BABBITT
onSinclair Lewis
onSinclair Lewis
on
Sinclair Lewis
It was night in Zenith, the night of the grand testimonial banquet tendered to George F. Babbitt, by the Boosters Club, in honor of the publication of the well-known novel entitled “Babbitt.” Mr. Babbitt spoke on “American Literature,” in part as follows:
“Fellow Boosters: In rising to address you on this auspicious occasion, I want to say first and foremost that I am glad and proud that when it came to the turn of the City of Zenith and yours truly to of had their old, old story told, so to speak, it was by an up-to-date modern successful writer, who, I am told on good authority, sells his books by their thousands and their tens of thousands, amounting in all, I am led to believe, to somewhere in the neighborhood of upward of approximately about 400,000 volumes of a single book, an output, my friends, which compares favorably with the production of cans of condensed milk and pasteboard cartons produced in our great city, and puts literature firmly upon the basis of quantity production of a standardized output.
“I am glad and proud, I may say, that it was him, this modern, up-to-date literary writer, full of pep and punch, who sees things as they are and not as others see us, that it has fallen to his lot to depict this book.
“Now, my friends, let us come with me and cast a glance backward upon American literature in the old days of yore, as the poet says, and see how different it used to be, and I will not detain you long. Let us see how different was the lot of such writers as James J. Whittier and Edwin A. Poe and William Wordsworth Longfellow, when they were in their prime. Did they sell their books by their thousands and their tens of thousands and have a snug bank-account and a nice little bungalow, maybe, and a good little bus standing ready in his own garage, so he could climb in, step on the gas and shoot out into God’s good out-o’-doors for a little airing and exercise after the day’s work? No, sir, my friends, I say it without fear of contradiction; they did not.
“Literature in those bygone days of yore was something else again, as one of our greatest writers puts it in his well-known tales of Potash and Perlmutter, depicting the better side of our Hebrew friends, with all their love of home and family. They were lucky if they sold one of their poems or fiction-writings for a meresong to some publisher, who maybe paid them enough to eke out a miserable pittance in some garret or some place like that.
“And, why, my friends, was this the case? Simply and solely because, my friends, they didn’t write about the things that Zenith City wants to read. What do we want to read, if I may put the question? Why, we want to read about the things we know about and understand—about the things of home and business—about business, first and foremost.
“The kind of romance we want is not the romance of two knights in tin armor trying to punch holes in each other’s stomachs, if you will excuse the word, with spears or something or maybe making illicit love—I speak plainly for we must not blink these evils—to some countess, who was maybe already the wife of some lord or duke, as in the bygone days of chivalry, when knighthood was in flower, as the poet says.
“That’s not the kind of romance we want. Believe me or not, my friends, when two keen-witted American realtors, maybe, of my own profession, sit down to make a deal, maybe about a piece of real estate, matching our keen wits against each other in the struggles and triumphs of modern business—there, my friends, is the romance of to-day.
“Us real he-American men and our wives and kiddies want to read about our city, Zenith,God bless it! and our homes properly equipped with a bathroom with sanitary plumbing, which I say without disrespect and I challenge any man to deny it, is the hall mark of civilization in this twentieth century of ours, and not like the filthy habits and customs of the effete nations of Europe to whom the use of soap—God save the mark!—is practically unknown. We like to read about our autos, our hot-water heating and kitchen cabinets and vacuum-cleaners and those sort of things.
“It is facts we want and not imagination, and I am glad to say that the successful literary writers of to-day, with their ears to the ground, their eyes to the keyhole and their nose to the grindstone, are hearing the stern voice of the people—yea! and heeding it. Imagination has had its day, my friends. It was all very well in those bygone days of yore for an author to depend on his imagination, but it’s different now.
“Let us contrast for a moment and I will not detain you long, two well-known writers. Take Washington Irwin, for instance, what did he write about? Why it is well known of all men that he wrote about many things that never had actually happened in this broad land of ours nor anywhere else. Take Rip Van Winkle, for instance, all about a disgraceful old bum, whosoused himself into such a state that he beat his wife—a thing, I am sure, with all due respect, no man here in this audience would be guilty of in public. Then he got chased by a headless horseman—a headless horseman, mind you, my friends, an utter impossibility—and then to crown the climax he slept for twenty or thirty years, a perfect absurdity and one which, I am sure, no citizen of Zenith would place in the hands of a growing boy as an example to imitate.
“Now take another writer of the same name—zippy, peppy, up-to-date—a man who can sell his stuff to theSaturday Evening Post, than which there is no higher standard in our day and generation. Why, gentlemen, if Washington Irwin should turn over in his grave, I say without fear of contradiction, he would be absolutely and teetotally unable to recognize his own son, Will.
“And, gentlemen, consider for a moment, where this here imagination leads. If you depend on it for your raw material, you can’t go in and out among the people, notebook in hand and jot down what you actually see with your own eyes. No, sir, you got to work your old imagination for what you write about, and what does this lead to? Why, gentlemen, you all know that Edwin A. Poe, for instance, whenhe wanted to write about some raven or a skeleton in armor or something had to drink himself into a state of insensibility or worse before he could put pen to paper. That’s what they had to do.
“Think of those debased minds like James J. Whittier or William Wordsworth Longfellow or George Cullen Bryant, maybe, hiding in their wretched garrets or some place, taking shot after shot of hop, smoking opium, maybe, or worse, to keep their imaginations going to supply even the feeble demand for their hand-made output.
“That was bad enough, my friends, but things got going from bad to worse before they got better, and who made them better? Why, you, my friends, and me, the American business man. It was this way. The wide-awake business man of America began to employ the best writers, to write his ads. These writers dealt with facts, gentleman, facts, in their own inimical style, if I may say so, and the advertising sections of our great American magazines shortly rivaled in interest the stories and other fictional matter, so that it was the common custom of our business men to tear out the advertising section and keep that to read and throw the rest away.
“The editors and publishers of our great magazines found themselves paying good moneyfor stories and for good white paper to print them on and it being torn out and thrown away, which wasn’t good business. This, gentlemen, was the lowest depths to which literature at last got, the apothesis of our literature, if you will pardon the use of a high-brow term.
“Then a smart, keen-witted American business man who happened to be editor of one of the magazines saved the situation, so to speak. He saw that literature had got anæmic. It was short on red blood corpuscles. It needed a transfusion of blood.
“So he put the patient face to face and shoulder to shoulder with the real force in American life, the advertisements—made a page ad face a page of so-called literature—cut the stories into strips and put a column ad next to a column of fictional writing.
“The name of this literary genius, I am creditably informed, was Cyrus H. K. Bok, and, believe me, the greatest surgeon of modern times, who saved American literature from taking the count in a fight to a finish was this same old Doc Bok.
“The result was not only that you couldn’t tear out the stories and throw them away without simultaneously and at the same time destroying the thing you wanted to read, and after you had read all the ads two or three times you simply had to give the stories the once over.
“And, moreover and likewise, the fictitious writers couldn’t keep on writing their imaginative bunk and get away with it. They couldn’t stack up some guff about a raven or a skeleton in armor against the real thing, like the Ginko Cigar or the Jimmy Pipe. If they tried to pull any Rip Van Winkle stuff alongside a smart talk about Hartenheimer’s Morestyle Clothing, the picture of the clean-faced young man—bright-eyed, square-jawed and everything—simply made old Rip look like three mutilated dimes.
“So they got wise and changed their act and begun writing the kind of real stuff about which I’ve been talking to you about. It got to be so good, so full of real American life and everything, that some of it gets printed every week on the page facing the highest priced full page ad in theSaturday Evening Post, and that’s the proudest position in American literature to which any man can aspire to. It used to be that the preferred position, as the ad-men say, for an ad was next to reading-matter. Now look at the columns of the greatest American magazine with its millions of readers. Are the ads next to reading-matter? No, sir, not on your life. The reading-matter is next to the ads—and that’s saying something, believe you me.
“Now, gentlemen, let me say a few words about the book about which we are gathered here to-night, and I will not detain you long.
“It’s a good book, a great book, and yet, my friends, it has its faults, as whom of us has not?
“Friend author, for all he calls himself a realist and pretends he don’t shy at nothing in calling a spade a spade, don’t do it. No, sir, he don’t. Take that chapter in this book, now, about me getting up and getting dressed. What’s he say there? Why he talks about ‘the best of nationally advertised and quantitatively produced alarm clocks.’ Now, anybody here knows he means a Big Bob, and why not say it right out, just like that? Why, he just as well say ‘he removed the superfluous growth of hair from his countenance by means of an instrument designed for that purpose,’ when he means ’he shaved his face with a razor.’
“But these realistic fictitious writers will come to it, and just to help them I’ll tell you how that chapter ought to be wrote.
“The Big Bob alarm clock gave him a jolt that knocked all the sleep out of him. He drug his legs, in Matchless Pajamas, out from under the Downiwool Blanket and sat on the edge of the Ostermarsh Mattress, supported by the Neversag Spring. While he paddledaround with his feet to find his Comfy Slippers, he looked out at his new Flimsibilt Sectional Garage, which looked good to him.
“Then he beat it to the good old warm bathroom, all tiled with Shiniwhite Glazed Tiles. The bathroom was fitted with a Staykleen Bath Tub, a Porcellow Washstand and other sanitary fixtures all complete, including a Nasco All-Steel Medicine Cabinet.
“He cleaned his teeth with a Rubwell toothbrush and a squeeze of Lillidol to get the fuzzy taste out of his mouth.
“Then he rubbed a gob of Whiskerine on his face to soften his beard and lathered her good with Shavo Cream on his Bristletite Shaving Brush. The good old Neverkeen Safety Razor did the rest.
“A D. V. undershirt and knee-length drawers started the job of dressing, followed by a Bronx Shirt, onto which he buttoned a Spear Collar with a Kalisch One-Piece Collar Button. Then he put on his Hartenheimer Suit and a pair of Walkstrate Shoes.
“Then he put in his pockets a Walgin Watch with a Wearever Gold Chain, a Leakwell Fountain Pen and a Neverpoint Pencil.
“For breakfast he had a Moonshine Orange, a plate of Mothers’ Wild Oats, a slice of Mawruss Ham and two ordinary unadvertised eggs, Digesto Bread, spread with Prunella Butterand a cup of Moko-Boko Coffee, and, when he had lighted a good old Ginko Cigar, George F. Babbitt was ready for the fray.
“There, my friends, I don’t pretend to be a literary gink, but you give me my good old fountain pen and the advertising pages of theSaturday Evening Postand I’ll show you how to marry literature and life together. That’s what we want, gentlemen. That’s real, true blue United States one hundred per cent realism.”