Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling

   1998; 341 pages.  Book 3 (out of 7) in the Harry Potter series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : YA; Adventure; Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    Summer vacation is over, and it’s time to go back to school.  For Harry Potter and his best friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, that’s a highly-anticipated occasion since they are all now third-year students at the Hogwarts School of Magic.  We’d call them “juniors”, but Hogwarts is a seven-year academy.  But at least they’re getting close to being upperclassmen.

    They’ll all be taking some neat classes this year.  Professor Snape is back to teach them even more about Potions.  Professor McGonagall will introduce them to the art of Transfiguration.  The aptly-named Professor Sprout (perhaps a nod to Robert Rankin’s character “Barry the Time Sprout”?) will bore them to tears with lectures on Herbology.  And none of them sees any future in taking Professor Trelawney’s class on Divination.

    A new professor has joined Hogwarts this year.  Professor Lupin will teach the course called “Defense Against the Dark Arts”; Harry and his companions are all VERY interested in that class.  The class has been offered at Hogwarts for years, but it seems like every professor who teaches it only lasts for one year. 

    Finally, Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, has been promoted to Professorship, now that his name’s been cleared.  He’s extremely excited about teaching a brand new course, “The Care of Magical Creatures”.

    All-in-all, it promises to be an exciting year for Harry.  Alas, it’s a pity that one of the most dangerous inmates at Azkaban prison has escaped and is coming to kill him.

What’s To Like...

    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book in J.K. Rowling’s boffo series, is every bit as good as its predecessors.  There’s a new Ultimate Evil to threaten Harry (who’s capable of slipping through the best Hogwarts defenses), a complex storyline that will entertain adult and teen readers alike, and of course, an exciting Quidditch season.

    There are a whole bunch of new critters (some good, some evil, all bizarre) to study and beware of.  You can see one, called the hippogriff, on the book cover image above.  There seemed to be a few less puns this time, but they’re still present : Diagon Alley, Owl Post Again, and the esoteric groaner, Madam Cassandra Vablatsky.  I liked the imaginative names of the Magic textbooks, such as “Broken Balls: When Fortunes Turn Foul”.  Ditto for the names of the various charms that can be cast.

    Besides the main storyline – Sirius Black, the escaped prisoner from Azkaban, coming after Harry, I counted at least six secondary plot threads.  1) Why did the Fat Lady go missing?  2) What’s up between Crookshanks and Scabbers?  3) What about the big shaggy black dog that keeps showing up at critical points in Harry’s life?  4) How does Hermione cope with taking a double-load of courses, several of which are scheduled for the same time slot?  5) Who’s poisoning Professor Lupin?  6) Will House Gryffindor sweep its Quidditch matches with Harry as its seeker?  

    As always, I loved J.K. Rowling’s attention to detail.  The Sorting Hat, Platform 9-3/4, the Whomping Willow, and the newspaper The Daily Prophet are all back, and you’ll be introduced to things like a Pocket Sneakoscope, a Broomstick Servicing Kit, a Knight Bus, O.W.L.S and N.E.W.T.S., and the ever-popular Dungbombs (they’re always a blast!).  And if you’ve forgotten the bizarre rules of Quidditch, they’re given again on page 143.

    Once again, there are a slew of characters to meet and follow.  Malfoy returns to bedevil Harry, but naturally he gets his comeuppance in the end.  I was particularly impressed by the way Professor Snape was portrayed.  Just because he’s mean and hates Harry, doesn’t mean he’s evil, does it?  Hmm.

    The backstory is given in Chapter One.  There are 22 chapters covering the 435 pages, which makes them of moderate length.  In my edition, each chapter starts with a drawing of the relevant theme of the chapter, which I found to be way-kewl.  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a standalone novel, in addition to being part of a series.  Last, and least, the phrase “bated breath” is used, and properly so.   As a part-time editor editor, I’m happy to see that grammatical debate put to rest on this.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Shirty (adj.; slang) : irritable; angry.

Excerpts...

    “Where is dear Professor Lupin?”

    “I’m afraid the poor fellow is ill again,” said Dumbledore, indicating that everybody should start serving themselves.  “Most unfortunate that it should happen on Christmas Day.”

    “But surely you already knew that, Sybill?” said Professor McGonagall, her eyebrows raised.

    Professor Trelawney gave Professor McGonagall a very cold look.

    “Certainly I knew, Minerva,” she said quietly.  “But one does not parade the fact that one is All-Knowing.  I frequently act as though I am not possessed of the Inner Eye, so as not to make others nervous.”

    “That explains a great deal,” said Professor McGonagall tartly.  (pg. 229)

    Their second to last exam, on Thursday morning, was Defense Against the Dark Arts.  Professor Lupin had compiled the most unusual exam any of them had ever taken: a sort of obstacle course outside in the sun, where they had to wade across a deep paddling pool containing a grindylow, cross a series of potholes full of Red Caps, squish their way across a patch of marsh while ignoring misleading directions from a hinkypunk, then climb into an old trunk and battle with a new boggart.  (pg. 318)

 Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.  (pg. 194)

    The ending has a bunch of twists.  All the plotlines cited above are resolved.  It takes a couple chapters to do so, but that means nothing feels rushed.  I’m pleased to say I guessed correctly regarding the resolution of the main storyline, but I still got surprised by how most of the secondary ones worked out.  Hermione’s trick to taking so many courses was a particularly delightful twist.

    I don’t really have anything to quibble about in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  There’s nothing R-rated in it, and no justification for anyone to demand that it be banned from school libraries.  We truly are being overrun by literary ignoramuses.

    Book 4 in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, sits upon my TBR shelf, waiting for my attention.  All 752 pages of it.  I may have to ask Santa to bring me the next couple of books in the series.  I have noted that every book seems to be getting lengthier.  Robert Jordan would be proud.

    9 Stars.  One last, small plus from reading this book.  A long time ago, back in the heyday of Blogspot, I used to follow a blog called Padfoot and Prongs.  I was always clueless but curious as to why it was called that.  Now I know.

The Congo, and Other Poems - Vachel Lindsay

   1914 (original) & 2008 (this compilation); 102 pages.  New Author? : Yes.    Genre : American Literature; Poetry.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    “Hey, let’s sing a poem together!”

    “Say what?  You read poems; you don’t sing poems.”

    “Sure you do.  The ancient Greeks did it all the time.  But if you don’t feel like singing one, we could chant it together instead.”

    “That’s just as crazy.  Besides, I don’t speak a word of ancient Greek.”

    “No problem.  There’s this American poet who has written poems to be sung or chanted, not read to oneself.  He even writes directions on exactly how loud you’re supposed to do it, and what tone of voice you should use.”

    “Hmm.  Sounds like some sort of 1960’s beatnik.  Or maybe a rap artist.”

    “Nope.  He wrote these poems more than a hundred years ago, in and around 1914.  Back before anybody else was doing this sort of thing.  Except for the ancient Greeks, of course.”

    “Really?!  Well, okay then.  I’m out of excuses.  Let’s give it a try.  What’s this guy’s name, anyway?”

    “Vachel Lindsay.”

What’s To Like...

    The Congo, and Other Poems is a set of 66 of Vachel Lindsay’s poems, although it's not his complete works.  Wikipedia calls Lindsay the “founder of modern singing poetry” but he also wrote a lot of poems in the standard, metered format.

    The book is divided into five sections, namely:

Section 1 : “Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted.” (14%; 10 poems)

    The “singing/chanting” section.  The poems he’s most famous for.

Section 2 : “Incense” (43%; 17 poems)

    Lindsay reflecting on various themes, including love and all kinds of religions.

Section 3 : “A Miscellany called the Christmas Tree” (59%; 12 poems)

    Light-hearted poems; often short, and with children as the target audience.

Section 4 : “20 Poems in which the Moon is the principle figure of speech” (70%; 20 poems)

    Lindsay apparently had a thing about the moon.

Section 5 : "War – September 1, 1914, Intended to be read aloud” (81%; 7 poems)

    Dark in tone, somber, brooding.  Written about the horrors of The Great War.

    I can’t really say I have a favorite section.  I liked the broad spectrum of moods he could conjure up: – whimsical when writing humorous verse, serious when musing about Death or Heaven, outraged when contemplating war or child prostitution; star-struck when idolizing some of his matinee idols.  Vachel Lindsay is  most famous for his singing/chanting works, but he also wrote poems in the usual meter, and a few with no meter at all.  I was especially impressed by his use of ABAB and ABBA rhyme schemes; most poets use the lazier ABCB format.

    His most famous poem by far is The Congo, which Wikipedia describes as exemplifying “his revolutionary aesthetic of sound for sound's sake. It imitates the pounding of the drums in the rhythms and in onomatopoeic nonsense words. At parts, the poem ceases to use conventional words when representing the chants of Congo's indigenous people, relying just on sound alone.”  It is also his most controversial poem, with him being frequently accused of being racist, or at least patronizing, even by 1914 standards.  Personally, I don’t think he was racist, just blithely naïve.

    A lot of his poems have catchy titles, such as: The Black Hawk War of the Artists; A Rhyme About an Electric Advertising Sign; The Alchemist’s Petition; Popcorn, Glass Balls, and Cranberries; An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic; When Gassy Thompson Struck It Rich; and Abraham Lincoln Walks At Midnight.  I chortled at his mention of hashish.  In this book, along with the recently-read Babbitt, it is evident that the American drug problem was around long before the 60's.

    I read a couple of these poems each night, which is my usual strategy when reading a book of poetry.  But if you have a book report due tomorrow, this is a good choice; you can finish it easily in a single sitting (1-2 hours).  I have to admit, I enjoyed making myself “mentally” chant the poems in the first section according to their instructions.  I did not attempt to sing any of them.

    I had never heard of Vachel Lindsay before reading The Congo, and Other Poems.  My impression now is that he was a 1920’s “Poet of the Proletariat”, the mantle for which would later pass to Charles Bukowski.  No one will ever mistake Vachel Lindsay’s verses with that of Shakespeare, but I found this book to be an enjoyable and thoughtful read, and beamed at the slight broadening of my narrow poetry tastes.

Kewlest New Word ...

Hecatombs (n., plural) : (In ancient Greece or Rome) great public sacrifices, originally consisting of one hundred oxen.

Others : Pennons (n., plural).

Excerpts...

    Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

    Pounded on the table,

    Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,

    Hard as they were able,

    Boom, boom, BOOM,

    With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,

    Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

    THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.

     I could not turn from their revel in derision.  (loc. 162, from “The Congo”)

    This is the sin against the Holy Ghost:

    To speak of bloody power as right divine,

    And call on God to guard each vile chief’s house,

    And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine.

    (…)

    In any Church’s name, to sack fair towns,

    And turn each home into a screaming sty,

    To make little children fugitive,

    And have their mothers for a quick death cry.

    (loc. 974; from “The Unpardonable Sin”)

Kindle Details...

    The Congo, and Other Poems sells for $0.99 at Amazon.  There are several other collections of Vachel Lindsay’s poems, most of which include The Congo.  They range from free to $3.39.  I went with the 99-cents version because it seemed like the freebie might just be scanned images of the paperback, in which case, Kindle-highlighting might not have been available.  A dollar for a book isn’t going to break me.

We find your soft Utopias as white

As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells.  (loc. 500, from “An Argument”)

    A few words about Vachel Lindsay…

    He was born November 10, 1879; and died December 05, 1931.  “The Congo” was written in 1914,  and his most productive period seems to have been the World War One years.

    He was an energetic poet, at one point traveling by foot through several western states for inspiration.  His aim was to restore “poetry as a song art, appealing to the ear rather than the eye.”

    Alas, he was also a  “starving artist” poet.  In 1931, plagued by financial worries and failing health, he committed suicide by drinking a bottle of Lysol.  Ouch.

    7 Stars.  YouTube has a decent number of videos showing people singing Vachel Lindsay’s works.  I’m not sure if they wrote their own music or if Lindsay composed it.  One thing that made me laugh was the various ways that the video-narrators guessed as to how to pronounce “Vachel”.  According to this book, it rhymes with “Rachel”.

Redliners - David Drake

  1997; 388 pages.  New Author? : No, but this is the first book of his I’ve read where there isn't a co-author.  Genre : Science Fiction; Military; Action-Thriller.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

    The military has a word for them: Redliners. 

    It refers to combat troops who have witnessed such horrors, or been subject to such wartime ordeals, that psychologically they’ve been stretched to the point where they can snap any second.  They aren’t fit to be returned to combat duties in the future and placing them back in a civilian environment is just asking for a disaster.

    Major Arthur Farrell’s command, the Company of strikers known as C41, are Redliners.  They were sent into a advance-strike commando raid, suffered jaw-dropping casualties,  somehow and achieved their tactical goals, only to have higher-ups abort the overall mission and recall what was left of C41.  Their losses were in vain, and things got worse when they learned the enemy they had slaughtered consisted of civilian children.

    The conventional wisdom about what to do with Redliners is to send them on some easy and safe missions in the hopes that with time they’ll forget the horrors that caused them to redline.  The success rate of this isn’t impressive, but hey, what are the alternatives?

    Well, there is one other option, much more risky and unpopular than the conventional wisdom approach.

    Send them on a suicide mission and hope that most of them get killed, but not before they wipe out lots of the enemy.

What’s To Like...

    If you like lots of fighting, detailed tactics, and a gritty “War Is Hell” depiction of military life, then you’ll love Redliners.  The story could easily be set in Afghanistan or Iraq, but by putting it in a Science-Fiction setting David Drake can create all sorts of additional perils.  Here the plants and the ground are just as deadly as an enemy alien with a laser gun.

    The aliens here are called the Kalendru, and it is said that they ‘understand the concepts of “master” and “slave” but not of “equals”’.  It’s therefore a intergalactic fight to the death, and  sadly, conflicts such as this are a “kill or be killed” situation.  David Drake doesn’t prettify it in any way.  The good guys aren’t perfect, they can make mistakes.  The bad guys have some human qualities, but no matter what, they have to be killed.

    I liked the concept of forcing hardened soldiers and civilians to merge into a single unit, and then watching them somehow learn to coexist and cooperate with each other in order to survive.  It’s a slow, difficult process, but neither group has any choice in the matter.  There are a slew of characters from both groups for the reader to meet and greet.  Don’t get too attached to any of them; quite a few won’t be around by the end of the tale.

    The book is mostly in the 3^rd-person POV, although there’s a Prologue, Epilogue, and Interlude sections, which are in the 1^st-person.  There’s blood and gore, lots of killing, and oodles of cussing.  The action starts immediately, and never lets up.  It is a standalone novel, and not connected with any other of David Drake’s books.

    I enjoyed learning what calling a war-buddy “snake” means, and I thought the “null sacks” were neat.  It’s always a plus when Tchaikovsky’s music gets some ink.  Via Google, I learned that “Redlining” has several meanings, depending on what field it applies to.  Here, the dictionary definition that is most apt is “beyond the recommended safety limit”.

    Things build to a suitably climactic and exciting ending.  I wouldn’t call it “twisty”, but I did find it to be “bittersweet”, and that’s a plus.  I primarily think of David Drake as a Fantasy writer, but it was a interesting to see what he can do in the Military Science Fiction genre as well.

Kindle Details...

   ANAICT, Redliners is always free at Amazon.  David Drake is a prolific Sci-Fi and Fantasy author, writing both alone and with other authors.  He offers a half-dozen or so of his books for free, which is very generous of him.  The rest of his e-books are in the price range of $5.24 - $9.99, and a couple ‘bundles’  at $8.99.   Finally, it should be mentioned that he offers a 2^nd Edition of Redliners for $5.38, and with a note on the cover that it “includes all new content”.

Excerpts...

    “I didn’t understand how quick you had to be to survive,” Lock said softly.  He turned his face from Meyer.  His eyes were on the forest, but she wasn’t sure they were focusing.

    “When the savages came out of the trees I just looked at them,” Lock said to the forest.  “And one of them grabbed Alison.  And I said, I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and he cut her head off.  Like that.  And he grabbed me and you killed him.” (…)

    He began to cry.  “You were trying to keep us alive and I didn’t understand,” he said through tears.  “I’m a lawyer, Ms. Meyer.  I don’t belong here and I didn’t understand.”  (loc. 2939)

    Abbado got along better in the forest than Gabrilovitch did.  Both sergeants viewed the vegetation as an enemy, but the fact didn’t particularly bother Abbado.  To him, enemies were something a striker fought or avoided; it didn’t matter whether they had bark or pale gray skin.

    Gabe found the forest’s malevolence unnatural, even supernatural.  Imagination made Gabrilovitch a good scout, whereas Abbado’s two-valued logic – kill it or run – had struck Blohm as simple-minded during the year and a half he’d known the man.  (loc. 3480)

 Life was a series of tradeoffs.  Until you died.  (loc. 2157)

    For all its thrills and spills and realism, Redliners lacks one essential component: an overall, coherent plotline.  In theory this is a story about the colonization of a new planet by us Earthlings; in practice that never gets started because of the life-threatening dangers as soon as the ship lands.  I thought that the non-stop fighting would eventually end and the book would get on with setting up the groundwork of civilization, but that never happened.

    The ending at least brings a closure to the book-long fighting, and does a decent job of that.  But it doesn’t change the fact that there Is. No. Plot.

    David Drake is a Vietnam vet, and I read somewhere that writing Redliners was a catharsis for him in dealing with that experience.  I haven’t verified this, but it would give cause to the prolonged fighting, and the many casualties.  In any case, David Drake is a skilled writer, and I found myself turning the pages despite wondering where the heck the plotline was.

    Hey, if it helped him come to grips with the Vietnam struggle, more power to him and this book.  The fact that this is an always-free book, and that the cover of the second edition promises that it “includes all new content”  indicates to me that Mr. Drake is aware that this book might not resonate with everyone.

    5 Stars.  Add 3 stars if you read Military Science-Fiction stories for the Military more than the Science-Fiction.  You’ll have a blast reading this book.  Literally.

Four To Score - Janet Evanovich

   1998; 313 pages.  Book 4 (out of 24, soon to be 25) of the Stephanie Plum series.   New Author? : No.  Genre : Crime-Humor; Beach Novel.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Stephanie Plum’s going to get rich this month.  She’s double-dipping on her present bounty hunter case.

    First, there’s the commission she’ll earn by hunting down and bringing in Maxine Nowicki, an FTA (“Failure To Appear” at a court hearing) as an authorized agent for her cousin Vinnie’s Bail Bond business.  Maxine reportedly had a tiff with her then-boyfriend, Eddie Kuntz, and took it out on him by stealing his car.  Eddie retaliated by calling the cops on her, who arrested her, but Maxine didn’t show for her trial.

    Eddie understandably cooperates with Stephanie in her efforts to track down Maxine, and has now given her an added incentive.  He’ll pay her a thousand bucks if she retrieves some love letters he wrote to Maxine in fits of passion.  He says there’s embarrassing stuff in them.

    Eddie is not exactly a lady’s man, so it’s hard to imagine what he’d deem “embarrassing” in those letters.  But hey, for a thousand dollar bonus, Stephanie is more than willing to try to recover them when she successfully brings Maxine in.

    But don’t spend all that money just yet, Steph.  For starters, your cousin Vinnie has hired a second agent to track down Maxine, so you’ve got competition for the commission.  To boot, someone is dead set on scaring, or even killing, people who might know where Maxine is.

    And I don’t think they’d have any qualms about adding you to their list of intended victims.

What’s To Like...

    The action in Four To Score starts immediately, with someone bursting in on Cousin Vinnie and threatening to shoot him.  But since the assailant is Stephanie, we know that’s not the storyline.  I was happy to see Grandma Mazur and Lula both getting some major time in this book; they’re two of my favorite characters in the series.  Morelli and Ranger are back, and there are new people to meet and greet as well, the most notable of which are Sally and Joyce.  I’m hoping they're both developed into recurring roles.

    I counted five plotlines to follow:

    a.)  Stephanie chasing down the FTA, Maxine.

    b.)  Morelli working on a secret case for the government.

    c.)  The body-part chopper-offer.

    d.)  The ardent arsonist.

    e.)  Retrieving Eddie’s love letters.

    You might think that means things get confusing, but they don't.

    As usual, the story is told in the first-person POV, Stephanie’s.  The chapters are moderate in length, 16 of them covering 313 pages.  The pacing is quick, despite the requisite “running around in circles” for a while.  As always, the book’s title has nothing to do with the story.

    I liked the phrase “erotica non grata”; I’ll have to work that into a review somewhere down the line.  Ditto for Lula’s favorite phrase “Damn skippy!”  The musical nods to Savage Garden and Metallica were neat.   For me, the real fun in any Stephanie Plum novel is the witty banter and snarky observations, and in that respect, Four To Score did not disappoint.  This was a fun, fast, easy read.

    There’s a bunch of cussing, and one torrid roll in the hay.  If such things offend you, this isn’t your kind of series.  We also should mention the 7-foot transvestite.  I’m reading this series in order, but frankly, I don’t think that’s necessary.  Stephanie and Joe Morelli still have relationship issues, and I'm guessing that will go on for quite a few more books.  Four To Score is a standalone story, as well as part of a series.

Excerpts...

    She blinked.  “I lost a finger.  Well, I didn’t actually lose it.  It was on the kitchen counter.  I took it to the hospital and got it sewed back on.”

    I had an instant vision of her finger lying on the kitchen counter.  Little black dots danced in front of my eyes, and I felt sweat pop out on my upper lip.  “I’m sorry!”

    “It was an accident,” she said.  “An accident.”

     “Which finger was it?”

    “The middle finger.”

    “Oh man, that’s my favorite finger.”  (pg. 24 )

    The rain stopped halfway home, and Trenton showed no sign of relief from the heat.  The hydrocarbon level was high enough to etch glass, and the highways hummed with road rage.  Air conditioners were failing, dogs had diarrhea, laundry mildewed in hampers, and sinus cavities filled with cement.  If the barometric pressure dropped any lower everyone’s guts would be sucked through the soles of their feet into the bowels of the earth.  (pg. 200)

 Why deal with unpleasantness today when you could get hit by a bus tomorrow?   (pg. 137)

    The quibbles are minor.  Maxine-the-FTA chooses to tease her ex-boyfriend Eddie by sending him a series of coded messages about the stuff he wants returned.  Neither Eddie nor Stephanie are any good at puzzle-solving so they enlist the aid of others.  It would’ve been fun if the reader could try to decipher those messages as well, but we’re never shown any of the codes.  I was mildly bummed.

    The ending is a mixed bag.  On one hand, the five plotlines all get tied up nicely, and all parties receive their just desserts.  On the other hand, everything gets resolved in one chapter, and that felt a bit rushed to me.

    But enough nitpicking.  Four To Score was a light and delightful read for me, which was exactly what I was looking for.  Books 5 and 6 are on my TBR shelf, waiting their turns.

    8 Stars.  Wikipedia adds a pair of droll statistics to their posts on the early Stephanie Plum books: the number of FTA’s in each story, and the number of vehicles Stephanie manages to ruin each time.  They stop doing so somewhere up in the teens of the book numbers, but here the stats were: 3 FTA’s, 2 Car-Deaths.  I'm thinking of starting to include those in these reviews.

Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis

   1922; 370 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Laurels : None listed, but Wikipedia notes that the controversy that Babbitt sparked was influential in the decision to award the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature to Sinclair Lewis.  Genre : Satire; Highbrow Lit; Americana.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    Any way you look at it, George F. Babbitt is living the good life.  He’s got a loving wife and three darling kids: two daughters, Verona and Tinka; and a son, the eldest, Ted, in high school, and who George plans to send to Law School when he graduates, something that wasn’t an option for him when he was growing up.

    George does all the correct things he’s supposed to do as a fine, upstanding citizen of the Midwest city of Zenith.  He’s a diehard Republican and very much anti-union.  He’s a dues-paying member of the Elks, the Boosters Club, the Zenith Athletic Club, and the Chamber of Commerce.  He attends the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church, pastored by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew, who enlightens George as to what he should think about things like disarmament, tariffs, and Germany.

    He plays golf, albeit not very well.  He hobnobs only with other fine, upstanding men, and scratches their backs, if you know what I’m saying, in exchange for them scratching his.  His best friend is Paul Riesling, an old college chum, whom George admires very much.

    If George F. Babbitt isn’t the richest or most influential man in Zenith, it’s not from a lack of effort.  He’s comfortably middle-class, and he’s sure all the rich, upstanding men in Zenith hold him in high regard.

    But every once in a while lately, a vague feeling of discontent tries to nudge its way into George’s thoughts.  He dreams about getting away from it all by going camping with his friend Paul up in the rustic woods of Maine.  Just to escape for a bit from the stress and hubbub of making money and raising a family in Zenith.

    Thank goodness such rebellious thoughts never stay long.  Failure to strictly abide by the set-in-stone middle-class standards could impact his fine, upstanding status in the community.

What’s To Like...

    Babbitt was published in 1922.  The Great War was over, so was the post-war recession, and optimism ran rampant in the United States, particularly if you were a white middle-class businessman.   The story is set in the fictional city of Zenith, somewhere in the Midwest.

    I was impressed with Sinclair Lewis’s depiction of life in the early 1920’s.  Prohibition was in full-swing, but home-brewed beer and alcohol was easy to come by if you had connections.  Air-conditioning was non-existent, so a lot of houses had a “sleeping porch” (I slept in one once!) to cope with the summer heat.  There are milk trucks, paper-carriers, and a furnace man.  The trolley was the main way to get around the city, and you took the train to go to another city or state.  Cars were certainly common, but you had to “crank the Ford” to get it started.

    Paradoxically, I was amazed at how much society back then resembles today’s social/political climate.  George is vexed because his kids don’t seem to listen to him.  The churches feel it’s their place to influence elections, and evangelists are mostly interested in making money.  Cocaine-use is a problem and business executives perpetrate shady deals.  Anti-immigrant sentiment runs high and “fake news” is cited when one doesn’t like what’s written in the newspapers (see the second excerpt below).  Science is viewed as being in opposition to religion, and leftist “long-hairs” are leading kids astray.  Despite Prohibition, morals are loosening, probably due to fads such as Feminism and New Ageism leading people astray.

    The main theme of Babbitt concerns the consequences of “going against the flow”, in terms of marital fidelity, politics, and religion.  The Status Quo may be corrupt, but it’s also extremely powerful.  The “rebels” of Society might offer tempting alternatives, but in the end, they’re just as shallow and phony as The Establishment.  You step out of line at your own risk.

    There were a fair number of typos in the book, which is not uncommon for a “Public Domain” edition.  Most of them were word splits: motor-cycle, basket-ball, high lights, week-end, to-night, etc.  and they might be just scanning inaccuracies.  It’s also possible that English grammar was slightly different a century ago.  Languages evolve.

    I liked the “lingo” that Sinclair Lewis uses - slangy idioms like “snoway talkcher father”, “pleasmeech”, “Jever”, and “frinstance”.  It sets the down-home tone of the novel quite effectively.  I enjoyed the séance, and chuckled at the mention of Theosophy and Pentecostals.  I learned a new Latin phrase, “hinc illae lacrimae”, which roughly means “that is what those tears were for”, and I felt that comparing the Babbitts/McKelveys dinner date with that of the Babbitts/Overbrooks encapsulates the whole message of the book.

    There is a small amount of cussing, mostly in the dialogue, and about what you’d expect from fine, upstanding middle-aged men.  There’s one roll in the hay, and it’s done off-screen.  The pacing is somewhat slow, but that’s the norm for a typical highbrow book, and it’s balanced by Sinclair Lewis's excellent writing.  The ending is both hopeful and cynical.  Giving more details about that would entail spoilers.

Kewlest New Word ...

Zob (n., slang) : a good-for-nothing; a fool.  (a Yankeeism).

Others: En brosse (adj.; phrase); Picaresque (adj.); Supercilious (adj.); Credulous (adj.).

Kindle Details...

    The “public domain” version of Babbitt is always free at Amazon.  There are various other e-book editions available, each of them has assorted extras.  The most expensive of these was $5.38.  I went with the freebie.   

Excerpts...

    He stood before the covered saucer of raspberry jelly, and grumbling over a clammy cold boiled potato.  He was thinking.  It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practiced it was futile; that heaven as portrayed by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was neither probable nor very interesting; that he hadn’t much pleasure out of making money; that it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children.  What was it all about?  What did he want?  (loc. 3489)

    He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot.  He was sorry when his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls had been hungry, he was troubled.  “All lies and fake figures,” he said, but in a doubtful croak.  (loc. 3958)

 “Say! I know what was the trouble!  Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze last night.”  (loc. 2281)

    I don’t have anything significant to quibble about.  There were a poopload of characters to meet and keep track of.  The book is heavy on character studies and light on action and adventure.  But those are things I expect from a highbrow novel, and let’s face it, it is unlikely that a middle-class, middle-aged white suburbanite would have many thrills and spills in his life.

    What impresses me is the immediate and significant impact that Babbitt had on the American public.  It is unsurprising that his caustic and poignant depiction of the average businessman of the time sparked heated debate between his fans and detractors, which of course resulted in it becoming an instantly bestseller.

    Indeed, because of it, “Babbitt” is now an official word in our language (Really.  It’s in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Google it), meaning “a materialistic and complacent businessman conforming to the standards of his social set”.   Ditto for the milquetoast practice thereof, which are called “Babbittry”.

    8½ Stars.  One last tidbit about Babbitt.  J.R.R. Tolkien was so influenced by the book that he called his newly-imagined Halfling creatures “hobbits” as a tribute to it.  The Bilbo Baggins character we meet at the beginning of The Hobbit, before he gets corrupted by going on an adventure with the dwarves, is a perfect and deliberate example of a Babbitt.

    So says Wikipedia in its post on the novel.  Curiously, this is totally absent from their post on the word "Hobbit".