While reading this novel you will be caught off guard by the relevancy of Sinclair Lewis's insights into the priorities and caste system of the typical American small town and it's surprising relevance to current American surburbia. Fantastic novel that needs more attention!

This book is different from some of Lewis's other books in a couple of important respects.

On the positive side, this book is more of a "message" book than Babbitt or It Can't Happen Here. Babbitt is as much a character study as a social satire, and It Can't Happen Here is a fantasy.

This book, by contrast, goes after the dull reality of small-town life in WW I America. It has an eternal message: that the combination of (1) a close-knit community and (2) people with more spare time than sophistication leads to (3) a dull place dominated by malicious gossip spread by people with too much time on their hands.

In addition, Lewis's description of the dullness of the small towns themselves foreshadows the dullness of today's suburbs. Today, some people (including me) imagine the small towns of the past as like Walt Disney's Main Street- tiny, tidy, beautiful. But some of Lewis's quotes about Main Street could apply to today's sprawl:

"It was not only the unsparing, unapologetic ugliness and the rigid straightness which overwhelemed her. It was the planlessness, the flimsy temporariness of the buildings, their faded unpleasant colors. . . Each man had built with the most valiant disregard of all the others." (p. 43)

"Nine-tenths of the American towns are so alike that it is the completest boredom to wander from one to the other . . . The shops show the same standardized nationally advertised wares . . . If Kennecott was snatched from Gopher Prairie and instantly conveyed to a town leagues away he would not realize it. He would go down apparently the same Main Street (almost certainly it would be called Main Street) in the same drug store he would see the same young man serving the same ice cream soda to the same young woman with the same magazine and phonograph records under her arm." (pp. 311-12)

On the negative side, this book is not quite as easy to read as Babbitt or It Can't Happen Here- probably because the characters are not as vivid or as interesting. The unsympathetic characters are mere stereotypes, not obnoxious enough to be interesting. The sympathetic characters are not that likable.

Yes it is! As I sit here thinking about the experience of reading the book, and it is an experience I assure you, I can tell you that there are slow periods in this "story" when you hope it will be "over soon". So, don't expect an "easy read" on this one. But the main idea is so "universal" and the story in its totality is so well written, that you forgive any "lapses into boredom" of the narrative. In fact, that's partially what the book is about: "small town boredom" of an intelligent and thoughtful and self examining lady in the early part of the 20th century. And, further, it's about the "will to overcome" and the "courage to overcome" this boredom and pettiness of the small town by the main character who is a "downtrodden female" of that era. I think this could be considered a "woman's lib" book. As you read you will "cheer on" the main character, Carol, as she faces down the town pettitness and town bullies and even her somewhat staid but basically "good guy" husband.

The main thing that is bugging Carol is this: She "hasn't found her true life's occupation" and she feels "trapped" in the little podunk town of Gopher Prairie and in her marriage so that she'll never "find her true self". (wow, what a name for a town!o) This theme is a universal theme because everyone, even men, have the same driving force of finding "who am I" and "where do I really belong." It's a "universal theme". Thus this is an "important book" to read if you have ever had similer thoughts and restiveness about "where do I belong" and "what is my true purpose in life." Just keep reading past the "slow parts" and you'll find that your effort will be rewarded. Email boland7214@aol.co

Main Street is synonymous with "unimaginative commercial prosperity". Its citizens seek to conserve the so-called treasure of American ideals: sturdiness, democracy and opportunity. Town life is experienced as an expression of national feeling.. for all but the young Carol Kennicott, who feels that her desires to belong in the life of the town are thwarted by her own dedicated moral seriousness.

Carol is tempted by two options, either dynamite or leaving Gopher Prairie, to hide in the generous indifference of the Cities. As she realizes that her acquaintances are suspicious of her, Carol goes to experience a psychic collapse. She feels that not only her conscience but her physical body has been appropriated by the town. Why has Carol got to feel so separate from all things in Main Street? "They want shouts on Main Street, and I want violins in a panelled room".

Carol is eventually made to realize that it is probably easier to change the town than for her to change her point of view, her feelings. The friends she meets, such as the anarchist Bjornstam, reassure her in her pride of her difference, but their stories invariably fail in front of Carol's resigned, outward, gradual acceptance of things as they are. Has she finally acquired the Village Virus, a germ that infects ambitious people that stay too long in the provinces? Carol's story is a dramatisation of the failure of radical beauty to accomodate to small town, standardized American life. It is also a prefiguration of later feminist thought as it appeared in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. In the end the only certain thing is that no clear solution has been found to clear the drama of politics, radical art and communal living.

Carol Milford, an enlightened, beautiful, young woman gets married. She thinks she is marrying Dr. Kennicott, she doesn't know that she is also marrying his town, Gopher Prairie. She tries to love the town and tries hard. She wants to improve things, change, reform. She is faced with stone walls. And ugly ones at that. They resent her, they don't take her seriously, they call her crazy, flippant, foolish, snobbish, arrogant, silly, light woman, bad woman and a lot of other things. She alternates between wanting to give up and wanting to persevere. At times she is lazy, diligent, hopeless, hopeful, resigned, rebellious and often lonely. I read Carol's story as if I was living it. Half way through the book, I was giving her advice: "Run for your life!" or "Hang in there!".

Carol is not without faults and she has the courage to see and admit her faults. And her townspeople are not all (or always) villains either. But there is a stubborn ignorance in the air of the town, and someone has to expose it. Sinclair Lewis is a brilliant narrator. He tells the story of Gopher Prairie with wit, charm and sarcastic humour. I believe that he was the first male feminist of America.

I have heard people complain about the length of this book. "It is too long" they say, "too boring, repetitious". How can it be long and boring when every sentence is so deliciously bitter, so delightfully mocking? I loved this book. I think it uses only as many words as necessary.

Have you ever been to a party where you make a new acquaintance who, upon your mentioning of a book, or books in general, declares, with great ease, that s/he doesn't read fiction? If yes, you will understand how Carol feels.