Main Street - Softcover

Lewis, Sinclair

3.78

25,858 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451518985 ISBN 13: 9780451518989

Publisher: Signet Classics, 1961

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This is America a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves. The town is, in our tale, called Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. But its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or I llinois, and not very differently would it be told Up York State or in the Carolina hills. Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford car might stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters. What Ole Jenson the grocer says to Ezra Sto Wbody the banker is the new law for London, Prague, and the unprofitable isles of the sea; whatsoever Ezra does not know and sanction, that thing is heresy, worthless for knowing and wicked to consider. Our railway station is the final aspiration of architect ture. Sam Clark sannual hardware turnover is the envy of the four counties which constitute God s Country. In the sensitive art of the Rosebud Movie Palace there is a Message, and humor strictly moral. Such is our comfortable tradition and sure faith.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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About the Author:

Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American capitalism and materialism between the wars. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H.L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."

He has been honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a Great Americans series postage stamp.

From the Inside Flap:

This classic by Sinclair Lewis shattered the sentimental American myth of happy small-town life with its satire. "Main Street attacks the conformity and dullness of early 20th Century midwestern village life in the story of Carol Milford, the city girl who marries the town doctor. Her efforts to bring culture to the prairie village are met by a wall of gossip, greed, and petty small-minded bigotry. Lewis's complex and compelling work established him as an important character in American literature.

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