We Came Along with a Hammer

DP’s been sick and then on hols, so it’s been a bit lonesome round these parts. I believe she has a bit more to say on the erstwhile Age o’ Inn, which will doubtless be stimulating, but I can’t stand the tumbleweeds no more. And so it is my dreary duty to summarize for you Booth Tarkington’s Alice Adams.

Ah, Alice Adams. Let me just pause here a minute and fully savor my memories of it. Uck. Now I feel like I ought to spit.

The book concerns the career of one Alice Adams, natch, as she reaches a crucial turning point of her life. It’s the early 1900s, she’s in her early 20s, and in Middle American City (pssst…it’s Indianapolis, Tarkington’s home town) that means she’s got to find a guy to marry fairly quick, or she’s going to become an old maid. It doesn’t help that although she went to school and hung out with an upper-class crowd growing up, the city’s been growing and many of her friend’s families have been getting richer, while Alice’s dad is still stuck in the same high-level clerk job at the local factory that he’s had for years. Her old pals can afford cars, clothes and European vacations; Alice has to scrounge in the public parks for violets to make a bouquet to take with her to the dance she’s invited to in the opening scene of the book.

Luckily she still has her looks, however, which is enough to turn the head of a visiting stranger at that same dance, and when Alice runs into him in town the next day, she hooks in and starts doing her level best to charms the pants off him (not literally, it’s the Aughts). Arthur Russell, the smitten stranger, is due to become a partner at a big factory in town, and Alice knows he’s about her best ticket out of her folk’s house. So she does her best to conceal her family’s down-on-their heels status and keep Russell all to herself, warning him not to believe any talk he hears about her around town.

Meanwhile, her worrywart mother is leaning on her Dad to leave his comfortable position at his company and found a factory of his own, using an industrial formula he worked out on his employer’s behalf but which his boss has never developed. Mrs. Adams realizes that without a shit-ton more money coming in Alice is never going to marry a toff and their son Walter is never going to get to go to college (which doesn’t seem to bother him much; sneered at by the upper classes, Walter sneers right back, and spends his time hanging with a tough crowd from the other side of the tracks).

All this comes together in the book’s climax, when things between Alice and her beau have gotten serious enough that she has to invite him over to dinner to meet the folks. (Previously he’s never made it past the front porch.) Alice and her mom’s attempts at sparkle are rubbed off right quick to reveal the shabbiness underneath, giving Russell serious doubts about her suitability as bride. His former employer brings the hammer down on her Dad’s new business, smothering the thing in its cradle and wrecking the family finances. And brother Walter goes on the lam, as it’s revealed that he’s been nicking from the till at work to cover gambling debts.

And so the book ends with everything gone pear-shaped, and Alice staring at the stairs of the shop front business college, preparing for life as a secretary, while her broken family are preparing to take in borders to make the rent.

This entry was posted on April 25, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Alice Adams, Booth Tarkington . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.