I’m early for everything. I love reading. I once had a job at a mall where I would walk past a book store on the way to my store. Combine these things and it’s not hard to imagine that I spent a lot of time killing a few extra minutes browsing shelves and adding to my library.
One of those books I bought a decade ago was Sinclair Lewis’ “Main Street.” I put it aside as I read many others over the years, but with my 2017 goal of getting through as many of my unread titles as possible, its time finally arrived.
The story follows Carol as she marries a man named Kennicott from a tiny town named Gopher Prairie that is far different than the city life she is used to. Lewis takes a satirical tone as she experiences what it’s like to show up with plans to remake a way of life that doesn’t want to change.
Kennicott himself is the perfect Gopher Prairie resident.
“If Kennicott were snatched from Gopher Prairie and instantly conveyed to a town leagues away, he would not realize it. He would go down apparently the same Main Street (almost certainly it would be called Main Street); in the same drug store he would see the same young man serving the same ice-cream soda to the same young woman with the same magazine and phonograph records under her arm. Not till he had climbed to his office and found another sign on the door, another Dr. Kennicott inside would he understand that something curious had presumably happened.”
It takes a while for the situation to get to Carol, but it does, and one day she asks confidant and fellow outcast Miles what he would do if people thought he were “affected.”
“Huh? Kick ’em in the face! Say, if I were a seagull, and all over silver, think I’d care what a pack of dirty seals thought about my flying?”
My only frustration with this story, and surely something Lewis intends, is that Carol doesn’t immediately show up and get everyone rallied around the rebuilding effort. In the first few pages, I genuinely thought that’s what the book was going to be. But the result was satisfying as little by little Gopher Prairie eats at Carol.
Perhaps the height of scoffing at the situation comes when she and Kennicott check out another Main Street in another town where there’s a street fair. They are there with another couple, and when Carol says oh hey, let’s ride the merry-go-round the response is easy to predict. Other guy: nah, but go ahead yourself. Other woman: nah, but go ahead yourself. Kennicott: well I guess we won’t. Carol: ADSSJLKASJGLJGOIAJS;JF;LJS09U0JIOSJALFKJ
My favorite line comes when Carol and Kennicott discuss the outing later and he asks what she thought of the town. She calls it an “ash heap” and he is SHOCKED.
Not my favorite book of all time, but I enjoyed it. And I probably should have read it in 2009.