Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Published 1922 · 330 pages · 102,840 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Satire & Humor
How hard is Babbitt to read?
Babbitt scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
- 1920s American business vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
- Lewis's characteristic satirical rhythms.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- American conformity and dissatisfaction.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with Zenith social satire.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Babbitt's limitations are visible.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- Zenith, business, conformity carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- Lewis's satire is relentless.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- Babbitt returns but dissatisfaction remains.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Follows Babbitt through midlife crisis.
How Babbitt is regarded
Babbitt holds a literary regard score of 67 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.