Word: babbittism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Direction that was so obvious that it seemed at times burlesque blurred the virtues of the work. Fervent overacting also detracted. Ruth Nugent, quiet, direct, sometimes a little wistful amid the sub-Babbitt racket, mattered markedly. Altogether the piece is a doubtful value, and yet the first entertainment of the season for adult consideration...
...profiteer and the capitalist who stirs college youth to critical expression in these days so much as George F. Babbitt, his rotarian friends and the hosts of the "stodgy" and the commonplace. The Opposition in college today is not composed of the rigid economic dogmatists of yesterday with fixed ideas on the distribution of wealth, labor unions and the revolution, but rather is it made up of the care-free, mentally and morally loose-jointed "flapper" whose twin passions are disrespect and personal nonesty and whose favorite word is "moron." It is all very gay and most earnestly flippant. Evans...
...strip is read so widely by the very people who are so savagely satirized in it does not appear to lie in a "tough-minded population not among the intellectuals, but among the very draymen, shop clerks, and bond salesmen who are the raw material." Like the readers of "Babbitt," the members of this tough-minded population never remotely imagine that they may be exactly like the people at whom they are laughing so uproariously...
From chaffee, babbitt thoughts refrain...
...Significance. Mr. Lewis once had a romantic twist (see Free Air, The Trail of the Hawk, The Job). Then discontent plagued him sore. He pickaxed through Main Street, spitted Babbitt. Now, slightly relieved but no whit satisfied, he hammers out a harsh heroism and lays it, hissing hot, to the flabby flank of Medicine. While he is thus occupied, his fancy is caught by a realist's dream of fair woman - wry little Leora. The satire is swift, sure, great in its age, and Leora, being of life, will outlive...