Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis' satirical novel is set in the fictional Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. The novel is very descriptive, and although coastal dwellers may find the descriptions of a small midwestern town amusing, I found it a little creepy to read a nearly exact description of the hamlet in North Dakota in which I spent much of my childhood. Lewis isn't lying. For better or for worse, this is small-town America. Now, as Lewis was writing satirically, he accurately skewered most of the negative aspects of living in a small town. I'm sure other writers have written on the positive aspects of small town culture, and for the sake of balance I should probably read one...but I won't do it anytime soon. I'm still enjoying shaking my head at Gopher Prairie.

The main character, Carol Kennicott, moves to Gopher Prairie, her husband's hometown, after her marriage. She struggles for years as a person whom the townspeople perceive as an outsider, although she wants to be considered an insider. I too moved to a small town and was mystified at the insistence many people had upon labeling me a newcomer. Even after two years of attending the small school, I was referred to as "the new girl". After two years of being the new girl, the prospects of ever being considered an insider were bleak. I can sympathize with Carol. Unlike Carol, however, I turned 18 and left. If I had been born into the place, had been accepted as one of the community from birth, I may have been happy to come back after college and make a life in that small town. In that way, I can understand the residents of Gopher Prairie and the residents of my own small town, and their enjoyment of their community. Unfortunately, their protective instincts toward their community are a double-edged sword, as they use those instincts to excuse their reticence to accept people who genuinely want to belong.

Oh, and last week I went to Minneapolis. I'll admit that I imagined the residents of Gopher Prairie, admiring the sleek Euro designs as they wandered through Ikea, or buying trendy clothes at the Mall of America just to impress their friends back home. And then I went back to my house, in a town that is not tiny, where people do not tell me that I don't belong.

Gulliver's Travels

I was feeling so refreshed after Sense and Sensibility that I decided another light-hearted choice was in order. Unfortunately, I thought Gulliver's Travels would fit the bill.  A shipwrecked castaway lands in Lilliput, a land of tiny people. Plus, it's a satire of Robinson Crusoe-style travelogues. That's funny, right? Sure, for about twenty pages. After that, it's repetitive. And did I mention it's also a religious and political satire? That might be amusing, or at least illuminating, for someone who hasn't already analyzed the flaws of various political systems and the petty religious disagreements that plague societies. But for someone as bombastically fantastic as me, well... ha! I sound like Gulliver in Lilliput!
     Okay, Jonathan Swift had a great idea.  I do enjoy the fact that he lampoons pretty much everything, but it got old after a while.  Also, Gulliver's development from an optimistic humanist into a pompous misanthrope (I stole that phrase because it's perfect) seemed unnecessarily cynical. There's a difference between accepting people with all their faults and assuming from the outset that every human is horribly degraded, although in 1726 that outlook was probably par for the Protestant course...and also par for the Irish course.  Perhaps Swift (an Anglo-Irish protestant) can be excused due to his double dose of environmental pessimism.
      My linguistics nerdiness also found the names of his imaginary countries to be irksome. All the words were English nonsense, following the phonological and morphological rules of English.  It would have been more plausible had he created words inspired by other languages.  While of these sounds more like a foreign country: Glubbdubbdribb or Ngokumbu? Brobdingnag or Zhao Shang? Luggnagg or Schnezitskoya? And I bet you can guess which continents would be likely to contain Ngokumbu, Zhao Shang and Schnezitskoya, respectively.  Still, Swift's purpose was to lampoon his own culture and not others, so I can see why he would choose English-based names at the expense of realism.  Actually, considering that he has Gulliver explore lands of minute humans, talking horses and flying islands, he obviously wasn't too concerned about realism in the first place. And lest you think I disapprove completely of all his invented words, I am quite grateful to Jonathan Swift for giving us English-speakers the word yahoo.  English is known for its belief that it's impossible to have too many synonyms for one thing.  I, for one, am especially emphatic that it is impossible for English to have too many synonyms for barbarian.  On those days when your children are wilder than philistines, and such epithets as huns, savages, beasts, boors, and feral spawn have lost their magic, you can always resort to... yahoo.

Stats:
Hero: Gulliver
Anti-hero: Gulliver
Yes, it's all about: Gulliver
Why must there be so many descriptions of his: bathroom habits
The above is almost as bad as the descriptions of: the giants' bathroom habits
There was a lot of: nonsense, improbability, satire of minor political events from the 1720s which even history buffs  are unlikely to remember today
There should have been more: merciless cutting by the editor
This book makes you want to: stop reading it
This book makes you glad you don't have to: read it again