Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: A Review

Satire! Wit! Intelligence! Come snuggle, you three.

Hokay so. Babbitt is about...Babbitt, a 1920's realtor who is All the Conventional Things. He's all 2.5 kids (awkward, that 0.5), new car, shiny happy house, member of civic leagues, dutifully Presbyterian in the shallowest of ways, Republican, etc. Lewis introduces you to Babbitt, notes his nice pajamas and his habit of sleeping on the porch because this is what people did back then, and then rips into Babbitt and everything he represents for 300 pages. It is a manifesto against middle-class American conventionalism and How to Win Friends and Influence People-style business and "go-getter" -ism. I WANT TO SMUSH ITS FACE WITH LOVE.

Oddly enough, Babbitt is full of things I generally find irritating in books: slang, speeches as philosophical tools, clever turns of phrase that sort of propel you out of the story. But since they're being used satirically, they didn't bother me. Turns out I'll swallow your line if it's delivered with a raised eyebrow and an elbow nudge. It's like a literary Mad Men, if Mad Men happened during Prohibition and was actually about making fun of Don Draper, not glamorizing him.

Babbitt (character, not book) does have a wee midlife crisis wherein he realizes that his life is a sham and he's actually an ass, but it's a short-lived crisis. Actually, I had a few issues with this part of the book- at some points it seemed like Lewis wasn't just ripping on shallow American middle-class materialism, but the whole of middle-class life. There were bits where I was kind of like "Meh, Lewis. Lots of people are legit happy with their family life and their jobs and that's not ALWAYS soul-sucking, so....have another highball and shush."

ALSO. I found Babbitt to be an oddly sympathetic character (and I seem to be alone here). I have trouble stomaching the WOE IS ME suburban ennui drama, but Babbitt isn't woe-ing. He is too stupid to woe, mostly. And when he does WOE, it's less "my life sucks" and is more "I have let my life suck because I am a dumby" and THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. And in some moments where Lewis wants you to think Babbitt is a fool for his sentimentality, I just found him to be human. We're not ALL super-reflective smarty-pantses analyzing our every thought for a hint of superficiality at all times, Lewis. 

Some of the criticism I've read mentioned that the book falls short because it doesn't offer a solution. Lewis doesn't say "this is what sucks about American superficiality and HERE IS HOW YOU BETTER IT, WORLD." I prefer it that way. If Lewis had tried to make the book more about his ideal middle-class America, it would have become less funny and more moralizing. Anywoot! Read it, it is happy making.

Four stars out of your mom- not giving it five because he gets a bit heavy-handed and unreasonable at times, but only a few times and it's funny enough the rest of the time for me to not care all that much.

The Hardest Thing Ever (That's What She Said)

Picking books for a readathon is HARD. So many things to consider- length, ease, length, style, length, genre, length. And then there's the LENGTH. Having never participated in a readathon before, I am unsure of the best strategy- pick a long, difficult book I've always wanted to read so I can devote an entire day to tackling it? I rejected that one. I'm too easily bored and I'm afraid if I try to spend 24 hours with Ulysses I'll just end up watching reruns of Storage Wars and eating popcorn.

SO. I went with the opposite strategy- several short selections, which makes the biggest dent in my TBR pile. And yes, I know the readathon is still five days away. I'm excited! Must plan! Here is my tentative pile:

The poems:

Howl byAllen Ginsberg

The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot- I've had these two lying around for about two years, and I figure this is a great opportunity to finally plow through them. 

The books I own:

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck (Who is GREAT for this readathon strategy. He has so many tiny books- someone on Twitter calls them Tinybecks, I don't remember who but that is FUNNY)

The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke

A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie

These are all short, or in the case of the Christie, easy with BIG PRINT and w i d e     m a r g i n s.

Books I have from the library as a last resort:

Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, the brains behind Go Fug Yourself, a hilarious fashion blog making fun of the crazy crap famous people wear.

Again, these last three are last resorts. I don't really intend to read the last two books of the Hunger Games, but Twitter tells me they are good readathon selections, so. And the last one is sure to be funny and frothy, if the authors use their Blog Voice. 

I AM OPEN TO ADVICE (this is a rare thing to hear from my lips-er-fingers). Are these selections acceptable? Will I want to stab someone with knitting needles because they're so bad? Help me, help me!

Blogger on Blogger Crime

UPDATE: Since the person who originally told me to shut my mouth came over here and left rambling, insulting comments telling me to shut my mouth AGAIN, I've disabled comments on this post. If you wanna talk about it, I'm on Twitter @deadwhiteguys or email me deadwhiteguysblog (at) gmail (dot) com.

As much as I get email that's all "you are THE WRONGEST" and "show some proper REVERENCE" (despite title of blog), I've never really been told to straight up shut my mouth- until today. I don't know if the person is a blogger or what, but I was really in shock about it and it got me thinking about blogger on blogger crime.

Here's the thing: I am SO DOWN with being told that I am le crazy. Part of my personal voice is being purposefully riotous and irreverent because I find that it's a funny way to get people talking. So when I say "This is stupid and I wanna punch it" and you say "Say wha? I heart it's face" then I say "For reals? Let us chat about why."This is my voice, and it's gotten me pretty far down the path towards where I want to be as a blogger. Some people have much calmer, more serious, academic, (insert your favorite adjective here) voices through which they communicate their thinky-bits.

Some people may be of the opinion that those bloggers with the more calm, serious, whatever voices are better suited to the positions I have both within and outside of the blogging world (specifically in reference to my involvement with FridayReads). To that I say- being who I am has gotten me this far, and I will not EVER change my voice to appease anyone. I'm open to criticism, and I get plenty of it- but it starts conversations, and those are my FAVORITE THINGS. But telling a blogger to keep her mouth shut is essentially telling her (or him) that the work they do is not valuable, and that the voice they carry is unimportant.

I think this is silly- book bloggers should all speak, and speak loudly. We should be a unified presence that is standing up for reading, no matter what else we disagree about. It's us against Jersey Shore, people. So I will continue to speak, in my voice, forever and ever amen *or until I get laryngitis* and I encourage all of you to do the same.

A Fancy Thing and Some Other Things

I have a fancy thing to show you, and then some other things. Actually, just one thing. I think. We'll see when we get there- it will be a thing adventure (that's what she said [sorry had to] moving on).

FANCY THING.
In a rare move of unprecedented kick-ass-itude, a publisher actually read my review policy and sent me a book that fits it! Oh, the joy! Trafalgar Square Publishing mailed me this fancy-pants thing: Sense and Sensibility: The Bath Bicentenary Edition.

Please ignore the Mac power cord in the corner. And my pajama-wearing arm. Carry on.

It's a really sturdy clothbound edition with an introduction by Katharine Reeve, who wrote Jane Austen in Bath: Walking Tours of the Writer's City. There's also a really interesting essay in the back of the book by Reeve that talks about what Bath meant to Austen.

AND! It's illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat:

There are THESE nifty silhouette-ish illustrations

And THESE big big big full-page color plates.

Anywoot, I really enjoy new editions of classics and this one is very pretty, so there you go. Here's a link to the book's page on the Barnes and Noble website if you want more info, but I really encourage you to order it from your local indie- the ISBN-13 is 9780956494245.

OTHER THING-

I love this blog: Reading Rambo. It is my blog kryptonite- supes funny, GIF-heavy and full of talk about books I actually give two *zerberts* about. I am powerless in its grip. 

OTHER OTHER THING- I really don't have another thing, so I'm going to use this space to prod you into signing up for the Belated Readathon, if you haven't already. Sign-ups are in the sticky post above.

 March on, Tuesday. March on.

In Which I Succumb to Peer Pressure

OK FINE, INTERWEBZ. I will do the Back to the Classics 2012 Challenge from Sarah Reads Too Much. JEEZ.

No really, I'm actually very excited about this challenge. I hesitated to join because a) I'm not really a joiner of...things...because I don't like being held accountable to other people and b) I can't plan that far ahead. But the enthusiasm for the challenge has been so widespread, and the categories are kick-ass, and I like Sarah, SO. Here I am, joining and planning. The challenge lasts for all of 2012, which is great because it leaves plenty of time to read other things in between. I am also committing to only read Things Already On My Shelves Because Egads Woman, Stop Buying New Books. The categories and my selections are as follows:

Any 19th Century Classic: Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Any 20th Century Classic: The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
Reread a Classic of Your Choice: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
A Classic Play: TBD, I'm actually going to SEE one of the plays done during the Richmond Shakespeare Festival in the summer.
A Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction: Curtain by Agatha Christie
Classic Romance: The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
Translated Classic: Dead Souls by Gogol
Classic Award Winner: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Classic Set in a Country You Will Probably Never Visit: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Hellz yeah. That's a mighty fine list. If you're interested in participating, just follow the link above and...participate. Hoozah!

Tess of the FORTHELOVEOFGODEND by Thomas Hardy

Hey, guys. Guess what. Guess what, guys. Hey, stop walking away! No! I MUST VENT MY FRUSTRATION! Thank you.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the plot of Tess of the D'ubervilles, I'll catch you up (spoilertastic). Tess is a peasant woman who has a drunken father and an idiot mother who, well- let's just say I ain't sayin' she a gold digger, but she ain't messin' with no broke- uh. Tess herself is a sweet but vapid country girl who falls victim to her parents' shenanigans and ends up living with a rich pseudo-relative who rapes her (I think. Hardy doesn't really go into any actual detail...or...you know...anything beyond gentlemanly allusions to "stuff happening" [even if she is seduced and not raped, it's still pretty venomous stuff and the rich guy is an asshat *but I'm pretty sure it's rape*]). She has a baby who dies, tramps around being poor and living with the shame (of being a rape victim UGH?!). Eventually she meets a nice boy who ends up abandoning her because she was raped (even though he had 2 seconds earlier admitted to his own CONSENSUAL mansluttery)- more tramping around. He comes back because he realizes that HE TOO IS AN ASSHAT, but by then Tess has gone back to the rich guy, who she then STABS TO DEATH in one of the most OUT OF CHARACTER scenes in the HISTORY OF BOOKS. She's then arrested while sleeping on a sacrificial altar of Stonehenge (SUBTLE) and hanged. AND YOU KNOW WHAT?

Ok. I know. What happens to Tess throughout the book is awful and disgusting. Everyone treats her like a disposable object, and I had plenty of righteous rage at all the places where righteous rage was warranted. However, Tess herself was so one-note that I didn't care so much about HER as I had generalized Rage For Victorian Womankind. 

But here's another thing. I appreciated what Hardy was saying, mmkay? I'm glad he took it upon himself to point out the hypocrisy of Victorian society in regards to "fallen women." HOWEVER, this book is far from being pro-feminist. Tess is obviously Hardy's Eve (no really, he calls her that about 34,545 times), his perfect vision of femininity and womanhood, etc, etc, amen. EXCEPT SHE'S A MORON. Hardy's continual references to how she 'lacked reason because she was a purely emotional creature' and her inability to do/think/feel anything outside of what her husband tells her to is infuriating, ESPECIALLY coming from a book that I heard was so much about gender equality. Apparently, Hardy's paragon of the female species is obedient and ignorant, with no individual thoughts or spirituality, insufferably good and noble and chaste in thought if not in actuality. 

Hardy would never have written a book with the same themes about a woman who slept with Alec because she darn well felt like it, or about a women who was upfront with Angel from the beginning, or about a woman who told Angel that he was being a toad the first night of their marriage, or about a woman who in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM knew her own mind (and don't tell me it's a period thing- Jane Eyre and pretty much all of Austen's women knew their own minds, thankyouverymuch, it's a period thing when written by men [Tess reminded me quite a bit of Dickens' Nell, about whose death I had a similar snort/laugh reaction and who was similarly one dimensional and irritating]).

In short, it was an entirely unpleasant reading experience, both as reader in general and as a woman.

Oh yeah, but the landscape imagery was nice and Hardy knows how to write a beautiful sentence, etc.

One star out of your mom.