1916: Seventeen by Booth Tarkington

Who?
            Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) appears twice on the list.  The first time was for 1915’s The Turmoil.  While he had great commercial and critical success with serious and mature novels (garnering two Pulitzer prizes in the process), he was also well known for his comedic fiction starring children and teenagers.   Penrod (1914), which followed the eponymous twelve-year old, was one of his bestselling books in terms of numbers of copies sold. Both Seventeen and Penrod and Sam (the sequel to Penrod) were published in book form 1916.

So what's this book about?

            Seventeen was originally published serially in ten parts in Metropolitan Magazine beginning in January, 1915, before being published as an individual novel by Harper in 1916.  It tells the story of seventeen year old William Baxter and his summer spent trying to woo Lola Prat, the girl from out of town who he, and a number of his friends, have immediately fallen for.  William treats the situation with all the subtlety and rationality one would expect of a love-struck seventeen year old.  His wildly over the top responses to the rest of the world are hilarious and, as anyone who did not grow up in a cave can attest, embarrassingly true:  

          “He walked in his own manner, using his shoulders to emphasize an effect of carelessness which he wished to produce upon observers. For his consciousness of observers was abnormal, since he had it whether any one was looking at him or not.”

            The cast includes bizarre and amusing characters like William’s ten year old sister Jane, the adventurous, free-spirited bane of William’s existence.  And of course, the love interest, the exasperating Lola Pratt, whose refusal to speak in any fashion other than ‘baby talk’ straddles the line between humorously annoying and cringe-worthy. 

            Seventeen is funny, even though at times the gags get a bit repetitive.  But at 185 pages, it doesn’t have a chance to drag.  The humor is largely based on the over-the-top love-strickenness of William and the overwrought nerves of the adults who have to deal with them.  All this is strung together with a heaping dose of slapstick.

Why was it so popular?

            It certainly benefited from Tarkington’s popularity and the success of his other teenager stories.  It’s a short, fun read which would certainly boost its saleability.  On top of that, a silent film version of Seventeen was released in early November, 1916. 

So why haven't I heard of it?

            Seventeen remained popular for several decades after its publication.  In addition to the 1916 silent film, the novel was also adapted into a stageplay in 1918, a short-lived musical (Hello, Lola) in 1926, an Orson Welles radio broadcast in 1938,  a talkie in 1940, and lastly another musical in 1951.

              Eventually, Seventeen went the way of the rest of Tarkington’s oeuvre and faded into obscurity. 

Should I read it?
            As with The Turmoil, there are aspects of the story that do not translate well into modern attitudes.  Certain subplots (e.g. William’s quest for an evening suit) are far removed enough from modern culture that they lose much of their impact.  If you can overlook that and have the patience to deal with Lola’s (intentionally and humorously) grating personality, I’d gladly recommend it as light, fun reading.

You can read Seventeen on Project Gutenberg.
You can listen to the Orson Welles radio adaptation on Youtube.

Also published in 1916:  

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Chicago Poems by Carl Sandberg

Sources:  

Mott, Frank Luther. Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1947.
Tarkington, Booth. Seventeen. New York: Harper & Row. 1968.
Woodress, James. Booth Tarkington: Gentleman from Indiana. New York: J. B. Lippincott. 1955.

1915: The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington

Who?
            Newton Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was born, lived, and set most of his works in Indiana.  He was the offspring of old American families: His father’s side of the family moved to Indiana from the south in the late eighteenth century, and his mother’s family in New England could be traced back to colonial days and still held prominent positions in society and politics (in fact, Booth was named after his uncle, Newton Booth, then governor of California).  During his youth, his family was one of many who fell into financial hardship.  They managed to hold on, and Tarkington was educated at Purdue and later Princeton University.  He became a rather successful playwright and novelist, his first novel, The Gentlemen from Indiana, being published in 1899.  But it was not until a divorce and his marriage to Susanah Robinson in 1912 that he entered what biographer James Woodress called his “major phase.”  The first novel of this phase was 1915’s The Turmoil, the first volume of what became known as Tarkington’s Growth trilogy, including his Pulitzer-prize winning novel, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918).   Tarkington was the first author to win two Pulitzer prizes for fiction (the second was for 1921’s Alice Adams), a feat that has only been duplicated by John Updike and William Faulkner.

           

So what's this book about?
           The Turmoil tells the story of the nouveau riche Sheridan family, led by the consummate industrialist, Jim Sheridan.  The main character is the family’s youngest son, twenty-two year old Bibbs Sheridan, who at the beginning of the novel is returning from a sanitarium after two years spent recovering from a nervous breakdown brought on by his father’s attempt to mold Bibbs after his own image (as he had successfully done with Bibbs’ two older brothers).  The novel’s main focus is on the relationship between Jim and his children and the relationship between the Sheridan’s and the “old rich” families of Indianapolis, specifically the secretly destitute Vertreeses and their daughter Mary, and how these things affect Bibbs’ personal growth.

            Therein lies the heart of the novel: Bibbs, the dreamer, poet, and outsider, assuming his maturity in a changing world.  Tarkington creates an honest picture of an isolated young man with vague ambition and his transformation as he reenters the world and falls for Mary Vertrees.  The story is often funny and, on a few occasions, tragic, as the lives of all the characters drastically change.  

            Besides Bibbs and Mary Vertrees, the characters are often typecast so as to parody certain kinds of people or situations.  That is not to say that they don’t have depth (although there are a few characters who don’t), and this parody is intended and generally succeeds in being humorous.   And when the characters examine the reasons behind their behavior, or break from their established caricatures, it is done skillfully, giving the reader a deeper understanding of their personalities. 

            Overall, The Turmoil has aged well.  The relationships between the members of the Sheridan family are true to life and easily accessible, even after all this time.  However, the attitudes the characters hold in regard to romantic relationships and the old wealth vs. new wealth are strictly representative of their time.

So why was it so popular?

            This was a time of great industrialization and corporate growth in the United States.  The lives of the rich and powerful have always been popular subjects for novels, and the fall of American “aristocracy” to the nouveau riche was of particular prevalence at that time.  I also noticed an interesting correlation between The Turmoil and The Inside of the Cup: they have remarkably similar openings.  Both describe a midwestern city, once home to the well-to-do, now made urban and industrial.  In both openings, the sign and symbol of this prosperity, is smoke.  Churchill wrote: “Little did the … prominent people foresee the havoc that prosperity and smoke were to play with their residential plans! One by one, sooty commerce drove them out.”  Tarkington wrote: “The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more riches.  He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling prodigiously.  He has a voice,  a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained to one tune: ‘Wealth! I will get Wealth!’”

            The industrialization of the Midwest affected many people, including Tarkington.  According to his biography: “The sedate, well-mannered, and self-contained society that he rememberd in Indianapolis in 1900 had crumbled before the irresistible force of big business and the vast complexities of an industrial democracy.  The life he formerly knew had been succeeded by a frenetic rat race in the grimy maze of his once relaxed and friendly city (Woodress 181-2).

Why haven't I heard of it?

               That’s a good question.  At the time of writing this, I’ve already finished reading Tarkington’s Seventeen (the bestseller of 1916).  Judging from these two (very different) novels, I feel that the reason is that they are very much period pieces.  Obviously, much fiction takes place at the time it was written, and that time is from a  past period, but that is not what I mean by “period piece.”  As I define it, a period piece is a story in which the attitudes of the characters are deeply entrenched in that specific time and place.  For example, if we look at Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the film adaptation Apocalypse Now, even with the change in the specifics of the setting (replace colonized Congo with occupied Vietnam, mercantile with military), the characters’ attitudes and values are not anachronistic.  The same cannot be said of Tarkington’s characters.  The characters are still accessible and coherent, but they can only be understood as products of their time. 

        
Should I read it?       

               If you don’t mind period pieces, then yes.  The Turmoil is fun, emotional, and well-written. 

You can read The Turmoil on Project Gutenberg.

Also published in 1915:

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

Sources:

Churchill, Winston. The Inside of the Cup. 1913.
Tarkington, Booth. The Turmoil. 1915.
Woodress, James. Booth Tarkington: Gentleman from Indiana. New York: J. B. Lippincott. 1955.