Classic review: THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington won the Pulitzer Prize for the best novel in 1919. At the time Tarkington was considered one of America's best novelists and was often compared to Mark Twain. Tarkington was from Indiana and The Magnificent Ambersons story could have been taken from his own family's fall from fame. Though he was very popular when he was alive, publishing over 45 books and  25 plays, he did not remain popular after his death. By the middle of the twentieth century "he was ignored in academia: no congresses, no societies, no journals of 'Tarkington Studies'." In 1985 he was used as the example of the disparity of a writer's fame while alive compared to their oblivion after death.  Fortunately for Mark Twain, no one is comparing the two authors today.

In a nutshell, The Magnificent Ambersons was a story of three generations of Ambersons and their declining fortunes. Major Amberson makes a fortune after the Civil War and sets himself up in what is probably Indianapolis (it is never named in the book) where he builds a big mansion on a huge estate and sets about naming parks and statues after himself. The time period of the novel, between the war and the beginning of the 20th Century is a time of great industrialization and the Ambersons just aren't nimble enough to invest in the future and change with the times. They are still stuck in the past when a person's name, Amberson, was more important than what work one did. As one of George Amberson's friend says, "Don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"

George Amberson Minafer, the Major's grandson, is a complete brat and ill-equipped for the industrial life of the 20th Century and he is the last of the Ambersons to survive and he becomes a witness to the demise of the family fortune, forcing him to work to pay his bills. Honestly he was such a brat I found myself almost cheering when he was forced to move from the family mansion to a small apartment where his only activity outside of work was walking since he still scorned the new-fangled automobiles popping up everywhere. The best part of the book was the first chapter which was a riff on what life was like for those with money:

Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost during the period when every prosperous family with children kept a Newfoundland dog. In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet, and when there was a new purchase of sealskin, sick people were got to windows to see it go by. Trotters were out, in the winter afternoons, racing light sleighs on National Avenue and Tennessee Street; everybody recognized both the trotters and the drivers; and again knew them as well on summer evenings, when slim buggies whizzed by in renewals of the snow-time rivalry. For that matter, everybody knew everybody else's family horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a mile down the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or to a reception, or coming home from office or store to noon dinner or evening supper. 

Outside of the first chapter I admit I didn't care for the book which I rated with 3 stars. Just because a book won the Pulitzer Prize, I am finding, it doesn't mean the book will age well. And The Magnificent Ambersons has not aged well. (I can't even imagine anyone in 1919 liking it.) It is interesting to think about what life was like during this time period, however, and I found myself thinking of my grandparents. My grandfather was born in 1889 and my grandmother in 1892. They were both alive during the time period of this book. Of course neither of them lived around opulent wealth but they both witnessed the advent of cars, planes, radios, air-conditioning, phones (I think), television, electricity, indoor plumbing. (See list here.) Imagine a life without these things. I never gave my grandparents credit for living through such huge changes without becoming sticks-in-the-mud like George Amberson Minafer. Even my parents, who were both born in the late 1920s lived through many, many changes. My mom remembers the ice man delivering ice for their ice box, and my dad talked about pranks they played concerning outhouses. It is a minor miracle that my mom, age 96, can manage email just fine, even if texting is outside her skill set.

 

Even though I didn't love The Magnificent Ambersons I am glad I read it. It gave me so much to think about related to changes during the industrial revolution and life during the early period of my grandparents' lives.

-Anne