16 / CHRONICLESnIn the rise and fall of families and neighborhoods, muchnbeauty is destroyed, but the ugliness is not permanent.nEugene Morgan builds his own mansion five miles beyondnthe ruins of the Amberson mansion. At the end of ThenMidlander, Dan Oliphant’s aristocratic mother reflects onnthe neighborhood her son has created, pronounces the townneven more pleasant than in the days of her youth: “I don’tnsuppose my mother could have believed how beautiful itnwould come to be.” Her ever-skeptical son, Harlan, innrefutation points upward to “where an opening through thenfoliage of tall beech trees left a vista of the sky; and there,nagainst the evening blue, the thinning end of a plume ofnsmoke, miles long, was visible.” When he asks his wife ifneven the smoke has beauty, she tells him that his brothernthought so and must have “felt something in it that neithernyou nor I can understand.” This is not naive optimism but anfaith in the American character. For all our restlessness andnmutability, we will attempt to create something fine out ofnthe ugliness that greed has made.nLike any novelist, Tarkington has his share of flaws,nchiefly an easy sentimentality that comes perilously close tonsuperficiality. In his universe there is hardly any real evilnbut incivility or coldness, no virtues but kindness andncandor. In the tragic sense of growth, there are nonvillains—only flawed heroes. Apart from The MagnificentnAmbersons and, perhaps, Alice Adams, there is littie awarenessnof the tragic dimensions of human life. Set besidenFaulkner or Fitzgerald at their best, Tarkington might seemna lightweight. To set against these vices, we have only tonmention his extraordinary gifts as a storyteller and as anportrayer of character—especially women’s. Because henParadise Enow: A Midwestern Perspectiven(continued from page 9)nthis is the best part—without being surrounded by crazies.n(Although, because we are such a large, diverse place, wendo have our little ghettos of lunacy, especially in our biggerncities.) Think of it: We’re neither Cahfornia, where one’sninvitation to community seems to rest solely on one’snaberration and pique at all things normal, nor Managua (wenhave no Managuas in this country), where what is notnstandard is quietly crushed.nHere is a cornucopia of disinterested goodwill towardsnoddities, an amused politeness at the tender psyches of thengenius and the artiste and the sometimes unbalanced (oftennindistinguishable); here we have both the security of beingnpart of a sane, humdrum community and the stimulation ofnobserving, or perhaps acting, the occasional eccentric.nThere’s room here for the dance instructor grocery shoppingnin his lavender leotard; the militant feminist, and thenshy bride who just wants to have babies and keep her housenspotless; the teenager clad in leather and chains; the oil rignor coal mine or harvest itinerant from Texas or Mexico; thenflamboyant Marxist professor and his colleague who spendsnhis spare time translating Old High German lays; thenbuttoned-down shopowner and the layered-look artist andnthe turtienecked writer; Born-agains and Jews and Muslims,nnndid not disdain popularity, even his worst books can be readnwith pleasure, which is more than can be said of some ofnFaulkner’s best.nMore important than all of this, in my estimation, isnTarkington’s success in tackling the great American story ofnthe 20th century. In Gatsby, Fitzgerald fashioned a litflencorner of that story into a gem, and in his Snopes Chronicles,nFaulkner approached more epic proportions, butnneither of them comes even close to the grandeur ofnconception achieved in Tarkington’s Growth, and neithernwas able to sum up the American story so succinctiy in ancharacter as convincing as George Amberson Minafer.nThe key to Tarkington’s peculiar triumph (as well as to hisndecline and fall) lies as much in the accident of birth as innhis literary gifts. As a Midwestern gentleman growing upnafter the Civil War, Booth Tarkington actually lived thenchanges he described and lived them in what was then thenmost American part of America—the Midwest—and thenmost Midwestern state of that region—Indiana. The neglectnand obscurity into which he has fallen is an indication,nall too clear, of America’s decline as a nation assurednof its identity and its place in the world. Things are at such anlow ebb that the publishers of the most recent reissue of T/ienMagnificent Ambersons signed up Stanley Kauffmann tonwrite an introduction full of schoolboy hermeneutics like ann”Oedipal theme as the psyche’s revenge on George for hisnclaustral family pride” and pompous references to “Welles’sngenius.” I will believe that America is on the road to moralnrecovery only when Growth is taught as a classic and peoplenlike Stanley Kauffmann are forbidden, on pain of imprisonment,nto open their mouths on such subjects.nChristian Scientists and Quakers and Moonies, JuniornLeaguers and right-to-lifers and the Posse Comitatus.nHere I can run my business or my family or my love lifenthe way I want, and no one will think it proper to interferenunless it’s obvious that I’m hurting someone else. Herenprivacy is considered a part of community, and license isnanswerable only to its own excesses. Outsiders might thinknwe’re “isolated” here, because fads and national paranoiasnare slow to reach us; the truth is that Midwesterners are toonbusy and involved with real life to spend much time fearingnthe corruption of civilization. And besides, it just won’tnhappen here: decency, charity, dogged skepticism, and anheartfelt laissez-faire are our defense, as solidly a part of usnas our suspicion of gratuitous change and our dependencenon the livestock market.nIt’s no accident that, in addition to being the clearest hintnof Heaven to come our way, the Midwest is also, barringncertain details, a compelling synecdoche for the nationnwhose heartiand it is. With that in mind, perhaps thisnshould be an invitation: What I believe about the nationnshould hold for the region, too. So: If you think you cannhandle the sanity here, and are content to help us do whatnwe do best, come on in. There’s plenty of room.n