Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (ink book reader .TXT) π
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Carol Milford grows up in a mid-sized town in Minnesota before moving to Chicago for college. After her education, during which sheβs exposed to big-city life and culture, she moves to Minneapolis to work as a librarian. She soon meets Will Kennicott, a small-town doctor, and the two get married and move to Gopher Prairie, Kennicottβs home town.
Carol, inspired by big-city ideas, soon begins chafing at the seeming quaintness and even backwardness of the townsfolk, and their conservative, self-satisfied way of life. She struggles to try to reform the town in her image, while finding meaning in the seeming cultural desert sheβs found herself in and in her increasingly cold marriage.
Gopher Prairie is a detailed, satirical take on small-town American life, modeled after Sauk Centre, the town in which Lewis himself grew up. The town is fully realized, with generations of inhabitants interacting in a complex web of village society. Its bitingly satirical portrayal made Main Street highly acclaimed by its contemporaties, though many thought the satirical take was perhaps a bit too dark and hopeless. The bookβs celebration and condemnation of small town life make it a candidate for the title of the Great American Novel.
Main Street was awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, but the decision was overturned by the prizeβs Board of Trustees and awarded instead to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. When Lewis went on to win the 1926 Pulitzer for Arrowsmith, he declined itβwith the New York Times reporting that he did so because he was still angry at the Pulitzers for being denied the prize for Main Street.
Despite the bookβs snub at the Pulitzers, Lewis went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, with Main Street being cited as one of the reasons for his win.
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- Author: Sinclair Lewis
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By Sinclair Lewis.
Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Preface Main Street I I II III IV V VI VII II I II III I II III IV IV I II III IV V I II III IV V VI I II III IV V VI VII I II III IV VIII I II III IX I II III IV V VI X I II III IV V VI XI I II III IV V VI VII VIII XII I II III IV XIII XIV XV I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX XVI I II III IV V VI XVII I II III IV V XVIII I II III IV V VI VII XIX I II III IV V VI VII VIII XX I II III IV XXI I II III IV V XXII I II III IV V VI VII VIII XXIII I II III IV V XXIV I II III IV V XXV I II XXVI I II XXVII I II XXVIII I II III IV V VI VII XXIX I II III IV V VI XXX I II III IV XXXI I II III IV V XXXII I II III IV XXXIII I II III IV V VI XXXIV I II XXXV I II III XXXVI I II III IV XXXVII I II III IV V XXXVIII I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX XXXIX I II III IV V VI VII VIII Colophon Uncopyright ImprintThis ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.
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This is Americaβ βa town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves.
The town is, in our tale, called βGopher Prairie, Minnesota.β 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 Illinois, 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 Stowbody 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 architecture. Sam Clarkβs annual hardware turnover is the envy of the four counties which constitute Godβs 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. Would he not betray himself an alien cynic who should otherwise portray Main Street, or distress the citizens by speculating whether there may not be other faiths?
Main Street I IOn a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky. She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinking windows of skyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Nor was she thinking of squaws and portages, and the Yankee fur-traders whose shadows were all about her. She was meditating upon walnut fudge, the plays of Brieux, the reasons why heels run over, and the fact that the chemistry instructor had stared at the new coiffure which concealed her ears.
A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to
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