Word: babbittism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Even when he goes in for dialectal ditties, much of the Kaye piquancy depends upon rapid enunciation. In Babbitt and the Bromide, he summarizes a meeting of two "solid citizens" with: "Hello," "How are you?" "Howza folks?" "What's new?" "I'm great." "That's good." "Ha, ha." "Knock wood...
Millions of Americans know Caspar Milquetoast as well as they know Tom Sawyer and Andrew Jackson, better than they know George F. Babbitt, and any amount better than they know such world figures as Mr. Micawber and Don Quixote. They know him, in fact, almost as well as they know their own weaknesses...
Beside that ardently swelling literary bosom, the lean, taut, fidgety figure of the author of Main Street, Babbitt and Arrowsmith might seem a little out of place and even a little out of date. For a decade Lewis had favored U.S. readers with a book almost every biennium, but his last important work had been done in the beginning of the '30s. If Cass Timberlane now acquired new importance, that was chiefly due to the fact that the hundreds of thousands of men & women who would read his new novel had, while he was writing it, made...
...Zenith. Two years after Main Street, Novelist Lewis did a similar job for the U.S. small city (Zenith) and the U.S. businessman. George F. Babbitt, the rotund realtor, trapped in the dilemmas of middle-aged marriage and infidelity and the saurian rip and slash of pitiless business competition, was Lewis' most human and lovable character, as Babbitt was his most mature work...
...Elmer Gantry (dedicated to Henry L. Mencken) was a rich caricature of a corrupt and ranting preacher (as he might appear to the village atheist). In The Man Who Knew Coolidge, a superb tour de force, Lewis used his remarkable talent for mimicking U.S. speech to let George F. Babbitt (this time called Lowell Schmaltz) reveal the mind, manners and morals of Babbitry in Babbitt's native tongue...