewis created a new archetype or just adapted one.I think this is a triumph no matter, as he created a character sketch that is effective but never defines the character.

I still don't know who George F. Babbitt is, do you?

Good read, but protagonist is a straw man
I came across an editorial recently referring to a "Babbit-type" person and decided it was time to read this book. It was a good read. At times I laughed aloud. There were passages I was tempted to memorize for quoting. I did care what happened to Babbit.

But I'd like to alert young readers that despite Lewis' efforts to make Babbit sympathetic, he is a charicature. In my mid-forties, I've known many businessmen, seen many unexamined lives and mid-life crises. Even 80 years after Babbit was written (when conformity is less in vogue in the US) I've known many conformists.

I haven't known anyone like Babbit. It is out of character for a people person like Babbit to be *so* fond of Paul and yet blind to Paul's needs.It is out of character for him to be so protective of Paul and yet so estranged from his own children.

Enjoy the book and let it remind you to think for yourself and to be real, but don't let it convince you that businessmen are doomed to conformity and to sacrifice of all their ideals. To be good at business is to weild power and though we don't see it ni "Babbit", that power can be used for good. Babbit is almost as much a charicature as are Ayn Rand's businessmen heroes.

Incidentally, as good as this was, I thought Lewis' "Arrowsmith" was better. ... Read more