Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [0]
FROM THE PAGES OF MAIN STREET
Title Page
Copyright Page
SINCLAIR LEWIS
THE WORLD OF SINCLAIR LEWIS AND MAIN STREET
Introduction
CHAPTER I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
CHAPTER 2
II
CHAPTER 3
II
III
IV
CHAPTER 4
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III
IV
CHAPTER 5
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III
IV
V
CHAPTER 6
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III
IV
V
VI
CHAPTER 7
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III
IV
CHAPTER 8
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III
CHAPTER 9
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III
IV
V
VI
CHAPTER 10
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III
IV
V
VI
CHAPTER II
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III
IV
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VI
VII
VIII
CHAPTER 12
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III
IV
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
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III
IV
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VI
VII
VIII
IX
CHAPTER 16
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III
IV
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VI
CHAPTER 17
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III
IV
V
CHAPTER 18
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IV
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VI
VII
CHAPTER 19
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VI
VII
VIII
CHAPTER 20
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III
IV
V
CHAPTER 21
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III
IV
V
CHAPTER 22
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III
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VI
VII
VIII
CHAPTER 23
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IV
V
CHAPTER 24
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III
IV
V
CHAPTER 25
II
CHAPTER 26
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CHAPTER 27
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CHAPTER 28
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III
IV
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VI
VII
CHAPTER 29
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III
IV
V
VI
CHAPTER 30
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III
IV
CHAPTER 31
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III
IV
V
CHAPTER 32
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IV
CHAPTER 33
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VI
CHAPTER 34
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CHAPTER 35
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III
CHAPTER 36
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III
lV
CHAPTER 37
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IV
V
CHAPTER 38
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VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
CHAPTER 39
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IV
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VI
VII
VIII
ENDNOTES
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
FOR FURTHER READING
FROM THE PAGES OF MAIN STREET
This is America—a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves. (page 2)
The days of pioneering, of lassies in sunbonnets, and bears killed with axes in piney clearings, are deader now than Camelot; and a rebellious girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American Middlewest. (page 3)
He lifted her, carried her into the house, and with her arms about his neck she forgot Main Street. (page 56)
“Miss Sherwin’s trying to repair the holes in this barnacle-covered ship of a town by keeping busy bailing out the water. And Pollock tries to repair it by reading poetry to the crew! Me, I want to yank it up on the ways, and fire the poor bum of a shoemaker that built it so it sails crooked, and have it rebuilt right, from the keel up.” (page 120)
“I went to a denominational college and learned that since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it.” (page 161)
“We want a more conscious life. We’re tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We’re tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We’re tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We’re tired of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, ‘Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we’ll produce it; trust us; we’re wiser than you’. For ten thousand years they’ve said that. We want our Utopia now—and we’re going to try our hands at it.” (page 207)
“I wonder if you can understand the ‘fun’ of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!” (page 230)
Aunt Bessie was a bridge over whom the older women, bearing gifts of counsel and the ignorance of experience, poured into Carol’s island of reserve. (page 253)
The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman. (page 270)
“When I die the world will be annihilated, as far as I’m concerned.” (page 281)
There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn’t a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble. (page 379)
“You must live up to the popular code if you believe in it; but if you don’t believe in it, then you must