Word: babbittism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...author he would probably say John Dos Passes. If the same question were put to a Swede, the first name off his tongue would doubtless be that Nobel Prizeman Sinclair Lewis. But such a loyal Swede would have in mind Author Lewis' earlier, better books (Main Street, Babbitt, Elmer Gantry). With such a second-rate novel as Work of Art following hard on the heels of his mediocre Ann Vickers (TIME, Jan. 30, 1933), readers of any nationality can see with half an eye that Sinclair Lewis is slipping. What skimpy satire there is in Work...
Fannie Hurst would have choired the paean with more gusto. Horatio Alger would have awarded his hero a more thoroughgoing financial success. But not even Zenith's Chamber of Commerce could have done a more wholehearted job of boosting than this onetime Babbitt-baiter has done...
...Lardner, who died a week after Sime Silverman, was usually careful to avoid inventions of his own, stuck close to the jargon of baseball. Columnist Damon Runyon mixes authentic underworld talk with invented freaks. Gelett Burgess' The Goops contributed a less valuable word than Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt. George Ade's Fables in Slang were funnier than real slang. Gene Buck, who, Mr. Funk said last week, had once told him he "was responsible for 100 words that are now current in the language" was guilty of a songwriter's exaggeration...
...seminars. For the advanced student, the seminar is decidedly the most stimulating method of study and discussion, and Harvard should use it far more. The choice of a field, both for general study and thesis work, needs to be greatly widened. More emphasis is needed, as the late Professor Babbitt was fond of saying, on the relation of one study to another, of history and economics to literature, of philosophy and psychology to each other, of sociology to any of these. Let those who wish to explore the small obscurities of the past do so, but do not discourage...
Winthrop lineup: Morris (Babbitt), l.e.; Dunton, l.t.; Schwayzer (Neusbaum), l.g.; Foley, c.: Sise (Downes), r.g.; Emerson (Donovan), r.e.: Crampton, q.b.: Haring, r.h.b.: Rindle, l.h.b.; Parker (Rolmes...