Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/223

 Thanatopsis society, week-end parties with prohibition anecdotes and cocktails.

With comprehensive and mordant notation of detail coupled with a formidable power of generalization, Mr. Lewis shows how the city attempts to solve the problem of the small town. Between Gopher Prairie and Zenith, there is the material progress of a generation—a long march in America. But between Gopher Prairie and Zenith, civilization, according to this record—civilization, judged by the decisive tests—has not advanced an inch. The quantity of human happiness has not increased, nor has its quality improved. The people are not more open-minded nor more upright nor more beautiful nor more interesting. This is not the story of Carol; and the unrest among young women, which she so vividly illustrated, finds here no adequate representative. The "leading lady" does not lead. Myra Babbitt, Mrs. George F., is a woman, "definitely mature," who has, in a dull fashion, accepted her universe: "She was a good woman, a kind woman, a diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Tinka, her ten-year-old, was at all interested in her or entirely aware that she was alive"—a tragical sentence, applicable enough to the average middle-class American woman of forty. This is primarily a story of a man's unrest. This is the story of Babbitt, the graduate of a state university, the "swaddled American husband," the prosperous American broker, the Rotarian, the leading citizen, the consequence and cause of civilization as it exists