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Topic: Main Street (novel)


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In the News (Thu 17 Dec 09)

  
  Main Street - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Main Street is the generic name (and sometimes the official name) of the primary business street of a small town in the United States, Canada, some parts of Scotland and also in some countries in central Europe (e.g.
Main Street is the name of a community revitalization program begun by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the late 1970s.
The core of the Main Street philosophy is the preservation of the historic built environment by engaging in historic preservation.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Main_street   (645 words)

  
 Main Street (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The satirical novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis was published in 1920.
Main Street is important for a number of reasons--among them is the portrayal of a strong female protagonist, and what one might now call feminist themes by a male writer.
Main Street was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, but was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who overturned the jury's decision.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Main_Street_(novel)   (591 words)

  
 Main Street Resources : : News
Mavericks on Main Street — By Ellyn Spragins - May 2004 - Two financiers are rewriting the rules of Wall Street by recruiting entrepreneurs to invest their money and expertise in other entrepreneurs...
Main Street Resources Acquires Artex International — August 2004 - Private equity firm Main Street Resources, headquartered in Westport, announced the acquisition of Artex International Inc. by its...
For Main Street Resources, It's People — By Joe Christinat - November 3, 2003 - Perhaps the last thing you'd expect from a group of accountants and economists is for them to form a people- oriented private equity firm.
www.mainstreet-resources.com /news.html   (533 words)

  
 F.A.Q.
In Main Street, Lewis portrays Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, as a typical small town in the American Middle West, "Its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere." His keen observations and attention to detail convinced many Americans that he was writing about their towns.
The novel ends as he prays for the United States to be a "moral nation" and simultaneously admires the legs of a new choir singer.
This juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane is a hallmark of this novel.
www.english.ilstu.edu /separry/sinclairlewis/faq1.html   (1299 words)

  
 WowEssays.com - Main Street
Main Street Lewis, Sinclair Copyright 1948 David Snow Paragraph 1 The protagonist in this story is Carol Kennicott.
Carol is identified as the protagonist because she’s the main character and she has a conflict to overcome.
Paragraph 10 In the novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, the theme is that of a young America coming up into the 20th century and the obstacles that women of the time had to face.
www.wowessays.com /dbase/aa5/vdj186.shtml   (1324 words)

  
 SparkNotes: Main Street: Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Throughout the novel, Lewis attacks the narrow-mindedness, mediocrity, and conformity of small-town America in the early twentieth century.
The main conflict of the novel stems from Carol's desire to change the town in the face of the town's resistance to such change.
As the heroine of the novel, Carol reflects the spirit of the Progressive movement in America in the early twentieth century, under the banner of which many people took an interest in social issues such as the labor movement and the suffrage movement.
www.sparknotes.com /lit/mainstreet/themes.html   (1512 words)

  
 The New York Review of Books: The Romance of Sinclair Lewis
Main Street is dedicated to James Branch Cabell and Joseph Hergesheimer, the two classiest novelists of the day.
There are events, some more dramatic than others, but the main character is Main Street and the intense descriptions of the place are most effective, while the people themselves tend to be so many competing arias, rendered by a superb mimic usually under control.
Main Street with its two-story brick shops, its story-and-a-half wooden residences, its muddy expanse from concrete walk to walk, its huddle of Fords and lumber-wagons, was too small to absorb her.
www.nybooks.com /articles/2805   (6554 words)

  
 Main Street Summary & Essays - Sinclair Lewis   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
Main Street, originally published in 1920, is the story of a sophisticated young woman who moves to a small town in the American Midwest in 1912 and struggles against the small-minded culture of the citizens who live there.
Main Street was an immediate, phenomenal success when it was published in 1920, making it the book of the century up to that point.
It was the first in a string of novels written by Sinclair Lewis in the 1920s, including Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and Elmer Gantry, that established him as one of the preeminent authors of American literature.
www.enotes.com /main-street   (283 words)

  
 SparkNotes: Main Street: Context
While many of Lewis's other novels are written in an optimistic tone, Main Street is a bit darker, satirizing small-town life of early twentieth- century America.
Main Street is written in the same vein as Sherwood Anderson's novel Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and Edgar Lee Masters' poem collection Spoon River Anthology (1915), both of which also sought to attack the romantic myths of small-town life.
Main Street is seen through the eyes of Carol Kennicott, a young woman from Minneapolis who marries a small-town doctor and settles in his hometown.
www.sparknotes.com /lit/mainstreet/context.html   (640 words)

  
 Amazon.de:  Main Street (Dover Thrift Editions): English Books   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
Main Street is a mercilessly realistic picture of 20th century America - its desires and whims, foibles, passions and hates.
"Main Street" is, however, first and foremost a work of literature, which tells the story of a young woman, Carol Kennicott, who has to come to grips with life in this small town, whether she likes it or not.
MAIN STREET is directed to the small towns, ARROWSMITH to the profession of Medicine, ELMER GANTRY about the superficiality of some preachers and how they can be robbers as well as men of God, and then there's BABBITT, which is about the small time business man who has no moral scruples.
www.amazon.de /exec/obidos/ASIN/0486406555   (2081 words)

  
 Main Street Study Guide & Literature Chapter Summaries
This includes a historical context essay, a box comparing the time or place the novel was written to modern Western culture, a critical overview essay, and excerpts from critical essays on the novel.
To further aid the student in studying and enjoying each novel, information on media adaptations is provided, as well as reading suggestions for works of fiction and nonfiction on similar themes and topics.
For older works, this section includes a history of how the novel was first received and how perceptions of it may have changed over the years; for more recent novels, direct quotes from early reviews may also be included.
www.bookrags.com /studyguide-mainstreet/copy.html   (2015 words)

  
 SparkNotes: Main Street: Chapters 1–3
While Carol's dreaminess may be one of her main character flaws, she still possesses many admirable traits, such as her enthusiasm for life and optimistic spirit.
In the preface to the novel, Lewis writes, "This is America—a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves.
While perhaps the primary theme in Main Street regards Carol's rebellion against Gopher Prairie, the secondary theme of marriage examines the realities and compromises of marriage—compared to the illusions of romance—throughout the novel.
www.sparknotes.com /lit/mainstreet/section1.html   (1365 words)

  
 SINCLAIR LEWIS
By eschewing a main character who would show up the subjects of his satire with clever retorts and sparkling wit, Lewis avoided the trap that ensnares most writers of satirical protest, who use their protagonists to take potshots at buffoons.
These novels are much less successful as explorations of character and motivation than they are, to paraphrase Lingeman, as works of literary sociology, and fiction was perhaps not the most appropriate vehicle with which to impart the world Lewis observed.
Main Street, for all its popularity, was a strain on Lewis's rambunctious, aggressive imagination because the figure to be dissected with his knives of disappointment is an airy, misplaced woman, Carol Kennicott, to be dropped down in a Midwestern village bearing the name of Gopher Prairie.
members.tripod.com /arlindo_correia/020502.html   (12412 words)

  
 South of Main Street by Robert Gately
Main Street was an almost impenetrable barrier between the two groups of people.
South of Main Street is the story of the Henry and Mary Wolff and their two daughters, Robin and Sharon.
South of Main Street is one of the most touching novels I've ever read, and Henry is as beloved a character as you're ever likely to meet.
www.sun-rising-poetry.com /SOM.htm   (2401 words)

  
 Main Street - Sinclair Lewis - Penguin Group (USA)
The first significant success of America's first Nobel prize-winning author, Sinclair Lewis's Main Street was notable for shattering the uniquely American myth of the open, progressive-minded small town.
The novel centers on an idealistic young woman who marries a country doctor and settles in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.
Caught between her desires for social reform and individual happiness, Carol Kennicott reflects a whole country hesitating between a new sophistication and its traditional insularity.
us.penguingroup.com /nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_9780451526823,00.html   (138 words)

  
 Library of America: Sinclair Lewis: Main Street & Babbitt
Lewis began to work intensively on Main Street, a novel he had had in mind for several years, in November 1919, and he finished the first draft by February 27, 1920.
Main Street was published on October 23, 1920, by Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
He continued working on the novel after returning to London in January 1922, and when he arrived in New York in May 1922, he delivered the finished typescript to Harcourt.
www.loa.org /volume.jsp?RequestID=73§ion=notes   (987 words)

  
 Booknotes
After "Main Street" was a big success, he went to Europe, and he went all over Europe.
This Main Street runs right through all America, and this town of Gopher Prairie sets the standards for all America.
Then he -- he went through a -- he was developing a system for writing novels, and he -- so he -- after he did the research, he filled this notebook full of stuff.
www.booknotes.org /Transcript?ProgramID=1666   (6981 words)

  
 Main Street Revisited - James J. Thompson, Jr
Although that novel is little read today, it was all the rage in the 1920s, especially among dyspeptic intellectuals who lamented the cultural desolation of their homeland.
Main Street soared to popularity on the strength of the decade's penchant for "debunking." H.L. Mencken and a host of lesser imitators slashed away at the American ethos, chortling among themselves as they revealed the clay feet of national heroes, exposed the tawdry underside of patriotic ideals, and demolished the verities cherished by Mencken's "booboisie."
Carol's mission fails, but Sinclair Lewis' revenge on his hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, succeeded: The term Main Street entered the lexicon as a trope for the stultifying drabness and hypocrisy of small-town life.
www.worldandi.com /specialreport/1987/May/Sa12933.htm   (316 words)

  
 The American Street » Blog Archive » The Novel-Writing Class
I plan to try to explain why there are so few political novels to begin with and why the ones we have tend not to be written by novelists but by journalists (and in the case of All the King’s Men, by a poet).
And I think that American “political” novels have tended to follow their example, rather than being the kind of behind the scenes soap operas of the lives of the high and mighty.
Street vandals and content thieves claiming the material as their own will be wedgied
www.reachm.com /amstreet/archives/2005/10/30/the-novel-writing-class   (1166 words)

  
 Main Street Analysis
Title: Main Street Author: Sinclair Lewis Synopsis: The story centers around Carol Kennicott, a woman who is from Minneapolis, but moves to the small town of Gopher Prairie when she gets married.
The apparent contrast made between Carol and the other characters was important because it further exemplified the fact that she did not fit in with the citizens of Gopher Prairie and that she struggled to fit in while struggling to keep her own identity.
Identify a flashback from the novel and explain the effect of the use of this device.
www.roachnotes.com /sth/englishii/novels/mainstreetdarilek.htm   (1432 words)

  
 Main Street
Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, published in 1920, was not expected to be a commercial success.
Main Street also deals with the struggles in developing a new relationship – whether private as in a marriage or public as with society – and the compromises necessary to adapt an individual personality to make the relationship successful.
Main Street has been discussed as "the courtship of Carol and Gopher Prairie." Explain, using examples from the text as support.
www.teachervision.fen.com /reading/activity/3711.html   (9534 words)

  
 Amazon.com: Main Street : The Story of Carol Kennicott (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics): Books: Sinclair ...   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
The bulk of the novel, which, considering the context, could be considered picaresque, consists of Carol's haphazard attempts to reform the obdurate, immobile mindsets of the citizens of her new home.
Main Street is a tad longer than it needs to be, and a bit tedious at times.
Lewis's MAIN STREET is about a newly volatile mix of small-town people groping toward a constructive social equilibrium for Gopher Prairie.
www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140189017?v=glance   (2791 words)

  
 Free-TermPapers.com - Main Street
Main Street Sinclair Lewis was a queer boy, always an outsider, lonely.
In this novel, many themes are presented such as the use of satire as an urge to reform, family life of the period as portrayed in the novel, and World War I and its impact on the main streets of America.
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis satirizes the small town lives and values of Americans through the idealistic view of Carl Kennicott.
www.free-termpapers.com /tp/48/tyc28.shtml   (2919 words)

  
 Main Street - Sinclair Lewis - Penguin Classics
Sinclair Lewis's barbed portrait of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, shattered the myth of the American Middle West as God's Country and became a symbol of the cultural narrow-mindedness and smug complacency of small towns everywhere.
At the center of the novel is Carol Kennicott, the wife of a town doctor, who dreams of initiating social reforms and introducing art and literature to the community.
The range of reactions to Main Street when it was published in 1920 was extraordinary, reflecting the ambivalence in the novel itself and Lewis's own mixed feelings about his hometwon of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the prototype for Gopher Prairie.
us.penguinclassics.com /nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,10_9780140189018,00.html   (134 words)

  
 Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing, Vol 9, No 5   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
GTE Main Street is both a creator of content and a packager of content licensed from others.
GTE Main Street sees itself in competition with other TV channels—CNN, the weather channel, QVC, the Home Shopping Club, etc. What it offers is instant access to the content it carries, whereas others fit it in during their broadcast day.
As Myrick states, Main Street is “at the dirt road before the entrance ramp to the information superhighway.” That is, we submit, not only a lot closer than most of us have had the opportunity to be, but also a necessary first step.
www.seyboldreports.com /SRDP/0dp9/D0905001.HTM   (988 words)

  
 National Register of Historic Places - Original Main Street Historic District
Main Street, between South Eighth and North Third streets, Sauk Centre, Stearns County
The Original Main Street Historic District in Sauk Centre is significant for its close association with Sinclair Lewis’ 1920 novel Main Street, which introduced the profoundly influential concept of “Main Street” as a way of analyzing, visualizing and symbolizing the American small town.
Sauk Centre’s Original Main Street Historic District encompasses 90 contributing buildings, including single-family dwellings, hotels, financial institutions, commercial structures, a post office, library, religious structures, theaters, manufacturing facilities, a park and railroad-related structures.
nrhp.mnhs.org /property_overview.cfm?PropertyID=25   (127 words)

  
 eBay - Book: Main Street (ISBN: 0140189017)   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
Sinclair Lewis's best-selling 1920 novel was controversial in its time because of its gritty refusal to romanticize small-town life--one of America's fondest myths.
The range of reactions to MAIN STREET when it was published in 1920 was extraordinary, reflecting the ambivalence in the novel itself and Lewis's own mixed feelings about his hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the prototype for Gopher Prairie.
And yet this novel, with all its vacillations and ambiguities of artistic purpose, has a reach of greatness to it, a sense of human softness and helpless witness.
product.ebay.com /Main-Street_ISBN_0140189017_W0QQfvcsZ1392QQsoprZ35993   (518 words)

  
 The Doomsday Prophets on Main Street - The Boston Globe
The inside of the former flower shop on Plymouth's Main Street looks hardly promising, with its drop ceiling, walls covered with faux-oak paneling and latticework, and empty walk-in refrigerators that once held lilies and roses.
Members look for white elephants to refurbish, ramshackle houses in residential neighborhoods that they can move into or rundown storefronts on main streets in depressed towns where they can set up one of their cottage industries.
The group's real estate expansion has been opportune: It bought its first Main Street storefront in Plymouth in 1999 for $174,000, and the 2005 property assessment is $646,500.
www.boston.com /news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/10/23/the_doomsday_prophets_on_main_street   (3437 words)

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