Word: dodsworth
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...Samuel Dodsworth was, perfectly, the American Captain of Industry, believing in the Republican Party, high tariff, and, so long as they did not annoy him personally, in prohibition and the Episcopal Church. He was the president of the Revelation Motor Company; he was a millionaire, though decidedly not a multimillionaire; his large house was on Ridge Crest, the most fashionable street in Zenith; he had some taste in etchings; he did not split many infinitives; and he sometimes enjoyed Beethoven. He would certainly (so the observer assumed) produce excellent motor cars; he would make impressive speeches to the salesmen...
...Significance. In fixing upon a label for the rung above Babbittry, Mr. Lewis evidently recognized his grave responsibility to vocabulary, for he wavered and fussed, changed and substituted, before committing himself to "Dodsworth." His difficulty is plain: Dodsworth, no simple ameba, reacts to stimulae of the shifting European scene not automatically but thoughtfully, individually. Dodsworth is a type, recognizable, familiar; but the type is susceptible to variations. Fran's type also is familiar−to those who read Henry James, and dally in cosmopolitan circles. Literati have even traced resemblances to the first Mrs. Lewis, substituted dark...
...define what Sam Dodsworth was, at fifty, it is easier to state what he was not. He was none of the things which most Europeans and many Americans expect in a leader of American industry. He was not a Babbitt, not a Rotarian, not an Elk, not a deacon. He rarely shouted, never slapped people on the back, and he had attended only six baseball games since 1900. He knew, and thoroughly, the Babbitts and baseball fans, but only in business...
Less important than Babbitt or Arrowsmith, kinder and more accurate than Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth is as shrewd a piece of reporting as any of the earlier volumes. No scoop, it has a pale prelude in Tarkington's Plutocrat, but Dodsworth is the exhaustive definitive edition...
...Waterloo, Iowa, in San Francisco, New Haven. Supporting himself by prolific short stories, he led his nomadic existence, on foot, by motor, from St. Paul to Cape Cod, from Minneapolis to Washington and back again, gleaning, and sorting, and sifting the facts that compose his incisive writings. He started Dodsworth in Berlin, continued in France, Italy, and the Aegean Islands, finished the first draft on a motor caravan tour through England...