book review: alice adams by booth tarkington

i wished after reading alice adams that my younger self had discovered it, ideally the version of me who was besotted with pride & prejudice and identified with the impudent, winsome miss elizabeth bennet. i doubt the young maureen would have identified with alice adams at first but it's hard not to see the parallels between elizabeth and alice: both have deep affection for their fathers, and somewhat difficult relationships with their simpering, preening mothers. both have siblings that embarrass them and make their lives difficult. and both novels feature cringe-worthy scenes of social distress. both girls are pretty; both girls are relatively poor in relation to the class of people with whom they associate. we all know how elizabeth's story ends; my heart sang each time i read the ending of pride & prejudice for many years. it wasn't just happiness for elizabeth that i was feeling -- the novel assured the young maureen that if you stayed true to yourself you would be rewarded in time. a reading of alice adams at just that point might have tamped my optimism in that quarter somewhat and better prepared me for my future.

alice adams lives in an age between me and elizabeth bennet. i live in a culture that aspires to meritocracy where miss bennet's was severely stratified and class rules were firmly established. alice adams lives in an era that shows a transition point between these two societies. the novel is set after the first world war and before the great depression. it is an era of change, where horse and wagon is being replaced by the early automobile, where local robber barons have firmly established their wealth and watched those with lesser acumen assist them, struggle along, or be subsumed. alice adams is the daughter of a lesser businessman in the employ of the "great J.A. Lamb" the local leading light. (i would love to discuss this character with somebody who's read this novel. he plays a small but pivotal role and i am fascinated by what he represents here... is lamb benevolent? do i doubt him because of my modern sensibility?)

alice, feted in her first bloom, socialized with the "better" part of society but now, at twenty-three, she is already losing her social status, being cut from acquaintance, partly because her family never got as rich as the others, partly because she has not made an advantageous marriage, she is perceived as grasping to those who have it all, and alice is only just beginning to perceive she has never had enough. still, she wrangles an invitation to one last ball, and there she meets a young man, arthur russell, apparently affianced to the giver of the ball, his cousin mildred palmer, in the time-tested fashion of bringing two families and their fortunes even closer together. but mr. russell isn't as sure of his engagement as the rest of society is, and he begins to call on miss adams, sitting outside her house on the porch. and as we know, two attractive young people sitting under the stars and talking stuff and nonsense can't help but be romantical.*

i won't relate any more of the plot turns in alice adams -- there is certainly more to the novel that readers should discover for themselves. she does not face a tragic end, even if she does not get the happily ever after that cinderbennet gets. rather, alice adams gets to become a modern girl, one who has to face up to her own future and her own survival. she has overcome her own pride & prejudice and comes to find that the world might still have brightness to it despite all the things she lacks. the novel ends in a way that solidifies its importance. this book is a tonic to peel away romantic illusions and face a little reality.

a few words as to why i gave this novel only four stars: true to the other tarkington books i've read, there is a peppering of racism here. i would suggest that in the case of this novel, it's plays better than it does in the unfortunate penrod, which not only reflected the racism of the age and failed to contribute to the plot of the novel, but also needlessly wedged in racism wherever possible -- feel free to check out that review if you require more detail: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... here at least, we find alice's brother walter (who could very well be an older version of penrod) loves jazz, and as a consequence of that, and his penchant for shooting craps, socializes with black people and respects them even if he uses racially provocative epithets to describe them. the other people who are horrified by these associations are just plain racist in that smug condescending way, that was unchallenged in that era. still, it bears remembering that tarking probably did mean for his readers to respect walter's character even if he is perhaps more sympathetic to modern eyes, and i can't even get started on the other gross portrayals of serving staff: as usual i think tarkington has done both his writing and humanity a disservice by indulging in slur.

beyond the racism is *my disinterest in the romance between alice and russell. i didn't like her talk when she was wooing and he just seemed like a pretty moron. every conversation they had i thought, how can either of them imagine wanting to spend another moment together, let alone another hour having a stupid conversation like this? this romance didn't have the interest tarkington imbued into his other celebrated novel, the magnificent ambersons. given the necessity of this connection to the book, i wish it had sparked more. still, i think this is a very instructive novel, and one i will definitely prescribe as a romantic palliative in future. :)


This work by Maureen de Sousa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

goodreads book review: the magnificent ambersons, booth tarkington

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
the magnificent ambersons makes you think about how humans value things, and other people, and reputation, for what reason, and in what proportion. it is a book that i want to talk to other people about because i keep rolling it over in my mind, the choices and observations tarkington made in some cases baffle me, and i'm still not sure what to think, of it, the world, or myself.

had i not read penrod just prior to reading the magnificent ambersons i'm not sure i would have liked it as much as i did. tarkington had already softened me when it came to whims and importunate desires of boys so i was somewhat prepared for the dark and evil epitome of boys who never grow up: the monster at the heart of this book, george amberson minafer. part of me still chafes at the injustices of the world revealed in this novel, reminding me that somebody who is only beautiful on his outside can wreak such harm and destruction on the people that love him. the relationship between georgie and his mother isabel amberson is the most destructive in the book, and the pattern continues when he takes up with lucy morgan, the daughter of eugene, isabel's true love whom she spurned when he lost sight, for a brief moment, of propriety. i revolted against these relationships until finally i came to this passage:

"But though she was a mistress of her own ways and no slave to any lamp save that of her own conscience, she had a weakness: she had fallen in love with George Amberson Minafer at first sight, and no matter how she disciplined herself, she had never been able to climb out. The thing had happened to her; that was all. [..:] But what was fatal to Lucy was that this having happened to her, she could not change it. No matter what she discovered in George's nature she was unable to take away what she had given him; and though she could think differently about him, she could not feel differently about him, for she was one of those too faithful victims of glamour. When she managed to keep the picture of George away from her mind's eye, she did well enough; but when she let him become visible, she could not choose but love what she disdained."

and for all that i still hate georgie, these words helped me understand, and identify with lucy, and at least took me down from my moral highground for a moment to remind me that our rational minds are not always in control of our hearts, and sometimes we love people who aren't good to us, or for us, but it is nigh impossible to revoke our love once we give it.

all of these entanglements play out in turn-of-the-century american society where the established ways of business were changing, and people began calling horseless carriages automobiles, and one way of life began to die out, while another began. this backdrop is almost another character in the novel, and tarkington's interest in the culture that was and his horror at what it was becoming is vivid, and real, and easily identifiable for contemporary readers, in this, our own moment of change. i am now interested in reading the rest of the growth trilogy, and alice adams.

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goodreads book review: penrod, booth tarkington

Penrod by Booth Tarkington


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
penrod is an amusing book. it's not laugh-out-loud funny but the misadventures of this inscrutable and bad boy are captivating, and knowing, and made me smile. tarkington lets us into the hallowed halls of an adolescent male mind which is itching for experiences, and wily in its meeting of any consequence that these experiences might bring. penrod, as the epitome of boys, an untroubled huck, breathes life into the archetypal boyhood. he is good at getting into scrapes whether they are of his own devising or not (usually they are), and things often spiral wildly out of his control despite his efforts at containment. he is popularized as the "worst boy in town" by the girl he likes best, and he's hotly defensive of his honour. he is curious, vindictive, but also sometimes kind. if you have spent any time with an unruly young man, with some brains, and too much energy, you have met penrod. the other characters too, are well drawn and quite familiar: his family, frustrated, amused, and perplexed by him; the other kids who are his friends and enemies all-at-once live in awe or fear, or collude with him; the other townsfolk cluck, or cause calumnies for him. the characterizations in this book feel real even if they also sometimes smack of caricature, as real people sometimes do.

some of the caricature in this book i had trouble with: specifically the endemic racism. i realize that it is a by-product of the society in which tarkington was raised, and understood, but it's distracting and painful to read some of these sentences that are tossed off, and in some cases, weaken the narrative. here's an example, with square brackets mine:

He sat staring at the an open page of a textbook, but not studying; not even reading; not even thinking. Nor was he lost in a reverie: his mind's eye was shut, as his physical eye might well have been, for the optic nerve, flaccid with ennui, conveyed nothing whatever of the printed page upon which the orb of vision was partially focused. Penrod was doing something very unusual and rare, something almost never accomplished except by [coloured people or by] a boy in school on a spring day: he was doing really nothing at all. He was merely a state of being.

cut those four words out, and it is marvellous writing, and cements the portrayal of a boy's mind which is the novel's central theme. and i can't even say that this is the worst of it. penrod has two black playmates named herman and verman, who have a raccoon they eventually name sherman after their dead brother, and they are wonderful characters, and is often the case, in some ways much more attractive than penrod himself. yet, we are forced to endure narrative that characterizes them as in the "lower stages of evolution" and the like. at least these racial slurs are relatively few in number, and the brothers are treated with respect by penrod and their other colleagues in the arts of chicanery.

i'm really glad i read this book despite the racism. each time i come across this issue, i face the quandary of to read or not to read. it is troubling, that a book that brings so much pleasure can also knock it out of you with a careless, and often useless remark. it is also a relic of the way the world was, and i can curse the editor of penrod for not seeing that the strength of the above paragraph was dimmed by the stupid addition of a folksy slur, and be glad that times have changed. boys and their spirits however, have not altered in essentials since the publication of penrod, and i cannot say that that is a blessing or a curse, so much as shake my head wryly at the epitome of boys so embodied in this book.

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