the magnificent ambersons by booth tarkington

He was active in Princeton literary and dramatic affairs. McCutcheon, he transferred to Princeton after two years but left without a degree. In spite of the genial companionship of George Ade and Preparation and, upon graduation, he entered Purdue University. Tarkington was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy for his college They named the baby for aĭistinguished uncle, Newton Booth, early governor of California. Hisįather was Judge John Stevenson Tarkington and his mother wasĮlizabeth Booth Tarkington.

Newton Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis on July 29, 1869, into the very sort ofīackground he wrote of best–comfortably prosperous middle class. Literary virtues of Dreiser and the others. Tarkington, to average citizens, was not only a great Indiana author, but to many he will always be the great Indiana author, regardless of the manifestos which critics may issue on the There have been Willieīaxters ever since boys began to reach the shaving age, and Willies willĪlways be with us as long as civilization maintains. To most parents of any age, there were half a dozen prototypes of The Gentleman from Indiana. Was easily recognizable to any citizen who was a boy in Penrod's day, and George Barr McCutcheon nor the grimy realism of TheodoreĮvery town in American had its Magnificent Ambersons, and a dotingĭaughter kept up a pretense of gentility in most American towns and cities. Wishfully-good and pure bad was about right. Some of the Magnificent Ambersons, but the proportion of good, near-good, They were by no means all nice people there was always the leavening ofĪlice Adams' bootlegging brother, the nastiness of Mostly, though, he knew the Indiana middle class and he put them down, in his notablyĬareful and beautiful script, for future generations and for the world at large to

Which fed the ebony glitter of the colored folks' main-stem, Indiana Progressively less impressive, and he knew what went on in the residential streets He did well, too, on the streets neighboring to Meridian and Thoroughfare, or, as in the case of the family of Alice Adams, He was at his best on North Meridian Street (his 'NationalĪvenue') in Indianapolis, or with the people who had prospered to a chill eminence above that Tarkington's interest lay in the people whom he and most other Americans knew well. Of all writers Booth Tarkington most nearly interpreted theĪmerican scene from the beginning of this century through the Twenties as the

The magnificent ambersons by booth tarkington