Babbit as a Compliment?

I was reading the obituaries in the Globe recently, when a weird simile jumped out at me. A suburban car dealer, James Kennedy, is described as being "l(L)ike a character from a Sinclair Lewis novel". I don't know how that could be considered a great compliment. Sinclair Lewis described small town life with a jaundiced eye. His first big success, Main Street, was banned by a small town. A latter novel, Babbit is a jaundiced portrayal of a businessman. Lewis was well hated in his time because he understood the small town world and all of hypocracies and contradictions from the inside. He was not some cosmopolitan tourist but a local.