Babbitt Audiobook By Sinclair Lewis cover art

Babbitt

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Babbitt

By: Sinclair Lewis
Narrated by: George Guidall
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About this listen

With his breathtaking social insight and his graceful sentences, Sinclair Lewis—a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner—stands out as one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. At turns lyrically soul-searching and scathing in its honesty, Babbitt captures the essence of the 1920s while remaining a timeless piece of literature. Babbitt, the ultimate conformist and social climber, seeks power in his community and self-esteem from others. Outwardly, he is the ultimate “big booster,” and he toes the company line with “zip and zowie.” In his dreams, however, he is tormented by the emptiness of his soul.

Public Domain (P)1998 Recorded Books, LLC
Classics
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Editorial reviews

Not especially known for its prose style, Sinclair Lewis's art is often based on accumulation; he adds detail to detail until a larger picture sharpens. This classic novel portrays middle-aged George Babbitt and his irreconcilable urges to conform to social standards and to satisfy his deeper inner restlessness. Lewis delineates and satirizes Babbitt's bourgeois nature with small and large data, such as his booster button, his slang ("tux" for "dinner jacket" ), his jingoism, his hypochondria, his naive politics, his worries about his clothes. Such a style makes George Guidall's measured narration a bit inappropriate - Guidall's deliberate approach sometimes lingers needlessly over individual sentences that do not repay such scrutiny. The conversational scenes come off as more lively.

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An outstanding story and performance

First off, I will listen to any book read by George Guidall. I feel like I am in a theater when he performs, he will give just the right flavor and tone to a sentence that could be read in a hundred ways. Then there is the superb writing by Sinclair Lewis. The characters are at once real and caricatures; the city of Zenith is familiar even though it is 1920s. This novel used to be about conformity, chasing money, and about the shallow nouveau riche, but as I see it today, the book also tells us a lot as a historical novel and makes one think how come we in the middle class are so, so much poorer today, in terms of worldly goods but also quality of life, than our counterparts 100 years ago.

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