Main Street - (THE GREAT CLASSICS LIBRARY)

In this sardonic portrait of the up-and-coming middle class during the prosperous 1920s, Sinclair Lewis perfectly captures the sound, the feel, and the attitudes of the generation that created the cult of consumerism. With a sharp eye for detail and keen powers of observation, Lewis tracks successful realtor George Babbitt's daily struggles to rise to the top of his profession while maintaining his reputation as an upstanding family man.On the surface, Babbitt appears to be the quintessential middle-class embodiment of conservative values and enthusiasm for the well-to-do lifestyle of the small entrepreneur. But beneath the complacent façade, he also experiences a rising, nameless discontent. These feelings eventually lead Babbitt into risky escapades that threaten his family and his standing in the community.Though published eighty years ago, this acerbic depiction of majority Americans, obsessed with success, material comfort, and midlife doubt, still rings true.

(linked ToC)

Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition.

This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside:

I experienced this myself, to the most remarkable degree, when I first made the attempt to arrange, in accordance with their period and substance, the hundreds of individual pages bearing neither date nor address, and I was soon convinced that a connecting text (such as Mozarts Letters have, and ought to have) would be here entirely superfluous, as even the best biographical commentary would be very dry work, interrupting the electric current of the whole, and thus destroying its peculiar effect.

...I cannot tell; but I feel to this day just as I felt to the innermost depths of my heart in the days of my youth when I first heard a symphony of Beethovens,--that a spirit breathes from it bearing us aloft with giant power out of the oppressive atmosphere of sense, stirring to its inmost recesses the heart of man, bringing him to the full consciousness of his loftier being, and of the undying within him. ... They convey, too, the knowledge of this brightest victory of genuine German intellect to those for whom the sweet Muse of Music is as a book with seven seals, and reveal, likewise, a more profound sense of Beethovens being to many who already, through the sweet tones they have imbibed, enjoy some dawning conviction of the masters grandeur, and who now more and more eagerly lend a listening ear to the intellectual clearly worded strains so skilfully interwoven, thus soon to arrive at the full and blissful comprehension of those grand outpourings of the spirit, and finally to add another bright delight to the enjoyment of those who already know and love Beethoven. All these may be regarded as the objects I had in view when I undertook to edit his Letters, which have also bestowed on myself the best recompense of my labors, in the humble conviction that by this means I may have vividly reawakened in the remembrance of many the mighty mission which our age is called on to perform for the development of our race, even in the realm of harmony,--more especially in our Father-land.

This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by O. Henry, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside Rolling Stones:

So, of the seven condemned only three called their farewells to Murray as he marched down the corridor between the two guards-Bonifacio, Marvin, who had killed a guard while trying to escape from the prison, and Bassett, the train-robber, who was driven to it because the express-messenger wouldnt raise his hands when ordered to do so.

...And my desire was granted, for I saw near a corner of Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a scaly-bark hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool that omnigeneously proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screw-driver, a button-hook, a nail-file, a shoe-horn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler, and an ornament to any gentlemans key-ring.

Written at the end of the 19th century, the book predates so many things: truly high rise New York or Chicago, and more importantly the American embracing of Freudian concepts of psychoanalysis and treatment of depression.

Carrie enters the book as a young naive girl who sees the big city - 500,000 people - in Chicago. Like other characters of this great time, the citys harsh backdrop can stifle youth and decay spirit. Unlike Upton Sinclairs Jurgis Rudkus of The Jungle, Carrie quickly escapes the demeaning and devouring sweat shops of the windy city. How? Basically by being the feminine sex. And, like no good girl from the midwest would do - she is from Wisconsin - she boards with dapper Charles Drouet. Her rooming relationship is not like the 21st or 22nd century girl who boards, but the cohabitation under the guise of false marriage would easily amount to great scandal within the community - hence Drouet and Carrie must keep their false marriage a secret unknown by anyone.

Drouet is then confronted by the married George Hurstwood, who basically gives up a very comfortable life, wife and family in Chicago for Carrie. A greater sacrifice than he can manage. He first runs away with Carrie to Montreal, marries her before his own divorce is complete, adopts a false surname for the marriage, and moves with Carrie to New York where he finds work easily, but at a job which provides much less income, reward or prestige. And, during these times, Carrie who never enjoyed fruits of comfort, has no complaints.

It is then that the lives of simple Carrie and sophisticated George furnicularly move - she ascends slowly while depression catches Hurstwood by surprise and slowly eats away at his esteem until she becomes the breadwinner and he the lost soul. Many aspects of this relationship remind me of F. Scott Fitzgeralds tragic tale about Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender is the Night. Very poignant difference between these great American novels is 34 years in time. Fitzgerald, who wrote when the concepts of Freud and psychoanalysis had well matured for a much clearer understanding, incorporates the same in great detail to treat a mental illness similar to that of Hurstwood.

Amateurs of psychology, after reading this book, can clearly assert that Hurstwoods demise is classically caused by severe depression - he hides in his apartment, agoraphobic to a certain extent, he has an appetite reduction and he has a clear loss of hygiene. He may not be Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov of Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment, but his disease is equally deadly.

Reading a book of this size often can be difficult. But, this is not a book often read. Dreiser is a great story teller. And, his loyal socialist emotions erupt from the pages as he, like Sinclair, boldly depicts the tremendously unequal worlds of large metropolitan areas of America at this time. And, as displayed in these pages, Dreiser artistically shows how the inequality can be within the same family, within the marriage, within the nucleus of the family fabric.

This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by Henrik Ibsen, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside Ghosts:

We cannot, I think, get nearer to the truth than Georg Brandes did in the above-quoted phrase from his first notice of the play, describing it as not, perhaps, the poets greatest work, but certainly his noblest deed.

...Nor can I blame you for wishing to keep up with the intellectual movements that are said to be going on in the great world-where you have let your son pass so much of his life.

...Only look at your own son-there is no reason why we should not say it in his presence-what has the consequence been for him?

...Well, it was just this, your Reverence: weve been paid off down yonder-my grateful thanks to you, maam,-and now everythings finished, Ive been thinking it would be but right and proper if we, that have been working so honestly together all this time-well, I was thinking we ought to end up with a little prayer-meeting to-night.