Main Street

1920, 1980 Signet Classic edition
Sinclair Lewis
Main Street
Bought newish for $4.50
Worn paperback
B+

Lewis's first successful novel should be more dated than it is.  Oh, yes, there's the explanation of "hot dogs" as "frankfurters on buns," and it certainly is a product of its time, looking back on the then last decade or so, as automobiles, the Great War, and boosterism have their impact on small-town life.  But the way that people gossip and use other forms of peer pressure hasn't changed.  As Lewis notes, an office can be like Main Street, and this environment most reminds me of junior high.

Also, as Mark Schorer's afterword observes, Lewis defined the small-town stereotypes for ever after: the socialist "crank," the old-maid schoolteacher, the no-nonsense doctor, and so on.  It is odd that Erik, the "town queer" (actually, one of two men who are mocked for being effeminate), is the potential lover for the main female character.  Carol is always on the verge of rebellion but never quite makes it, even when she escapes to Washington, D.C. for a year.  Like Erik, she's not quite talented, clever, or unique enough to make it.  All she can do is voice her discontent.  She knows that there are "other Carols" out there, but unfortunately not enough of them in one place to make a difference.  There's poignancy to her vision of her daughter, born the year of the publication date.  "Think what that baby will see and meddle with before she dies in the year 2000!"  The nameless 80-year-old indeed would see advances and setbacks, including for feminism.

While Lewis was not exactly a feminist, he could write convincing and sometimes likable female characters.  Carol is possibly his best, despite her blind spots and hypocrisies.  He also, as Schorer notes, approves of Carol's husband, Will.  When Will has an affair, it's understandable.  Carol is oblivious to it, partly because she doesn't fully see him as a person.  By the end of the novel, they've grown to understand each other a bit better.  They'll always be two very different people, but their marriage is actually one of the better ones in the book.

And yet, I don't think Carol should've gone back to him, not when it means returning to Gopher Prairie.  She builds a life for herself and her little son in Washington, and her return means trying to repress the best parts of herself.

There's definitely a pessimistic strain in Lewis.  It would get worse, but even here, so many of the characters have tragedies heaped upon them.  Miles the anarchist loses his wife and son, and then is almost run out of town.  Fern Mullins, the vibrant young teacher, is the victim of malicious gossip.  Erik, after dealing with a harsh father and an unsympathetic boss, as well as the town's ridicule and Carol's rejection, ironically escapes to the life of a silent actor, which we're meant to see as a waste-- Lewis is vicious about early movies-- but I think he comes closer to a happy life than any of the other victims of Gopher Prairie.  The saddest though may be Guy Pollock, who's too passive to woo Carol and too worn down by the town to leave.

Vida Sherwin, the old-maid schoolteacher, ends up marrying effeminate Raymie, and boosts his confidence so much that he becomes a war hero.  She's one of the more complicated characters, nursing a secret crush on Will, adoring and disparaging Carol, pushing through the few reforms the town has, and being bloodthirstily anti-German during the War.

It's a Minnesota town, with Germans and Scandinavians as the minorities, although the criticisms by the townspeople of farmers and servants are the words of bigots everywhere.  The arguments against unions wouldn't change for decades, perhaps still haven't.  In fact, other than the slang and the fashions, this could pass for the 1950s.  My hometown in the 1980s was larger but had the same level of anti-intellectualism and homophobia.  And that place is one of the towns mentioned in the book.