Babbit by Sinclair Lewis

The book takes its name from the principal character, George F. Babbitt, a middle-aged partner, with his father-in-law, in a real-estate firm. When the story begins, in April 1920, Babbitt is 46 years old. He has a wife, Myra; three children (Verona, 22; Ted, 17; and Tinka, 10); and a well-appointed house in the prosperous Floral Heights neighborhood of “Zenith,” a fictitious city in the equally fictitious state of “Winnemac,” which is adjacent to Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. (Babbitt does not mention Winnemac by name, but Lewis's later novel Arrowsmith elaborates on its location.) When Babbitt was published, newspapers in Cincinnati; Duluth; Kansas City; Milwaukee; and Minneapolis each claimed that their city was the model for Sinclair's Zenith.[1] Cincinnati possessed perhaps the strongest argument for such a claim, because Lewis had lived there for a time while researching Babbitt. Lewis's own correspondence suggests, however, that Zenith is meant to be any Midwestern city with a population between about 200,000 and 300,000. Zenith's chief virtue is conformity, and its religion is “boosterism.” Prominent boosters in Zenith include Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer; Sidney Finkelstein, the ladies'-ready-to-wear buyer for Parcher & Stein's department-store; Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey, owner of the Riteway Business College and “instructor in Public Speaking, Business English, Scenario Writing, and Commercial Law;” and T. Cholmondeley "Chum" Frink, a famous poet of dubious talent.