This was my effort to read some prize winning American authors. The Magnificent Ambersons won the 1919 Pulitzer. Apparently it is the middle novel of the "Growth trilogy" of which the first novel is The Turmoil (1915) and the third is The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). His novel Alice Adams won the Pulitzer in 1922--the only Pulitzer awarded between his two went to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. Tarkington was also awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction/Novel/Short Story in 1933.
So why don't we read Tarkington now? I should have run across him in some capacity in class or in an anthology or on my comps list. From what I can tell, Edith Wharton is simply better in that she wrote the same sort of novel about the same sort of thing and she happens to be a woman so she's not derided for writing a novel of manners in our often manner-less 21st century (and I bet Hemingway would have had a thing or two to say about the man's subject matter if not the man himself). She also then manages to fill a minority niche.
The Magnificent Ambersons isn't bad. It's very similar to The Age of Innocence but seems less of a complete novel--which now makes much more sense given it is the middle of a trilogy. The basic plot revolves around young George Amberson Minafer, the grandson of Major Amberson who essentially built the town they live in. The family had a lot of money, a lot of power, and a shortage of ambition after the Major's generation. The second generation include George's mother Isabel who marries Minafer out of spite, essentially, because the suitor in the forefront got drunk one night; George Amberson who attracts failed business deals like moths to a flame but who served in Congress for a bit; and Sydney Amberson who is just a mooch. George Amberson Minafer is coddled and babied from the minute he leaves the womb and proceeds to terrorize the town with his lack of occupation and conceitedness. He basically runs over people in his horse and carriage, beats up anyone who speaks against him, and does as he pleases. But he can't be punished because his mother thinks him an angel. He grows up and continues this line of behavior, goes to college but proclaims he will never work because he doesn't think it proper for a gentleman and intends to live on his family's money for the rest of his life while he becomes a yachtsman. This doesn't go so well thanks to the fact that only one generation of the family had earned any money at that point. George also wrecks his mother's relationships, wrecks his family relationships, and wrecks his own personal relationships (with men and women) with his haughty behavior and supposed ideals. He then, of course, gets the wind knocked out of him (a bit, not enough in my opinion) when everyone is dead and he is dirt poor and, thus, has to work. I didn't like the end because I thought it left too much undone and was too presumptuous, though this makes a little more sense if it is continued in the final part of the trilogy.
The novel's overriding themes are, of course, class and the manners that attend such matters, industry and modernization, alienation, power, etc--it's a modernist novel that clings to Victorian styles. It's not so great for black people (referred to as "darkeys") but it actually works out just fine for the women. Stragely. While constrained by society's mores, the women in the novel are actually governed by their own motives and opinions and act as they please. Yes, George controls his mother but she allows him to do so and even encourages it to a degree. And Lucy, George's love, is very much in charge of herself and her life. They don't have it any worse than the men, which is unusual for a novel from 1918, especially one about these subjects.
Anyway, it's not bad. It won't make it to any sort of recommendation list of mine unless someone asks me for a list of novels of manners . . . and who is going to so that, really. But it was an interesting read. It was entertaining and well written and engaging. I'm sort-of half curious to read the third part of the trilogy but we'll see how long that curiosity lasts.
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