I read about 62 pages of Babbitt off and on to Claudia in our first leg of the St. Louis trip. There was a lot of description in the first couple chapters which was a bit off putting but did remind me of how the houses of people who were newly married in the 1920’s looked and smelt by the time I was a kid in the 1950’s. Babbitt’s “Zenith City” isn’t Duluth. Its going on a million people ten times the size our our fair town. He’s a man too shallow to realize he’s not an honest fellow……a little too extreme…..but that seems to be the point for Sinclair Lewis. He was beating up middle class boosterism and self satisfaction.
We stopped by Claudia’s farm to see if the corn would be as high as an elephant’s eye come August. It looks unstoppable. Only tornados, hail, wind and other assorted weather disasters stand in the way. Good. We can keep those ethanol prices low.
I haven’t revisited the notes I wrote about yet. Not sure there’s that much rush and I haven’t quite figured out the best way to deal with them. I jotted them down many hours after my meeting and they are randomly recalled things I remember telling the troika. It too is six pages but not taken down on a legal pad. I jotted these down on a pocket sized notebook.
I won’t be shortchanging myself by leaving my son early to return home. Instead I’ll get up at 3AM on Tuesday and make the long trek home beginning in the early morning hours. Thirteen hours should give me an hour to spare unless the car breaks down……Cars don’t do that much these days. I hope Ottos don’t either.
Oh, last night in an Iowa City motel we watched “The Rake” mentioned in a post a few day’s back. Its on Netflix and its not the newer Fox version. It was the sixth of about sixteen total episodes. I think we hit the big plot point last night around which the remaining episodes will likely revolve. Our hero “Greene” is a cokehead Australian attorney who loves the fairer sex and has such bad judgement where they are concerned that most of his loves dump him for good reason. Still, they remain as fond of him as well as weary of his chaotic choices. He is the polar opposite of Babbitt. There is no feigned respectability, no smug superiority, only a virtuous self acknowledgement of his faults. He’s no hypocrite. He won’t lie. Last night he did and he’s not happy about it. I predict there will be hell to pay. OLD FOGEY VIEWING ALERT – Aussie television isn’t afraid of naked breasts.
Did I say before that his first client of the series ate a man?
