The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

This is my first post on The Pulitzer Project.

I recently read The Magnificent Ambersons as part of my Classics Club challenge.

The Magnificent Ambersons is a delightful old-fashioned read; a family saga that highlights the declining fortunes of one family during the industrialisation of turn-of-the-century small town America.

George Amberson Minafer is one of the most unlikable characters in literature. He is arrogant, selfish, spoilt and careless. Like the local townsfolk, you keep hoping he will get his comeuppance.

The skill of Tarkington is such, that when it finally does happens, you actually feel a little sorry for George.
But only a little. George's remorse, when it comes, is too little, too late.
The true generosity of spirit shown by Lucy and Eugene right up to the end only highlights further what was lacking in George.

The tension in the middle of the novel as you realise what a dastardly deed George is about to do against his own adoring mother is heartbreaking. With each step you want to reach into the book and grab George by the scruff of the neck and shake him into commonsense and human decency.

As for Aunt Fanny - the conniving, manipulative bitch wrapped up in victimhood and helpless ignorance! It seemed fitting somehow that Fanny and George only had each other for company at the end.

Booth won the Pulitzer Prize in 1919 for The Magnificent Ambersons (and again in 1922 for Alice Adams).

The Magnificent Ambersons is the second book in Booth's Growth trilogy. The books are only related by theme, not characters. (The other two books, if you're interested are The Turmoil and National Avenue).

My edition of The Magnificent Ambersons is a Modern Library one. The inside front cover has a list of the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century. The Magnificent Ambersons snuck in at number 100!

This is the house that Tarkington based the Amberson mansion on - Woodruff Place, Indianapolis.

Pg 9: "The house was the pride of the town. Faced with stone as far back as the dining-room windows, it was a house of arches and turrets and girdling stone porches: it had the first porte-cochere seen in the town."

Girdling: n. (Arch) an ornamental band, especially one surrounding the shaft of a column.

Porte-cochere: n. (Arch.) A large doorway allowing vehicles to drive into or through a building. It is common to have the entrance door open upon the passage of the porte-cochère. Also, a porch over a driveway before an entrance door.

Kata’s Progress

Despite having a BA in English, I am more of a Science Fiction and Mystery reader. The Pulitzer Prize winners are a nice counterpoint to my usual reading. I am just starting out on this journey. Here is what I have read so far. My reactions are on my blog.

• 1918 His Family  
• 1919 The Magnificence Ambersons  
• 1924 The Able McLaughlins  
• 1927 Early Autumn

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, 1919

This is the story of the fall from social prominence of a “Midland” family around the turn of the 20th century. Due to the financial success through land and investments of Major Amberson, the patriarch of the family, the Ambersons achieved social prominence in one generation. The story is primarily concerned with the abrupt decline of that family in the 3rd generation, as experienced by Major Amberson’s only grandchild, George Amberson Minafer. An arrogant and self-absorbed child who keeps those less-than-endearing personality traits into adulthood, George is the embodiment of the selfish, narcissistic “dandy”; his life goal is not “to do”—any sort of work or profession is beneath him and his self-perceived status—but “to be”—a gentleman.

But coming along to upset almost everyone’s ideas of society and progress is the automobile, its disruptive force personified of one of its (fictional) pioneers, Eugene Morgan. A former resident of the town as well as a former suitor of George’s mother, Isabel, Morgan invokes uneasiness in George, who proceeds to fall in love with Morgan’s daughter, Lucy.. That uneasiness turns to hatred when George’s is unaccustomedly denied something he wants and has his superficial values of life rejected. The result is tragic.

The automobile, however, is more than just an irritant for George, an unacceptable way for Morgan to make a living. It represents enormous economic and social upheaval, as wealth shifts from the American equivalent of the landed gentry to the new industrialists and speculators. The mobility provided by the automobile drastically alters the landscapes of urban areas; the Midland town—a mall puddle in which the Ambersons are large frogs—becomes a large city, whose growth in unchecked, leaving the Ambersons and their old-fashioned ideas of society behind; the Ambersons literally vanish in the sprawl of a large industrialized city.

In 1919, when Tarkington wrote the book, there was nothing remotely approaching an “environmental movement”. Yet Tarkington, in vivid prose, describes the price of the automobile and the resulting unrestricted growth, both in cities and in industry: soot-filled air from soft coal-fired furnaces of factories; disappearance of farm land as the city “upheaves” and moves its boundaries further and further out; the disintegration of the old pioneer values that had held sway for nearly 100 years only to be replaced by those of untrammeled greed; the destruction of neighborhoods as families are displaced by apartment dwellers and those living next to one another hardly ever meet. The Magnificent Ambersons is prophetic.

These forces destroy George’s world, so affectionately described at the opening of the book. But Tarkington doesn’t lay the blame solely on outside forces; instead, he makes very clear the negative impact of a doting mother and grandfather, who give George everything he wants and treat him like a god, an indifferent father who cares only for his business, and a group of fawning companions and similarly afflicted spoiled colleagues at university. George is not a bad person, but his self-absorption, his mania about preserving the “family name” as a reflection off his own self-important social status, is a recipe for disaster for those closest to him. The language may seem stilted, more suited to the post-Victorian era which it portrays (the story ends before the start of World War I), but the story is immortal; it can be seen played out in today’s media by the society celebrities of this age.

The Magnificent Ambersons is a morality tale with obvious lessons. George, a sinner, is suitably punished but earns redemption. While the language of the Victorian Age may present a bit of a problem and personal behavior may stretch the credulity of an early 21st century reader, the story is told poignantly, with great clarity, and to enormous effect.

1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, Sherry's Review

The only other book I've read by Booth Tarkington was Penrod, a story about a mischievous boy growing up around the turn of the century. I remember it as funny and profound upon the subject of boyhood, kind of like Tom Sawyer.

The Magnificent Ambersons, aside from the time period, the early 1900's, and the setting, the American Midwest, is not at all like Penrod. As an under current in the book, Tarkington preaches about the general nastiness and inevitability of urban sprawl and how the automobile and the factory have destroyed community and cleanliness and all that makes life worthwhile. Preaching aside, Mr. Tarkington still manages to tell an engaging story, a sort of family epic, the rise and fall of the Ambersons.

Georgie Amberson Minafer is a spoiled rich brat, reared in luxury and with a sense of entitlement. The Ambersons, George's mother's family, are the center of society in their "Midland town." From the beginning of the novel, the author sets Georgie up for disaster; the entire town is waiting for George Amberson Minafer to get his "come-upance". As George grows up the reckoning is delayed again and again, but the most casual reader must know that George's pride goeth before a fall. George's favorite word for other people, all others who aren't Ambersons, is "riff-raff". His attitude can only and always be described as condescending, even with the young lady with whom he falls in love.

So, The Magnificent Ambersons is first of all a cautionary tale. Pride is destructive. Things change; no one stays on top forever. Fortunes come and go. Only those who are strong, wise, and flexible, and maybe even lucky, can persevere to enjoy the good life.

However, the book is not just a preachy, moralistic fable. It's a picture of life at the turn of the century, of how change affects different personalities. It's a love story about a mother who idolizes her son, and a young man who loves his family pride more than he cares for the woman who is willing to overlook many of his faults and who could have made him happy. And the ending is about forgiveness and hope and the possibility that broken things can be, if not mended, perhaps made new.

I've not seen the Orson Welles movie based on this book, but I plan to do so. After reading the novel, I can see how this books would make a great "old movie". No modern remakes, however, nowadays a writer and director would most likely ruin the movie version with gratuitous sex and a plot in which only the characters' names were borrowed from the original book.

A Work in Progress review of The Magnificent Ambersons.