Sinclair Lewis's Small-Town Satire

About Main Street Lewis

Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920) was the bestselling American novel of its year — Carol Kennicott trying to reform Gopher Prairie, the small-town conformity that suffocates her, and her eventual accommodation to the life she despises. It preceded Babbitt (1922) as Lewis's breakthrough and established his reputation as the sharpest satirist of American provincial life. The word 'Main Street' became, like 'Babbitt,' a shorthand for a certain kind of American cultural poverty. Lewis was denied the Pulitzer Prize for Main Street; the jury who voted for it were overruled by the advisory board, which found the novel insufficiently appreciative of American life.