Small-town America. Ah, the scent of pine. The musty ramshackle old hardware store. But what is this? Something amiss in one of these romanticized burgs? Something dark and sinister? "I never imagined something like this would happen in our town," says the half-toothless talking head on the six o'clock news about the murder, even though you've seen this very thing happen in small towns 10,000 times in your life on the six o'clock news. Small-town America is supposed to be different somehow; supposed to be better. Fuck small-town America! The real murder is not the cheerleader of Podunkville High who was raped and slain. The real murder is something more sinister and pervasive--not even a loss of innocence, because the innocence remains; dazed and confused, but always there; always cluelessly upbeat, always blaming the wrong causes for its woes. The real murder on Main Street America is a suicide; the suicide of small-town America; the murder of small-town America by its own hands. Let the values voters of small-town America's Main Street keep on shooting themselves in the foot and dragging the rest of us down with them by electing right-wing corporate-puppet elites who don't give a tinker's damn about them or anybody else. Let the crackerbarrel bigots of Main Street stew in the backwash of their own hate. Let Walmart keep grinding into dust their shitty little stores. Let the untrammeled free-enterprise that you Main Streeters voted for put you out of work. Let you pull yourselves up by your bootstraps; the ones caked with McDonald's hamburger grease from the burgers you're now flipping for $5 an hour. Let the top 1 percent's mantra reign supreme: "What's good for us is good for the nation, and the world! (Oh, and thank you Main Street America, you suckers!)" Let them continue to confuse ignorance for truth, faith for knowledge, creationism for science, heterosexuality as love's exclusive domain, poverty for charity, hope for ruthlessness. Let them believe that theirs is a self-righteousness and arrogance earned, not by reflection or learning but merely by believing and never budging and by insisting that you are wrong and the God is on their side only. Let the red states cover us with their nasty redness. When Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street nearly a century ago now, Main Street was thriving, the commercial pulse of the nation. A veritable galaxy of hubbub dots across the map. Lewis did not predict the demise of Main Street in this formidable novel, but in capturing its soul, a soul bereft of healthy curiosity, of a sense of its own promise, of a desire to see itself in the bigger picture, he tells us how it sowed the seeds of its own destruction, and by extension the decline of America. Carol Kennicott, the city girl with the dreams and ideals of youth, the desire to share and to energize, the beautiful naivete of a progressive who wants to leave the world a better place than she found it, is Main Street's protagonist, a lovely soul after my own heart; a woman who wants to put the soul into a soulless place that wants none of it. In fact, I love love love Carol Kennicott. I could read an entire novel in which Carol Kennicott does nothing but prepare a tea service, or pick furniture, or shop for canned goods. Well, actually, a lot of Main Street seems to be about just that: Carol Kennicott fixating on ever-tinier rituals within a domestic universe that shrinks to ever-smaller dollhouse-sized proportions. Full of world-beating notions out of college and fragrant with a modicum of sophistication, Carol marries a decent, reliable, uninspiring Midwestern doctor from the sticks of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. Sold a bill of goods about the goodness of the town, the two go off to live there and Carol's dread of being domiciled within it is painfully rewarded with corroborating verification. The place is backward, banal, quietly venal, stiflingly tasteless, mercilessly moral and hypocritical, and deeply suspicious of city girls and city ideas. Gopher Prairie exists in the real 1920s; the 1920s of Zane Grey novels, not the 1920s of James Joyce or The New Yorker. The novel is about Carol's struggle to fit into this place, to negotiate between her desires to be individual and to conform, to be true to herself or to be popular, to reflect credit on her husband while aiming mightily to drag the town kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Instead, it drags her down into the dusty dregs of conformity. Beaten down by homogeneity, as a raison d'etre eludes her, as higher youthful ideals decompose via bacterial reality, Carol becomes a tragic figure; a symbol of spayed pre-liberated womanhood, a Stepford Wife of the sticks. In a reality devoid of greater meaning or purpose, her world-beating ideas are reduced to finding doilies with patterns that best match those on the sofa armrest. Lewis' book is a masterwork, too little read by today's readers. Main Street takes place in a world that may seem as appealing to engage as an arcane, tropical article in a yellowing magazine. But its world is essentially unchanged from today. The masses were asses then and they are still asses now; just as pliable, just as gullible, just as lazy, just as venal and just as lulled into low expectations. It's hardly a piquant or ingenious observation that Sinclair Lewis is unsubtly contemptuous of this rural menagerie, but he shoots fish in a barrel with an impressively embroidered firearm. He bores deeply into this town, this world, and this woman's place in it.The thing took me forever to read--many months--but the effort was worthwhile. It's a classic. Now, go out and canvass for Sarah Palin. Whoopeee!
In the aftermath of Independence Day I had listened to a piece on NPR about the Great American Symphony, which in turn led me to ponder the Great American Novel. I understand why the term ought not to be singular, although I find its "singularity" charming; I understand why it is not particularly attainable, because times change and (supposedly) America is just too gosh-darned unique and diverse and unprecedented (or so the romantics would tell you, but I think a good writer can put his/her finger on the pulse of a universal issue, and one ought to do away with the self-congratulatory inklings toward one's own oh-so-interesting nation); I understand the "decline" even of the possibility of this. Perhaps the novel is an antiquated form, and experimentation has done away with it. Or stupidity, or technology, or a mixture of all, or something entirely different.My opinions beforehand (at least of the Wikipedia list) were as follows: Moby-Dick was the first and my favorite; I am a dolt for not having read Huck Finn; The Great Gatsby is a Very Good American Novella; Salinger and Roth are undeserving; Gravity's Rainbow feels like a bizarre choice not only for its own bizarre-ness but that - for dubious reasons - its taking place almost entirely in Europe makes it a funny candidate; I hated The 42nd Parallel and abandoned Dos Passos thereafter; and where was Slaughterhouse-Five? Or Catch-22 for that matter?But now I have stumbled upon another candidate: Main Street. Main Street is all of the following: (1) a hilariously and brutally pertinent satire on the provincial life, or, in other words, a scathing yet still ambivalent indictment of life in the "flyover states"; (2) something requisite just about in any Great American Novel: a deconstruction and/or examination of the pursuit of the American Dream whether high-brow or not; (3) a very pertinent political backdrop that covers prohibition but also labor relations, discrimination against immigrants (in this case, Scandinavian) and the roles of church and state (those eternal American questions); (4) a vicious condemnation not only of the subservient domesticity inflicted upon women, but also the book includes the narrative of a character named Fern Cullins that is a heartbreaking and startling look into the mechanisms of American rape/sexual assault culture that is still true to this day; (5) gender issues, notably in the presence of an attractive yet stereotypically feminine male who, I might mention, is ridiculed, but also embraced, multi-dimensionally characterized, and dealt with compassionately instead of broadly or conveniently; and (6) insights on living the modest life. The laundry list of what Main Street encompasses and accomplishes - and accomplishes well - feels like the laundry list of qualifications for the delights of the Great American Novel. It is not that I had this series of qualifications in mind before reading it, but it is as if Main Street reveals itself to the reader under these terms of being so. It is so magnificently written: lyrical, funny, sad and human. It has a microscopic lens on its protagonist who is delightful in her benefits and wonderfully implicating in her faults, and a macroscopic comprehension of issues hither and thither. It has a pioneering spirit and a Puritanical discipline that also seems required.The point being Main Street is a barbed satire on the Midwestern yokels, but it is much more ambivalent and contemplative than this. It is branded as this - appropriately, of course - but words cannot begin to describe how much more expansive it gets, and how much larger the canvas becomes. It focuses on the pros and cons of the city and the small town life, and sees it charms and faults through the evolution of the eye of the beholder, who, in this case, is an aspiring and ambitious woman. Who else to have the American ambition and have to face the American obstacles than a character like Carol Kennicott? To those who find her unlikeable, I hope it is only because she reminds one of the mechanisms ingrained if not in one's self, then in some overtly "American" peers. Main Street is a great American novel, undoubtedly. As a study of provincial life it is, in some ways, reminiscent of an American Middlemarch. I mean this as the highest regard. But it also feels right, to me, as the Great American Novel. Alongside other Great American Novels, of course; let us not think the "the" ought to dissuade us from giving proper acclamations to multiple. At least, Main Street convinced me it ought to be one of the "the"s. Excellent read.
What do You think about Main Street (2000)?
An educated, cultured, big city girl moves to a small town as a result of her marriage to the town doctor and finds herself struggling with the overwhelming simplicity of life and mentality she finds there. Her struggles are at the center of the book. This book was simply amazing: completely eye-opening for me. As an individual living in a rural area, I could identify perfectly well with the main character. When you are in a place where being cultured is looked down upon, you feel like you either try to fight against the system or you give up and simply blend in. This dilemma is the precisely the main theme of the book. This is not a plot-heavy story, so if that's what you like, this is not for you but it is certainly a good starting point for reflection and intellectual discussion. This book rapidly climbed up to my all time favorites list.
—Paula Gonzalez
I know many people complain that not much happens in this book, and I am not the most patient reader, but I zipped right through it. I loved the commentary on tiny, unimportant events and the way the novel shifted from the main character's point of view. I felt sympathetic to Carol, even though she is a cold person. Not a bad person, not a mean person, but not someone who can truly connect to others. Even her son falls short because she believes he thinks like his father.From what I have read about Sinclair Lewis, he seems to have been a cold person, too.It's intriguing to read reviews of this book by other Goodreads members. I'm not saying others' comments are incorrect--I just saw things differently. Carol was a happy feminist before she was married? Dr. Kennicott is the real hero? Main Street is like a spinach salad? Wait, what?Gopher Prairie is based on Sauk Centre, Minnesota. From what I can tell by looking at the Web site, it seems to be a small town with lots of boosterism and old-fashioned charm. The high school sports teams are called the Mainstreeters. Hmmmm.
—Kirsti
"Main Street" is the story of how a college-educated city girl copes with living in small-town America. It is set in Minnesota from the years 1910 to 1920. Lewis has written a satire on small time life which was being depicted at the time as the most wholesome environment in America if not the entire world. In Lewis' view, small towns were made up of nosy people who were constantly in each other's business with a strong religious component (offset by the level of gossip going on)and a reluctance to change anything. Carol Kennicott comes to town intending on bringing "reform" and "renewal" to the community, but she is constantly stymied by the gentleladies and her husband and told to just appreciate things how they are.In like manner, "Main Street" is also an analysis of a marriage -- a marriage of opposites -- City Mouse and Country Mouse -- and the Kennicott's ability (or not) to find some ground on which they can live in psychological comfort. A minor character tells Carol he has caught the "village virus," meaning that as much as he would like to get out of this town, he is caught "with his foot in the door" as Harold Hill might say. This is Carol's affliction too."Main Street" was almost awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. The Prize eventually went to Edith Wharton's "Age of Innocence" because the judges thought that Lewis' satire was too sharp and mean-spirited. http://followingpulitzer.wordpress.co... Though Lewis did not win the Pulitzer in 1921, he was awarded the Pulitzer in 1925 (which he refused) and in 1930 was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.I enjoyed reading "Main Street" very much. It is a bit slow in the middle and somewhat repetitive (keeping it from getting a full 5 stars), but the language and the characterizations are so modern that I had to keep looking at the copyright date to make sure that it wasn't written more recently. When the upper class ladies start gossiping you would think you were witnessing the Real Housewives of Gopher Prairie. This is a book well worth recommending. It's not a historical novel, but a novel written in the past which will give you a great insight to an era as it appeared to one man at the time. I'm confident that it is the quiet reality of America just before and during World War I that you won't find in another novel.
—Donna
