Booth Tarkington is a favorite of mine. He really seems to have fallen out of currency, so I’m always happy to introduce him to new readers. He was a popular and prolific author in the first half of the 20th century, winning the Pulitzer twice, for THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and ALICE ADAMS. His PENROD books, about a pre-WWI boyhood, used to be standard children’s literature (although their language and style, not to mention unreconstructed racial attitudes, make them adults-only fare today).
I’m fascinated by people’s reaction to Alice Adams herself – people leap to attack or defend her as a person, rather than a character in a book. Always fun at a roundtable!
Tarkington is a very cinematic writer – although he didn’t write directly for the screen, and isn’t averse to entering characters’ minds, he does tend to give you the story in actions and images, e.g. Alice’s violets. He may well be best known today as the author of the source novel for Orson Welles’s mutilated masterpiece THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. The 1935 film adaptation of ALICE ADAMS is very interesting (aside from perfect casting of Katherine Hepburn and a great Hattie McDaniel cameo) because it follows the book faithfully up to the very end, then slaps on a Hollywood ending (as opposed to the much more interesting and cinematic ending of the book) at the last minute. Perhaps a screening is in order?
Tarkington is great on environments – especially in AMBERSONS, but also here, he shows/tells how a city changes over the years, how neighborhoods come down in the world building by building, how the city spreads into the surrounding country. (Movies again: I’d be fascinated to see how this could be done with today’s CGI.) He’s also a regionalist – while the term wasn’t invented then, it’s nice to have a story set in “flyover country.”
Isn’t it amazing to think that ALICE ADAMS and THE GREAT GATSBY were written and set so few years apart? They’re both about strivers reinventing themselves, but what a difference!
Poor Alice Adams didn’t get much love from those assembled – nor did ALICE ADAMS. (I’ve started reading HALF OF A YELLOW SUN, and I admit the contrast was jarring.) Michel made an interesting comparison to Austen, what with the fluttering mother and the push to advantageous matrimony, while pointing out the very American “money is family” motif. Phoebe went on at length about the weird jester/truthteller/Greek chorus role played by “colored” [very much sic] characters in Tarkington’s works.
Esprit d’escalier (also known as “she who writes the minutes
gets the last word”) here, my apologies: there was fairly heated argument over Alice’s
refusal to acknowledge that she did NOT have a place in the world she wanted to
belong to, together with thundering condemnation of her way of embroidering the
truth. I’m reminded of the reaction to Renée in LA CUREE – there seems to be an
expectation that the protagonist obtain, absolutely ex nihilo, standards and resources belonging to our world rather
than hers. All responsibility is placed on her shoulders, with no thought given
to the shaping force of environment. Don’t forget that Alice Adams is 22 –
effectively 18, since she hasn’t gone to college and has pretty much been in
suspended animation since she left high school. (Department of “How far have we
come, really?”: Has anyone seen FRANCES HA, whose protagonist is 27 and lives
in NYC in the 21st century?) To the Comments for ripostes!
Dépit d’escalier, no apologies: Are you nuts? Frank Dowling is
horrible.
-- Phoebe
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