Main Street

Carol Kennicott brings books and plans to Gopher Prairie; the town prefers itself. Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street is small-city America as a velvet trap: booster talk, committee ladies, a woman who wanted a culture and got a street. Satire with a bruise — idealism, scorn, and the long patience of coming back. Lewis invented Gopher Prairie so America could look in the glass. Carol’s clubs, plays, and failures are funny until they are not; the street always has more votes than she does.