By: Dreadful Penny

Dreadful Penny — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:45:00 +0000

I don’t think he’s a bad writer so much as a decidedly mediocre one; the characters in Magnificent Ambersons are insufferable, but the book isn’t necessarily. It’s the way Tarkington seems unable to make up his mind between satirical social commentary and sturm und drang that makes me think this… then again, perhaps I’m a mediocre reader for this book.

Is it possible for me to say that Tarkington is doing a poor Sinclair Lewis impression without having read a Sinclair Lewis novel (but having read extensively about how he passed over for the Pulitzer)? If we’re allowing this kind of uninformed opining in our blog, d.v., then let that pronouncement stand!

By: Diablevert

Diablevert — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:27:38 +0000

See, here’s the thing: I think I give Tarkington a bit more credit than you do. I don’t think he’s so much a bad writer as a narrow-minded man….For instance, I’d say that the Hamlet riff is clearly him poking fun at George. George is supposed to be what, 22 there? The kind of self-involved, self-serious attitude that George is displaying in the Hamlet scene is pretty typical of that age, and I think Tarkington depicts it quite accurately. And furthermore, I think Tarkington knows better, and expects the reader to know better — i.e., that really George is being selfish, and his problems don’t, as it were, amount to a hill of beans in this world. But I think Tarkington feels a benevolence toward George, a willingness to brush aside his flaws as merely the callowness of youth, that the reader doesn’t feel….and I think that’s maybe what I mean about narrow-mindedness…I think Tarkington has a sympathy with George’s aristocratic ideals; he doesn’t quite think George’s side is wrong, he just sees that George’s side is losing…

Comments on: The Magnificent Ambersons: Here We Go, With the Hamlet.

By: Dreadful Penny

By: Diablevert