Babbitt’s Notebook

I recently read an American classic that I’d never had to read in school: Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis. In the first chapter, there is a  description of the contents of Babbitt’s pockets, which includes this passage:

Most significant of all was his loose-leaf pocket note-book, that modern and efficient note-book which contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudent memoranda of postal money orders which had reached their destinations months ago, stamps which had lost their mucilage, clippings of verses by T. Cholmondeley Frink and of the newspaper editorials from which Babbitt got his opinions and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do things which he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription–D.S.S.D.M.Y.P.D.F.

This is meant to be part of a very unflattering portrait of Babbitt as a conniving, conformist, prosperous business man who is dazzled by status symbols and modernity… but I kept thinking it sounded like a pretty nice notebook!

The book is set in the 1920s, when loose-leaf ring binders would have been a relatively new product– the first ring binders were invented in Europe in the 1890s, and patented in the US in 1904. I have an antique notebook in my collection that is probably similar to Babbitt’s, which I wrote about in this post: EBAY GEM: A DECORATOR’S POCKET LOOSELEAF NOTEBOOK. A couple of images are below:

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33237593@N06/5503793073/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33237593@N06/5504385394/

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