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Probably no aspect of Babbitt has prompted so many different opinions as has Lewis\'s literary style. At its best, it\'s vivid, fast moving, and funny. One favorite technique is to use overly grand language (often capitalized) to show that Babbitt\'s life isn\'t nearly as heroic as Babbitt thinks it is--as when Lewis tells us that Babbitt feels his underwear represents the God of Progress.
Lewis\'s greatest gift, perhaps, is his ability to mimic his characters\' slang-filled speech and parody their ridiculous writings. Babbitt\'s business letters--\"I know you\'re interested in getting a house, not merely a place where you hang up the old bonnet but a love-nest for the wife and kiddies\"--are strings of enthusiastic, incoherent cliches. And there are equally effective parodies of correspondence school advertisements, T. Cholmondeley Frink\'s dreadful poetry, John Jennison Drew\'s syrupy sermons, and the mystical nonsense spouted by Opal Emerson Mudge of the American New Thought League.
Despite Lewis\'s gifts as a parodist, however, many readers have criticized his writing. Even at its most effective, Lewis\'s satire is seldom subtle. And too often, some readers feel, his strengths become his weaknesses. He skillfully mimics the speech of the 1920s, but dialogue so dependent on the slang of one era can seem out-of-date to later generations. And Lewis is so adept at imitating Babbitt and his friends that he tends to let the imitations go on too long, running the risk of boring the reader just as Babbitt himself bores his audiences with his speeches.
Another flaw, some readers feel, is that Lewis is so eager to give us a broad look at life in Zenith that much of Babbitt--the discussions of the importance of automobiles, for example, or the role of women--reads more like journalism or sociology than like a novel; we get the accurate but superficial acquaintance a newspaper or magazine article might give us, not the depth of understanding a great novel would provide.
Still, Lewis\'s style reflects his familiarity with Babbitt, Zenith, and a part of America that really hadn\'t been set down in fiction until he came along. And if Lewis\'s novel occasionally reads like something his main character might have written, that may help us know George Babbitt all the better.
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