America from an agrarian to an industrial society.nI do not intend to provide any Cliff’s Notes substitute fornreading Tarkington or offer a book-by-book discussion ofnGrowth. A few words on the themes and plots of the threennovels are, however, in order. In The Turmoil, a sicklynaspiring poet, Dibbs Sheridan, learns to accept his fate asnthe eventual heir to an industrial fortune in a city chokingnitself to death on the smoke of its own prosperity. Despisednand ignored by his nouveau riche family, Dibbs becomesntheir last hope upon the death of one brother and the failurenof another. The Magnificent Ambersons takes us back to annearlier period of Midwestern gentility in the years justnbefore its dissolution. Georgie Amberson Minafer, a handsomenbut repellant snob, assists in the ruin of his old familynuntil he is saved by the wisdom that comes throughnsuffering and by marriage to an industrialist’s daughter.nFinally, in The Midlander, the hale fellow Dan Oliphantnstruggles to build his dream: a bourgeois suburban communitynfor families whose livelihood depends upon the smokeinfestedncity.nLittle outwardly connects the three books, apart fromnlocation. There are no chance meetings between Dibbs,nGeorge, or Dan. Apart from the smoke, there appears to benlittie effort to interrelate the tales symbolically. The threenheroes are temperamentally unalike in every imaginablenway. What ties them together is each one’s confrontationnwith the spectacle of the economic growth and socialnchange that enriched the Sheridans, destroyed the Ambersons,nand posed a critical challenge to the Oliphants.nWhatever else he was, Tarkington was no booster. UnlikenSinclair Lewis, who only hated the way things were,nTarkington grew up in a gentier, more humane world thannthe 20th century. In his simpler fiction—like Penrod or ThenConquest of Canaan—the well-born Hoosier permittednhimself a certain nostalgia for the graceful old times ofncotillions and carriages. That was the world of the Ambersons,na family whose fortune may have been founded onnreal estate speculation but whose members justified theirnexistence by attending to business, doing public servicen(Uncle George Amberson sat in Congress), or simply bynliving lives which can only be described as beautiful. ButnTarkington was no snob. He was, if anything, even morenenthusiastic about the simpler folk who inhabit the villagenhe celebrated in The Gentleman From Indiana.nIt was a trip back to the Midwest which shocked thenyoung novelist out of his genteel reveries. All that had beennso quietiy beautiful was being transformed into smoke,nnoise, and soot. Tarkington was far more outraged by thenchanges than any muckraker, and there are pages of ThenTurmoil that constitute a harsher indictment against thengreed, stupidity, and dishonesty of American capitalismnthan anything in Upton Sinclair. Lovely old neighborhoodsnare swallowed up, old families are ruined, and young wivesnlose heart in all the soot. The most tragic consequence isnthe human cost. As Dibbs Sheridan turns into a shrewdn(albeit highly scrupulous) businessman, he learns secrets ofnthe heart which might be better left concealed—enoughnmaterial for more than one scandalous novel, he reflects.nDibbs’s open and honest face acquires a different look—hisnmother calls it a “set expression.” In the end, Dibbsnbecomes powerful and successful; he even is about to marrynthe girl of his dreams, and yet something has been lost. Innawakening from his dreams of poetry and refined sensibility,nthe American has become hard and not a little cynical.nDan Oliphant in The Midlander undergoes a similarntransformation from the well-beloved all-American boy intona booster. Unlike Dibbs, he never gives up on his dream,nbut in his effort to realize a suburban utopia, Dan agesnquickly. The girl next door, who had always idolized him,nis astonished to realize that the noble youth has turned intonan overweight Rotarian:nWhat was more to her, nowhere in this almostnmiddle-aged man of business, now beginning to bensuccessful, could she discover signs of the spirit thatnonce would have brought him instantly to welcomenhome an old friend. . . .nIn a sense, Dibbs and Dan are alter egos. The one is thenrefined son of a crude industrialist; the other is a bornngentleman turned booster. To complicate the refractions,neach has a brother (in Dibbs’s case, two) that runs truer tonthe family form but fails to meet the challenge of growth.nNeither of the two older Sheridan brothers live up to theirnfather’s standard of energy and dedication, while DannOliphant’s brother, Harlan, turns into a snobbish esthetenand a reactionary.nThe most famous of Tarkington’s characters is littienGeorgie Minafer. As a boy, he runs people down in thenstreet, tells the Methodist minister to go to hell, andngenerally inspires the town with the desire to see him get hisncomeuppance. He does. For all his flaws, George is made ofngood stuff: High-spirited, impulsive, with a touch of nobility,nhe breaks with the girl he loves because she expects himnto have a career beyond that of yachtsman. As his family ofnMagnificent Ambersons dwindles into insignificance,nGeorge refuses even to consider the pursuit of wealth asnsomething good in itself. His response to changing timesnand new faces is summed up in his favorite expression,n”riffraff.” At his grandfather’s death, the family realizes thatnit is, in fact, bankrupt, and George walks through a city hencan no longer recognize:nGreat numbers of the faces were even of a kind hendid not remember ever to have seen; they werenpartly like the old type that his boyhood knew, andnpartly like types he knew abroad. He saw Germanneyes with American wrinkles at their corners; hensaw Irish eyes and Neapolitan eyes, Roman eyes,nTuscan eyes, eyes of Lambardy, of Savoy,nHungarian eyes, Balkan eyes, Scandinavianneyes—all with a queer American look in them.nGeorge is humiliated not so much by the change innfortunes as by the realization that he has stood in the way ofnhis widowed mother’s happiness by forbidding her to marrynan old sweetheart, Eugene Morgan, father of his ownnformer almost-fianeee and a wealthy automobile manufacturer.nTo do penance and support a foolish bridge-playingnaunt whom he has tormented all his life, George gives upnthe prospects of a legal career and takes a job handlingnexplosives. The book, however, ends happily with a reconciliationnbetween George and Morgan’s daughter, after thenyoung man is run down by an automobile.nnnFEBRUARY 1987 /15n