08 June 2005

68. Sinclair Lewis, MAIN STREET

Idealistic librarian Carol marries a country doctor who caters to her dreams of finding a little "Middle Western" town and making it pretty and cultured. Then she moves to Gopher Prairie and the townspeople crush her dreams. I'm FROM Gopher Prairie (though it goes under a different name), so I can say that every word in this book is true... unfortunately. I think Lewis would be rotating in his grave like a Boston Chicken if he knew what replaced these Gopher Prairies -- the cookie-cutter suburbs that are even more soulless, more homogenous, and less open to new ideas.

So the moral of the story is, country mice don't marry city mice.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 35-65

No comments: