Review: The Magnificent Ambersons

Original Publication Date: 1918

Genre: Classic

Topics: Family drama, society  

Review by: Melissa at Avid Reader's Musings

At the turn of the 19th century the world was changing incredibly fast. From electricity to automobiles, people could either embrace the changes or get left behind. This Pulitzer-Prize winner’s title describes a wealthy Midwestern family as “magnificent” and then proceeds to chronicle their downfall during this tumultuous time.

The Ambersons’ fortune, managed by their patriarch Major Amberson, had always been there for the younger generations and they never doubted it would always been there in the future. The Major’s daughter, Isabel, married and had one son, George Amberson Minofaur. George grew up to be a self-centered young man who becomes infatuated with Lucy Morgan.

Lucy and her father Eugene Morgan have known the Ambersons their whole lives. Eugene and Isabel have always been close, though their attraction was limited to friendship after Isabel married. Years later when Isabel is widowed Eugene renews his interest to the chagrin of George. His pompous self-worth won’t even allow him to consider the match as anything less than vulgar.

**SPOILER**
I know that Isabel is the most sympathetic character, but part of me was frustrated by her actions. She allows her son to bully her into a miserable life. The fact that George is completely spoiled and expects the world to be handed to him on a silver platter has to be, at least in part, attributed to how his parents raised him. Isabel turns a blind eye to George’s cruel snobbery and there are never any consequences to his actions.

The ending feels like a really strange add on. It should have ended with George’s accident. I don’t understand what adding a trip to a psychic added to the story except to tidy everything up in an awkward way.
**SPOILERS OVER **

BOTTOM LINE: I was actually expecting to like this one less than I did. It’s not about lovable characters or romance overcoming all obstacles. It’s a story about the world changing whether you want it to or not. It’s about people making selfish decisions and the way that others are affected by those shortsighted views. It’s about hubris and jealousy, selflessness and devotion. To me those counterpoints made for a fascinating look at this time period.

“Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth. That is why the roles of the heroes and heroines of plays are given by the managers to the most youthful actors they can find among the competent.”


The Movie: There is a 1942 film version that I watched after finishing the novel. It was written and directed by Orson Wells the year after he completed Citizen Kane. It stars Drew Barrymore's grandmother as Isabel Amberson. I was surprised that it clocked in at a measly 88 minutes. I checked online and it turns out 50 minutes had been cut from the final version of the movie and a happy ending was reshot and tacked onto the end without Wells' knowledge. Wells once said that if his original version had been released he thought it would have been a greater movie then Citizen Kane. Unfortunately the 50 minutes of cut footage were destroyed, so we'll never know.

SIDE NOTE: Tarkington is one of the only major authors from Indiana (Lew Wallace, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Green round out the short list). There is a local theatre named after him and I’m glad I finally read one of his books!
  
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Guest Post: SEVENTEEN by Booth Tarkington

Original Publication Date: 1914

Genre: satire

Topics: love, teenagers, small towns















Review by Liz Inskip-Paulk (http://ravingreader.wordpress.com/):

Having seen Booth Tarkington’s name mentioned in various places over the interwebs, I thought I would delve into his work and see what it was like. Somehow in the Lucky Dip of choosing, I ended up with this volume (written in serial form in 1914), and it was a fun little jaunt into earlier times and the mind of a young man who is deeply in puppy love with a visiting girl up the street.

With an omniscient PoV to enable the reader to see all, Tarkington has done a good job of satirizing the importance of one’s First True Love when you’re young, and all the complicated situations that are fraught with disaster as one tries to navigate that. Your parents are awful. Your little sister is a continual embarrassment. Your friends are rivals and the world is out to humiliate you at every turn. Oh, how we probably all remember these days regardless of which gender we are…

William S. Baxter is almost 18 and lives with his parents in a small town in Iowa. He has a young sister who is uninhibited with regard to his “secret” crush and joyfully young in her approach to the world and to her elder brother. William is a typical teenager, it seems, for he regards the world around him guardedly and is very over-reactive to life and its trials. (How important things seemed back then when you’re in the midst of teenaged emotions!)

Tarkington has a good eye for teenaged angst, especially the more-innocent angst of the early 20th century: the glance that a girl (and the one you love) was loaded with meaning, your friends were everything to you, and your parents were just impediments to your social stature (although well meaning at the same time).

So William is in love with visiting Miss Pratt who has a small white dog that she carries everywhere and who speaks in baby talk all the time. Miss Pratt is also very pretty and fully aware of the social powers that she carries with the local pack of teenaged boys who cluster around her all the time. This pack of young men consists of William and his friends and the existence of Miss Pratt throws their small world into confusion: they are both rival and friend to each other…

Although this volume does not really have any deep meaning to it, it’s a fun and light-hearted satire of Young Love in Small town America during a more innocent time. (And – it must be said – it was also a lot funnier than I had anticipated.) It also reminded me of other “Prairie writers” such as Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis et al. although not sure if they overlap time-wise and they are a trifle more serious, and his humor reminded me of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer (although they were published much earlier).

Tarkington, however, was a writer of his times which means that there are some frequent cringe-inducing descriptions and dialogue of African-American help especially the Baxter family’s handyman called Genesis. It’s not surprising to read when one views in a historical context, but it still creates a jarring read to come across this so smoothly integrated into an otherwise really good book.

Outside that, I enjoyed the read. Tarkington had a great sense of humor that came through in his portrayal of Willie and his tormented love life that summer. Tarkington ended up being quite a prolific writer and was named by Publisher’s Weekly as “the most significant contemporary American author” in 1921. Additionally, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize two times, once in 1919 for The Magnificent Ambersons and once in 1922 for Alice Adams, neither of which I have read but I think I own the earlier book. I’ll need to check the bookshelves….



Download Seventeen by Booth Tarkington at Project Gutenberg|Librivox