“She was often called ‘a right pretty girl’—temperate praise meaning a girl rather pretty than otherwise, and this she deserved, to say the least.”
In the pantheon of great American literature, Booth Tarkington likely stands alone as perhaps the most befuddling and forgettable writer to have ever won the Pulitzer Prize not just once, but twice. Tarkington is currently one of only three novelists to have won the Pulitzer on two separate occasions (then called the “Pulitzer Prize for the Novel”), the other two-time winners being William Faulkner and John Updike (and as of 2020, Colson Whitehead has also joined this exclusive club). However, despite being little known today, in his day Tarkington was one of America’s most celebrated writers. He was a patrician of the highest order, a mid-Victorian aristocrat from the Midwest whose novels were lauded by both academics and popular reviewers alike. But today, his name is rarely mentioned, except by the few lone pilgrims like myself who decide to venture through the Pulitzer Prize winners. In both of Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams, his consistent theme concerns the decline of the old Midwestern gentry –a once dignified and genteel stock of aristocrats who arose as descendants of the early frontiersman, who gradually watched as their fortunes faded with the changing times. Tarkington’s books hearken back to the railroad and mining industries of the 1870s, and his characters often lament the rise of new industries, particularly the growth of factories and automobiles. Tarkington displays a particular nostalgia for America’s Gilded Age past –an era which he portrays as idyllic and orderly prior to being shattered in the shadow of World War I. Additionally, both of Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novels were adapted into memorable Hollywood films, and, in my view, both films greatly overshadow their parent novels (most notably, Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons but also Alice Adams starring Katherine Hepburn).
Part of the problem with Booth Tarkington’s novels is that he simply believes in his own grandiosity and the moral weight of his own project far too heavily. He sees himself as a tragic poet laureate of the declining Midwest. However, his novels are less deep and more bland and well-trod. The characters are often static caricatures; people with premonitions of greatness who inevitably fall short of their own aspirations. In contrast to Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence, Booth Tarkington’s aristocracy strains credulity. To be fair, scattered throughout Alice Adams and The Magnificent Ambersons, there are some amusing scenes and pleasant passages of summer days in old Midwestern towns, but with the benefit of hindsight, Tarkington’s novels are hardly remarkable in the history of American literature.
In Alice Adams, Tarkington introduces us to a struggling lower-class family, presumably dwelling in Indianapolis, whose vivacious daughter, Alice Adams, dreams of becoming a wealthy “well-to-do” lady. She attends a ball in town with her embarrassingly blue-collar brother, and she catches the eye of an older, wealthier man. He is new to town. His name is Arthur Russell, and much to her delight, he begins courting her gradually throughout the novel until an escalating crescendo of chaos throws their future into question. He is invited to the humble Adams family home for dinner, and unfortunately for Alice, everything goes wrong from the start –they are plagued by unbearably warm weather, working-class foibles, and her family’s mortifying lack of social graces are laid bare. Midway through dinner, the meal is interrupted by financial troubles looming over the family. Alice’s father, Virgil, is confronted by his old business partner, old Mr. Lamb (“probably the last great merchant in America to wear the chin beard”) who interrogates Virgil regarding unpaid debts. Mr. Lamb once employed Virgil out of pity, but Virgil stole the company glue-making recipe and opened a factory of his own. Unbeknownst to Alice’s father, their son Walter, has recently robbed the business and skipped town, leaving the family with a huge lingering debt.
The novel ends pitifully as Alice Adams and a somber Arthur Russell sit together for one final moment on the veranda of her family home –the story ends in their chosen place of courtship. They exchange pleasantries but Arthur is clearly perturbed by what he has seen. Arthur views their class differences for what they are: simply too great to overcome. Arthur solemnly departs for the last time from the Adams family porch steps, knowing it will be the last. Meanwhile, Mr. Lamb takes pity on Mr. Adams and arranges for his large debt to be settled. The company purchases Mr. Adams’s “glue factory” which prevents him from going to prison for his son’s crime. Whereas Alice has been abandoned by her upper-class dream with Arthur Russell, Mr. Adams has been saved by the benevolence of wealthy Mr. Lamb. The book ends with an epilogue of sorts: Alice Adams is en route to a local college to learn employable skills. She has learned to accept her lower class status. Ironically, on the way to school she bumps into Arthur Russell for a brief, awkward moment. Surprised, he stammers when he sees Alice, but she simply says “hello” and proudly moves along. She is pleased by her own confidence, even though she is now forced to confront her own “doom” in the labor market where she will keep her family afloat.
Notable Quotations
“They were pretty hands, of a shapeliness delicate and fine. ‘The best things she’s got!’ a cold-blooded girl friend said of them, and meant to include Alice’s mind and character in the implied list of possessions surpassed by the notable hands. However that may have been, the rest of her was well enough. She was often called ‘a right pretty girl’—temperate praise meaning a girl rather pretty than otherwise, and this she deserved, to say the least. Even in repose she deserved it, though repose was anything but her habit, being seldom seen upon her except at home. On exhibition she led a life of gestures, the unkind said to make her lovely hands more memorable; but all of her usually accompanied the gestures of the hands, the shoulders ever giving them their impulses first, and even her feet being called upon, at the same time, for eloquence” (Chapter II).
“At first sight of this Mr. Arthur Russell, she had said to herself instantly, in words as definite as if she spoke them aloud, though they seemed more like words spoken to her by some unknown person within her: ‘There! That’s exactly the kind of looking man I’d like to marry!'” (Chapter VII).
“Something like this always happened, it seemed; she was continually making these illuminations, all gay with gildings and colourings; and then as soon as anybody else so much as glanced at them—even her father, who loved her—the pretty designs were stricken with a desolating pallor. “Is this LIFE?” Alice wondered, not doubting that the question was original and all her own. “Is it life to spend your time imagining things that aren’t so, and never will be? Beautiful things happen to other people; why should I be the only one they never CAN happen to?” (Chapter IX)
“‘Isn’t it the most BEAUTIFUL evening! the daughter said. ‘WHY can’t summer last all year? Did you ever know a lovelier twilight than this, mama?’
Mrs. Adams laughed, and answered, ‘Not since I was your age, I expect.’
Alice was wistful at once. ‘Don’t they stay beautiful after my age?’
‘Well, it’s not the same thing'” (Chapter XIX).
For this reading I used an online edition of Alice Adams. Typically, I include a brief biography in my Pulitzer Prize reviews, however since I previously included a biography of Booth Tarkington in my review of The Magnificent Ambersons, I decided not to do so again here. However, feel free to click the link below for more information on Booth Tarkington in my review of The Magnificent Ambersons.
About The 1922 Pulitzer Prize Decision
The decision to grant the Pulitzer Prize to Booth Tarkington in 1922 was unanimous and uncontroversial (unanimity was not always the case with respect to the Pulitzer Prizes). This was in spite of the fact that Tarkington had won the Pulitzer only a few years prior with The Magnificent Ambersons. Stuart P. Sherman was apparently the only member of the three person Novel Jury in 1922 to return from the previous year (after the turmoil surrounding the infamous snub of Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street). Thus, Sherman was appointed Chairman of the Jury in 1922. In response to the question of why the Jury selected Booth Tarkington’s Alice Adams rather than John Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers, Sherman apparently stated that Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers “has no great power in characterization or structure but has considerable interest as a commentary.” The 1922 Novel Jury was the last time Stuart P. Sherman served on a fiction jury.
- Chair: Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881-1926) was a prominent literary critic. Distantly related to William Tecumseh Sherman, he was born in Anita, Iowa, studied at Williams College and received his PhD from Harvard University. He taught at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois before becoming a literary figure in New York City –he gained fame for a public feud with H.L. Mencken. He became literary editor of the New York Herald Tribe (a pro-Republican paper that ran from 1924-1966). He was initially a defender of Nativism and a critic of Theodore Dreiser, but later refined his opinions. Tragically, Mr. Sherman died at the age of 44 in 1926 –while on vacation at Lake Michigan his canoe suddenly flipped over and he suffered a heart attack. He was survived by his wife, Ruth Bartlett Mears, and only daughter. Upon Sherman’s death, Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia, praised the legacy of Stuart P. Sherman. Interestingly enough, Mr. Sherman was succeeded at the New York Herald Tribe by Irita Van Doren, a renowned literary figure in American life (she later served as a Pulitzer Fiction Juror in the 1960s).
- Samuel M. Crothers (1857-1927) was a Unitarian minister. He resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Bliss Perry (1860-1954) was born into a well-connected Massachusetts family (his brother was the headmaster at Phillips Exeter Academy) and he was educated at Williams College before teaching at Princeton and Harvard for many years. He taught at the University of Paris and served as editor of The Atlantic Monthly. He was a prominent literary critic and wrote extensively on American poetry, including a notable biography of Walt Whitman. He died in 1954 at the age of 93, he was a friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, and Woodrow Wilson, among other notable leaders.
Who Is Booth Tarkington?
For a brief biography of Booth Tarkington check out my earlier review of his first Pulitzer Prize-winner The Magnificent Ambersons.
Film Adaptation:
- Alice Adams (1935)
- Director: George Stevens
- Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Evelyn Venable
- Studio: RKO Radio Pictures
Further Reading:
- The Magnificent Ambersons (1918)
- Booth Tarkington’s earlier Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Literary Context in 1921-1922:
- Nobel Prize for Literature (1921): awarded to French writer Anatole France “in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament.”
- According to Publishers Weekly, the #1 bestselling novel in 1921 was Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. The #4 bestseller was The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Despite both being published in 1920, they were likely bolstered to bestseller status the following year by the controversy over the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.
- The publishing firm Jonathan Cape was founded in London by Herbert Jonathan Cape and Wren Howard. The company would later publish Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, as well as Roald Dahl’s children’s books, and literary luminaries like James Joyce and T. E. Lawrence.
- Margaret Caroline Anderson and Jane Heap, publishers of The Little Review, were convicted of obscenity in a New York court for publishing the “Nausicaa” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
- D. H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love was first published in London.
- Aldous Huxley published his debut novel Chrome Yellow.
- Marcel Proust published parts III and IV of “In Search of Lost Time.”
- Willa Cather republished her debut novel Alexander’s Bridge.
Did The Right Book Win?
From what I can tell, 1921 was not a particularly stellar year in the annals of American literature. I am somewhat ambivalent about the Pulitzer granting the prize to Booth Tarkington again —Alice Adams is a fairly simplistic little novel absent of much depth or complexity. This wasn’t a terrible novel, it just didn’t have much to say. I could have just as easily not issued an award at all this year in lieu of granting the prize to Booth Tarkington a second time. In my view, it would have been far more fitting to give the award to John Dos Passos for Three Soldiers.
Tarkington, Booth. Alice Adams. Published online by Project Gutenberg.
Comment