The Magnificent Ambersons

(1918)

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1919. It was filmed in 1941 by Orson Welles. It was adapted for television in 2002.

This is the second novel in Tarkington's Growth trilogy, which includes The Turmoil (1915) and The Midlander (1923; retitled National Avenue in 1927).

This novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, who derived power not from family names but by "doing things." As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"

The Amberson family is the most prosperous and powerful in town at the turn of the century. Young George Amberson Minafer, the patriarch's grandson, is spoiled terribly by his mother Isabel. Growing up arrogant, sure of his own worth and position, and totally oblivious to the lives of others, George falls in love with Lucy Morgan, a young though sensible debutante. But there is a long history between George's mother and Lucy's father, of which George is unaware. As the town grows into a city, industry thrives, the Ambersons' prestige and wealth wanes, and the Morgans, thanks to Lucy's prescient father, grow prosperous. When George sabotages his widowed mother's growing affections for Lucy's father, life as he knows it comes to an end.

What, who? The Magnificent Ambersons? if you thought that the Orson Welles screen adaptation was the "be all and end all", you are in for a shocker. Hey, I have to watch it once a year myself or it doesn't count as a year for me...So much I have loved how Welles encapsulated the Americana textures of pre-Roaring Twenties, industrially tinged high society. Never stopping once to think of how it was really the word of Booth Tarkington that had caused the whole shebang in the first place. You can't imagine what it was like to be alive near the turn of the 20th century. Not a single living soul can. Allow Tarkington to put you right there. Wow! How time was spent so differently than in our information overloaded and priority distorted social New World Order. I am not one to damn the advent of the tech-oriented world that we live in today. The one which has virtually colonized the hunk of meat between our ears. For instance I'd never trade my cell phone for a buggy whip. However, the author, armed squarely with lush descriptions of simple day-to-day human behaviors of the time does much to enrich our understanding of those times which are no longer retrievable by any living mind's eye! Please read this book!--Submitted by Mike Vitiello

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