The Flirt

Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 407K words
Chapters: 41

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Flirt by Booth TarkingtonAuthor: Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jul 1, 1995

Editor's review

The Flirt is a novel by Booth Tarkington that revolves around social relationships and character, with its title signaling the work's attention to frivolity and sincerity in human interaction. Tarkington is known for his keen observation and mildly satirical narration; the book will appeal to readers interested in marriage and social themes in early twentieth-century American popular fiction. Read it with attention to the subtle handling of dialogue and social scenes rather than expecting complex plot twists. For those studying Tarkington's style, it serves as a supplementary text in his vein of social comedy.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy early twentieth-century American social novels
General readers interested in literary treatments of marriage and social life
Literature enthusiasts who wish to study Tarkington's narrative style

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting suspense or strong plot momentum
Readers with little interest in social detail and dialogue-heavy scenes

Reading tips

First map the social relationships among the main characters, then move into the dialogue-heavy chapters.
Note the narrator's mild irony toward characters' words and deeds, and consider the personality type named in the title.
Read alongside other American social novels of the period to observe differences in handling social themes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Does “Flirt” in the title refer to a character or a personality type?

The title points to a frivolous, flirtatious type of person and mode of behavior in social life; which character it attaches to and with what consequences must be judged from the relationships in the text. Enter the book with this question in mind and attend to the tension between dialogue and the narrator's evaluation.

What is the pacing of the plot?

It is driven mainly by social scenes and dialogue, with a slower pace that emphasizes social observation over event density. It suits reading in installments, focusing each time on changes in one or two relationships.

Comments

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About the author

Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946 Author

Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) was an American novelist and playwright. The library holds 22 of his works, including The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams, Penrod, Seventeen, The Midlander, Penrod and Sam, In the Arena: Stories of Political Life, and The Turmoil. His writing draws largely on small-town life in the American Midwest, and he is known for his delicate, humorous portrayals of adolescent growth and family change, often touching on social manners during periods of transition. Both The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: the former uses the rise and fall of a family to reflect a changing era, while the latter depicts a young woman's struggles under social pressure. Both remain important works of American realism. Public information is limited, so full biographical details are not expanded here.