Word: babbittism
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...nation itself. Our more perfect union was forged at a convention (Philadelphia, 1787), divided against itself at another (Montgomery, Ala., 1861), reunited at a rather intimate one (Appomattox Courthouse, 1865) and renewed quadriennially. Long before Sinclair Lewis chronicled the fictional convention high jinks of George F. Babbitt, boobus Americanus and prototypical conventioneer, other observers dis covered our penchant for gatherings. "As soon as several Americans have conceived a sentiment or an idea that they want to produce before the world, they seek each other out, and when found, they unite," observed Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835. Editorialized the Nation...
Conventions are as American as HELLO MY NAME IS badges, loud sports coats, straw hats, brass bands and George F. Babbitt, the Middle American Everyman of his era whose adventures at an annual gathering of realtors filled a trenchant chapter of Sinclair Lewis' satirical 1922 novel Babbitt...
...these more diffident invitations, the golden doors of the ballroom opened with a blatting of trumpets, and a circus parade rolled in. It was composed of the Zenith brokers, dressed as cowpunchers, bareback riders, Japanese jugglers . . . As a clown, beating a bass drum, extraordinarily happy and noisy, was Babbitt...
...admire him very much, and I think he is a writer of world stature. I don't think the Nobel Prize always goes to the best writer, but I think it did in this case," Harry T. Levin, Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature, said last night...
Harry T. Levin '33, Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature, said yesterday that MacCaffrey's death "is a very serious blow to all of us," adding that MacCaffrey was a very devoted administrator...