Main Street is a novel by Sinclair Lewis about life in a small Midwestern American town. It follows a young woman who moves to Gopher Prairie and confronts its narrow-mindedness and social expectations. It is worth listening to for its sharp, critical portrait of provincial life and its questions about individual freedom.
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Cover illustration generated by AI.
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
MAIN STREET By Sinclair Lewis To James Branch Cabell and Joseph Hergesheimer This is America—a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves. The town is, in our tale, called “Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.” But its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois, and not very differently would it be told Up York State or in the Carolina hills. Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford car might stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters. What Ole Jenson the grocer says to Ezra Stowbody the banker is the new law for London, Prague, and the unprofitable isles of the sea; whatsoever Ezra does
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