| | This is the first of 12 reviews for the Book Awards Reading Challenge. Booth Tarkington (1869 - 1946) won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1919 novel The Magnificent Ambersons. It’s about the dissipation of a family fortune, as an Indiana town sprawls out to be become a sooty city. Like a realist should, Tarkington clearly renders the elements of a comfortable middle-class life, which I like because I’m apt to treat old novels as artifacts, looking for anthropological details. He describes the degradation of the quality of life caused by money-guys like developers, financiers, and manufacturers. But the fall of the family fortune and twists in plot are not due to profit-seekers and the economic and social pain they inflict, but to the characters of the family members themselves. They lack of vision. They sin out of selfish pride. Tarkington was a popular writer because his writing is optimistic and agreeable. There are passages of comedy, especially about the pomposity of youth. Tarkington apparently often used for the comic figure of the love-struck mooncalf. While the ending is dramatic, it is not plausible. But I’m glad I read it. Having read the tougher pre-Hemingway realists like Twain, Crane, Lewis, Wharton and a little James, I wanted a better sense of romantic realists like Tarkington and will also read some Hamlin Garland and William Dean Howells one of these days.
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| | Posted 1/26/2009 5:19 AM - 16 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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