The Midlander

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

3.8

Word count: 554K words
Chapters: 56

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 Midlander by Booth TarkingtonAuthor: Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Feb 11, 2019

Editor's review

The Midlander is a novel by Booth Tarkington belonging to his sequence of works set against the growth of a Midwestern American city. Tarkington writes with fine strokes about his characters' choices amid commercial expansion and shifting class lines, skillfully interweaving family relations, marital expectations and personal ambition in a narrative voice that is at once ironic and sympathetic. The book is valuable for understanding early twentieth-century Midwestern urbanization, the entrepreneurial spirit and generational difference, and can also be read as a text for studying Tarkington's development. Read it attending to the gradual unfolding of motive and the narrator's ironic distance rather than expecting sharp plot conflict. As an early work, its treatment of gender roles, class and race carries the limitations of its time, and readers should stay alert to them. The pace is leisurely overall, suited to readers willing to read slowly and attend to psychology and social manners.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy American realist fiction and novels of manners
Scholars of Tarkington or of early twentieth-century Midwestern American literature
Those interested in themes of urbanization, the entrepreneurial spirit and generational conflict
Readers willing to read slowly and value psychological and social detail

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking fast pacing, strong plot or suspenseful twists
Readers impatient with the gender and class biases of early fiction
Those wanting systematic historical knowledge rather than literary narrative

Reading tips

Learn first about Tarkington's sequence of works and the Midwestern urban background, then enter the text; the characters' choices will be easier to understand.
Watch the narrator's ironic tone and distinguish characters' own words from the author's attitude, so as not to mistake a character's view for the book's stance.
Take brief notes on relationships, tracing how the threads of marriage, family and career intersect.
After finishing, read alongside other American realist works of the period and compare their different treatments of commerce and class.

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

Can I read this without having read other Tarkington works?

Yes. The plot stands largely on its own and does not depend on earlier books. But knowing Tarkington's sequence of Midwestern urban novels makes it easier to see how character types and themes carry over, and gives a fuller reading.

The book is slow—how can I keep going?

Read it as a novel of manners: attend to the subtext in dialogue, the details of domestic scenes and the narrator's irony rather than waiting for plot shocks. A steady one or two chapters a day, with notes on relationships, will keep the pace manageable.

Are the values in the book problematic today?

As an early twentieth-century novel, it carries period limitations in its treatment of gender roles, class and race. Readers should separate characters' views from the narrative stance, understanding the historical context while remaining critical of the biases it implies.

Is it suitable as supplementary reading for a literature course?

Yes. It can support discussion of American realism, Midwestern urbanization writing and ironic narrative. Teachers should supply background on the period and on the author's development, and guide students to examine the book's treatment of gender and class.

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.