The dish (Free subscription) | 11/29/2009
I’ll be on ESPNEWS some time between 2:30 and 3 pm EST on Monday, topics TBD. Booth Tarkington’s Alice Adams won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, making him the award’s first two-time winner as he won two of the first four given. His first award was for The Magnificent Ambersons, a much stronger book [...]
The Pulitzer Project (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Grounded in outmoded attitudes about class and distractingly highlighted by outmoded attitudes about race, Alice Adams has not aged well. In his 1922 Pulitzer winner , Booth Tarkington presents a heroine striving to climb the short social ladder of her Midwestern city using only her charms and well-rehearsed mannerisms. Watching Alice struggle is painful. She has self-awareness sufficient to know she...
vere loqui (Free subscription) | 10/19/2009
In a post last year , I lamented the virtual disappearance of Indiana writer Booth Tarkington from the modern literary consciousness. My cries and lamentations have been heard by John Wilson at Front Porch Republic . Well, okay, not really. Wilson has probably never even heard of this blog. But for his outstanding idea of creating the Booth Tarkington Appreciation Society we are going to make him an...
2 Blowhards (Free subscription) | 10/16/2009
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- I recently wrote that California's time as national lodestar might have passed. If that assessment is correct, then what areas might replace California as America's goto place (figuratively and maybe even literally)? Perhaps there's no single replacement area. As observers such as Terry Teachout have been noting, culture in the USA is becoming increasingly...
Freedom Writing (Free subscription) | 08/05/2009
Nearly a century ago, novelist Booth Tarkington wrote a series of novels known as the "Growth" trilogy. It followed a fictional prominent family, the Ambersons, and its prestige and influence in a fictional Midwestern city from the end of the Civil War to the early years of the 20th century — during which time the aristocratic Ambersons' fortunes declined at a time that industrialists...
Baxojayz - Centricity (Free subscription) | 07/29/2009
apocryphal \uh-POK-ruh-fuhl\, adjective: (Bible) Pertaining to the Apocrypha . Not canonical. Hence: Of doubtful authority or authenticity; equivocal; fictitious; spurious; false. Apocryphal ultimately derives from Greek apokruphos, "hidden (hence, spurious)," from apokruptein, "to hide away," from apo-, "away, from" + kruptein, "to hide." Beer summit The meeting...
Dictionary Quotes (Free subscription) | 04/23/2009
“There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.” Booth Tarkington quotes
AppShopper.com: Price Changes (Free subscription) | 04/06/2009
The Magnificent Ambersons 1.0 Category: Books Price: $1.99 -> $0.99 ( iTunes ) Description: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington ***** Pulitzer Prize winner - 1919 ***** Film Based on this Novel: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) Nominated for 4 Oscars. Another 2 wins The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1942 American drama film written and directed by Orson Welles. His second feature film, it...
AppShopper.com: Price Changes (Free subscription) | 04/01/2009
Alice Adams 1.0 Category: Books Price: $1.99 -> $0.99 ( iTunes ) Description: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington Published in 1921 (84,427 words) (243 pages) No. 1922 in the Pulitzer Prize Winner series Categories: Humor, Fiction Alice Adams is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Booth Tarkington which was also adapted into a 1935 comedy/drama film "Alice Adams -1935) which was Nominated for 2...
Tales from the Reading Room (Free subscription) | 01/13/2009
Before I begin, a quick question: hands up those who’d heard of Booth Tarkington before this very moment? Over here in the UK, of the canonical authors who’ve made it across the Atlantic from the early part of the twentieth century, Tarkington does not cut much of a dash. So I was intrigued to read [...]
New York Times (Free subscription) | 12/17/2008
“Beasley’s Christmas Party,” a charming adaptation of a Booth Tarkington story, is told with such a light touch that you might overlook its contrivances.
The American Conservative (Free subscription) | 12/05/2008
American Conservative readers will enjoy the regionalism special issue of the University Bookman, guest-edited by TAC regular Bill Kauffman and featuring contributions from Jesse Walker (on soul music), Jeremy Beer (on Booth Tarkington), Caleb Stegall (on Kansas), and yours truly (on Missouri’s Jim Reed, Mencken’s favorite senator), among others. And speaking of Kauffman, his column in...
Eolake Stobblehouse blog (Free subscription) | 10/03/2008
There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink. -- Booth Tarkington (Are we supposed to figure out what the other thing is') --- I'm glad I didn't have to fight in any war. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up a gun. I'm glad I didn't get killed or kill somebody. I hope my kids enjoy the same lack of manhood. -- Tom Hanks Well said, Tom....
vere loqui (Free subscription) | 08/19/2008
David Frum has an excellent analysis of why it is that one of our great American authors, Booth Tarkington, has fallen into obscurity. I'll put my own plug in for Tarkington, one of the great American authors. Tarkington was most famous for his novels Alice Adams and the Magnificent Ambersons , both of which were made into successful movies: Tarkington dominated American letters in the first third...
David Frum's Diary (Free subscription) | 08/18/2008
Peggy Noonan, as usual, packs more insight into a dozen lines than I managed in 200:I bought and reread for no reason that I remember Booth Tarkington... . . .
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