Yes

I am a rabid re-watcher/re-reader. I am mad for the book, Babbit, by Sinclair Lewis, and have read it repetitively over the years. If you haven't read it once, read it, then read it again. I used to be a public high school teacher in Philadelphia and one year, I had the opportunity to use Babbit to teach the Gilded Age; the book covers everything from provincialism, conspicuous consumption, fads of the day, Social Darwinism, and good old-fashioned bigotry. I was like, "Eff Great Gatsby." It felt so deliciously subversive. To use it to teach, and not to read it just for pleasure? It's like knowing how to use wine. Sancerre by itself is pleasurable, Sancerre + a perfectly aged Clochette goat cheese from Loire, will change your life. It's so powerful.
I was always always re-reading it because I was constantly picking up something new and I loved the way Sinclair worded things. One of the biggest pleasures in my life was when my roommate's mother, Shaula, got a Master Violet Ray "off the trash." It was a fad in the time of Babbit. Basically, it was an electroshock therapy piece of quackery. AND, it was in working order. Old girl charged me $90.00 for something she got off the trash. My Master Violet Ray came with several attachments: the general electrode, the double chin electrode, the hair rake... the booklet said that I could have purchased the anal electrode, the vaginal electrode, and my personal favorite, the double eye electrode... Depending on the electrode, it treated everything from gleet, lumbago, vertigo, syphilis, dandruff, falling hair, wrinkles, female troubles, and fat necks...
A while after I had made the purchase, I re-read Babbit. A new scene had come to life and I UNDERSTOOD the mockery much better. Babbit goes to a fussy beauty salon and felt guilty as he walked by a sensible barber shop. But, he wanted to feel like one of the pretty people and hey, he had the money to burn. In passing, Sinclair mentions him walking through a room full of men getting Master Violet Ray treatments. I burst out into laughter at the room of collective male vanity and conspicuous consumption. And I laughed even harder because I know the Master Violet Ray hurts! I once held my little brother down to "treat him for carbunckles," until I smelled burning skin.
If I hadn't have re-read the book, I would not have "gotten" that detail, which made it so much more wry and funny. And then, I got to take my machine to class and bring the book to life. "Who wants to try this thing out on Miss Billick?"

Andrea

Cherry Hill, NJ