Thirty years before Sinclair Lewis published&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Babbitt/dp/1619493039/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Babbitt</a>&nbsp;and set the standard for smug, self-important middle-class conformity, there was The Diary of a Nobody and Charles Pooter. Pooter, a senior bank clerk in the City renting a home in a London suburb of Holloway, encapsulates Victorian respectability, snobbery, and pretensions. Pooter nearly invariably gets the short end of the stick in his interactions with his two neighbors, Cummings and Gowings; his spendthrift, reckless son Lupin; and the various tradesmen and servants he attempts to bully. Slavishly devoted to his employer, Mr. Perkupp, Pooter tries without much luck to cut his son into the same mold. Instead, Lupin slacks at work and spends his nights engaged in amateur theatrics or carousing with his chums till all hours. What's a father to do?