Main Street is about an educated, intelligent woman, Carol, who married the town doctor of a little village called Gopher Prairie, whose intelligence and opinions constantly breaks against the general feeling of the sleepy town like waves against resolute rocks.

The town is politically conservative - to the point where the sheriff led the townspeople to beat up and drive out a suspected socialist speaker who wanted to speak to an assembly of speakers. Carol is liberal. The main entertainment to be had at dinners or social gatherings is petty gossip and that neighbours should spy upon each other for gossip fodder is the natural order. Carol likes to read books - Shaw, Romain Rolland, etc. company. Carol wants to enact many reforms on the town such as a new town hall, but they are all rejected and laughed off by the town.

In contrast to Carol, Carol's husband has no appreciation for any of the things that Carol holds so dear, like art music or literary books or poetry - he has vague memories of having studied them in university but had no real appreciation for them, calling them "high-brow stuff". He had hoped that Carol would "settle down" and forget all that high-brow stuff and be a wife in the style of the stolid, gossiping way of Gopher Prairie women.

Carol stews in this oppressive environment for most of the book.

Overall, even though I didn't enjoy reading it, I think it was a very good book and very influential; the dialogue and representation of village life are all very realistic. It eloquently points out all the oppression of village life and village thought and ridicules country folk as well as de Maupassant or Flaubert. However, it can't be forgotten that this is a satirical work. Sinclair Lewis shows the foibles of every character, especially Carol and it is difficult to connect with the story. It's entirely unsentimental and a bit pessimistic. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic. Carol is the main character and is a great reader so the reader might relate to her. However, as Carol stays longer in Gopher Prairie, she unwittingly becomes like them. She acquire their way of thinking. When she goes to Minneapolis for a visit, she think and behaves just the people of Gopher Prairie would - she thinks of what the other housewives would say if they say her eating at a fancy restaurant, in a fancy hotel and other typical big city experiences. Her individuality, for lack of a better word, is being worn down by the oppression of Gopher Prairie and this process is highlighted by Lewis's narration and is quite depressing. ( )

The main street of the title is in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The main character, Carol Milford, moves there from the big city (St. Paul) with her new husband, Dr. Kennicott. Carold finds the town ugly and boring and proceeds to try to change things with mixed results. The story is good, but it is a slow read because of the dense but realistic dialogue. Definitely a classic and an excellent representation of the times. ( )

Personal justification for why not everyone enjoys small town life. Oh Carol, I knew ye well. ( )

"Buddenbrooks is a pretty damned good book. If he were a great writer it would be swell. When you think a book like that was published in 1902 and unknown in English until last year it makes you have even less respect, if you ever had any, for people getting stirred up over Main Street, Babbit and all the books your boy friend Menken [H.L. Mencken] has gotten excited about just because they happen to deal with the much abused Am. Scene."
Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
Selected Letters, pg. 176

A bit heavy-handed, true, but still a beautiful dissection of small town American faults and foibles. To appreciate it today requires only the least bit of imagination to transfer the setting from town and rural to towncenter and suburban sprawl. In the end it was delightful. ( )

This book tells the story of a young woman who gets married and moves to her husband’s small home town. There she finds that her “liberal” ideas (including that domestic help should get fair wages and that poetry and literature are appropriate topics of conversation at a gathering rather than gossip and conjecture) make it hard for her to fit in. She also disappointed that the town doesn’t live up to the pastoral ideal she had in mind, so she sets about on a number of reforms, which inevitably fail. I cannot help but admire the mind of Sinclair Lewis – he clearly shows in this book that he is both perceptive and visionary. He took a good hard look at what was wrong and what was right in America at his time and held nothing to be a given – whether it was the virtue of the small town over the big city or the traditional roles of masculinity and femininity (particularly in terms of their obligations to home and work). Some of his comments look to a future that has now been achieved (suffrage and space travel, for example). However, I must admit that I was not in love with this novel. Despite the interesting themes explored, I had two major problems with this book. The first was the main character, Carol Kennicott. She was rather wishy-washy, which I suppose humanized her (hey, I can’t make up my mind half the time either), but it made her a character very hard to feel strongly about and want to root for, particularly because the reader doesn’t know what to be hoping Carol will obtain in the end. Secondly, large portions of the book seemed repetitive (Carol tries some type of reform and fails, Carol tries some type of reform and fails, Carol tries some type of reform and fails, and so on). I suppose in part this may have been to get the reader to feel a bit of the oppression that Carol feels living this mind-numbing existence, but I found it difficult to not get bored with this tactic. ( )

I first read this as a sophomore in high school. I said this about Sinclair Lewis: "I absolutely adore his writing". Really?? While this book has much to say about a lot of things, I had a hard time relating to Carol. I never could figure out what exactly it was that she wanted. The character I ended up liking the most was Kennicott - although he certainly had his obtuse moments. It is true that some of humanity's worst qualities hide behind piousness and financial security and reputation. But I think that is true no matter where you go. In the beginning of the novel Carol seems to be overly concerned with how things look - she dislikes Gopher Prairie because it's not planned and beautiful. I think in the end, since the only person you can really change is yourself, Carol misses the point. Lewis makes it when he states the only real reaction you can make to smallness is laughter. But Carol seems to always have to have a cause. In the end, I'm not sure she was any better than "Main Street". Interesting commentary going on in this story ( )

Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

“This is America—a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves.” So Sinclair Lewis—recipient of the Nobel Prize and rejecter of the Pulitzer—prefaces his novel Main Street. Lewis is brutal in his depictions of the self-satisfied inhabitants of small-town America, a place which proves to be merely an assemblage of pretty surfaces, strung together and ultimately empty. (Product Description)

Well, he's got their number, all right. This is almost a book that I'd call something like a "gray masterpiece," if that weren't so manifestly grandiloquent for a story like this one (Lewis tries to cover this with all that "Sam's store is every store" crap at the beginning, but he is wrong. This book is really good, but it is small). But it approaches "masterpiece" in places, if only the whole weren't less than some of its wrenchingest parts.

And it is gray.

And it really, truly does belong to it's historic moment, doesn't it? Thirty years later Carol would have been a firebrand, and this would have been a novel of rebellion and easier to love for me here in 2008, instead of so . . . pathetic. Thirty years earlier and there'd have been no story. She'd have been bored but content. In a French town she'd have been Madame Bovary.

Yeah, you should probably read this. It's fucking good. It's just hard to love.

Oh, PS: How can everybody call this book "satire"? Satire implies exaggeration, and if there's anything in the WORLD this book is, it's accurate. At least, if it doesn't underestimate Williams Lake in 2001 and Weitensfeld in 2008, I don't see how it can underestimate fucking Gopher Prairie, Minnesota in the WWI era. Yes. Depressingly accurate and not funny. Biting, but not satirical. ( )

Main Street has some absolutely brilliant moments of satire. In fact, at it's best it offers spot on cultural criticism that resounds well into the 21st century. That said, the somewhat scandalous elements are dated and the motif, although maybe not dated at the time, has been so often repeated in film and literature that one can't help but feel like they've heard it all before. Again, I think what shines are individual moments, pieces of prose where Lewis just perfectly captures certain archetypal characters (and their utterances) and experiences.

Now, if Lewis had let Carol Kenicott evolve into a slightly more unsympathetic character, if he had taken a more critical, even handed eye to his protagonist it might have been a truly great work. I couldn't help thinking that in some of the more heavy handed moments Lewis must have been trying to do just this, but if so it doesn't come across clearly. While he beats us over the head with the narrowmindedness of the provincials, Lewis, it seems to me, spares the rod in Carol's case and ultimately spoils what could be a much better critical work. I say this because certainly for all their huffing and puffing the Carol Kenicotts of the world are really no more interesting and less hackneyed than the Sam Clarks. Had he subjected Carol to a bit more roasting Lewis might've better captured the underlying spirit of malaise and hopelessness.

Finally, at times the novel reminded me of a funnier but less brilliant Winnesburg, Ohio. I guess given the subject matter this shouldn't be surprising, but that aside, thematically this notion of hopeless searching that Carol Kenicott takes on seems to have strong parallels in Anderson. In fact, the careful reader will notice that Lewis actually name drops Anderson when composing in a list of fiction Carol has been reading.

Overall: not merely "good" but not good enough to be great ( )

Very readable book on prairie town American life at the beginning of the 20C. A young girl whose life is full of promise marries a doctor after a whirlwind romance and gets bogged down in the mind-boggling boredom and gossip of tiny communities. ( )

The story of Carol Kennicott, wife of a country doctor in a small town in Minnesota. Set around 1910-1920, Carol deals with the boredom, malicious gossip, and narrow-mindedness of the small town. Lewis later won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Carol is an exasperating character, at least by my more modern, middle-class values. Flighty, idealistic, and self-centered, I just wanted to slap her and tell her to “snap out of it”. I feel that you must have beauty within yourself in order to appreciate and find beauty in others and in nature. If you are bored with your life, look first at yourself for the solution to the problem, instead of demanding to be entertained and pleased by others.

Lewis did an excellent job of capturing the small-town culture though. I grew up in a small town of about 5000 people, larger than the Gopher Prairie of the novel, but small enough that everyone knew everyone else’s business. So many people spent so much time worrying about appearances. Lewis populates his town with a wide array of characters that exemplify all the problems of the small town, as well as the more noble characters, like the country doctor that Carol is married to.

Eventually Carol comes to terms with her problem, which is really a problem with her own personality more than anything else. I found her difficult to like, but the novel is exceptionally well written and worth the effort to read.

www.samfsmith.com ( )

I wish I could make a decision about this novel. I sort-of hated it, but then again, I sort-of loved it. It's worth the read to figure it out for yourself. ( )

sharp as a button and as true as ever - main street still has the power to connect. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/855044.htm...

I found this book really compelling, the story of a bright woman from the city who marries the doctor in a Minnesota town. The small-mindedness of her fellow residents is pitilessly portrayed, as are their repeated efforts to keep her spirit crushed. The main character, with all her faults, is convincing and sympathetic. ( )

Wow. It takes a damn good writer to create characters you hate so much you love them!Main Street is a portrait of small town Midwestern farm life at the beginning of the 20th century, and the discontent of the main character who tries to change it into her own world. First line (courtesy Amazon...I'm too lazy to pull the book out and type it) "On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky." I suggest reading this one laying in the grass in summer... red wine optional :-) ( )

In centuries to come, people will read Lewis and find out what 20th Century America was like. His writing is substantial, nourishing and Main Street is one of his best. ( )

Sinclair Lewis' first great novel, one for which he would be well-remembered had he never written another word. The story of Carol Kennicott, a newly married doctor's wife, determined to bring joy of life and culture to Gopher Prairie, the small town in which she and her husband have settled. This is Lewis' first great foray into the struggles of American women for freedom and independence in this beknighted era, but he sets a pattern in this book of not quite knowing what to do with his women after they have achieved some measure of what they were seeking. ( )

http://www.english.ilstu.edu/separry/...
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/li...
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/slewis.htm...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair... ( )

Wikipedia: The satirical novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis was published in 1920. It is set in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, a fictionalized version of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis’s hometown.
Carol Milford is a liberal, free-spirited young woman, raised in the metropolis of Minneapolis. She marries Will Kennicott, a doctor, who is a small-town boy at heart. When they marry, Will convinces her to live in Gopher Prairie, where he was raised. Carol tries to convince herself that Gopher Prairie isn't so bad, and is compelled to reform the town from its dusty, conservative ways: she tries speaking with its members about potential changes; joins women clubs; divulges literature amongst the townfolk; attempts to hold exciting parties to liven up Gopher Prairie's inhabitants; is cordial and friendly — all of which is in vain as her efforts are constantly derided. In order to find comfort and companionship she is forced to look outside her social class, only to have these companions taken from her one by one.

Carol eventually leaves her husband to go live in Washington, D.C. for a time, but she, inevitably, returns. However, Carol does not feel defeated: "I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women!" Carol is discontented with life at Gopher Prairie, but she finds that life in a big city is not so hot either. She learns to settle with Gopher Prairie and accept it for what it is.
Main Street is important for a number of reasons — among them is the portrayal of a strong female protagonist, and what one might now call feminist themes by a male writer. Also, there is very little plot to the novel: description and satire take prominence over strong characterization and obvious action. (Characters tend to be static; they are archetypes to display that these people in Gopher Prairie could be the same anywhere in the country.) Humor and veritable facsimiles of small town life and personas made Main Street the commercial phenomenon it was, easily relatable to the majority of America. Controversy about the small-town portrayal of vicious back-stabbers and hypocrites was also probably a factor to the novel's popularity; in 1920, it was a heralded thought to live in an area like Gopher Prairie--a notion hilariously denounced with Main Street's powerful inculcation. ( )

Found this book to be heavy going at first, but it was well worth sticking with! ( )