As Americans we like to see the spoiled rich kid/person get his comeuppance. We get tired of watching him flaunt his money and not care about the people around him, and we just wish that he would "get what's coming to him." I think this is an especially significant thought given the state of the current economy, which is falling in shambles around us. The "D" word is rearing its ugly head and we're not so sure we're going to be able to put it down...There are people all over the country who are struggling to make ends meet, and there are people who, like Carly Fiorina, have taken millions in "golden parachutes" while thousands went jobless. What's going to happen to all of those corporate executives that lost their jobs, or will lose their jobs due to their being "rendered superfluous" due to the fact that their greed led their company down the path of bankruptcy and being bought out by an even larger bank? Are we, as regular Americans going to cry over them, offer them our pity? No. We're going to be like that character Nelson in the Simpsons and say "Eh-heh!"(or ah-ha! in that "I told you so/you suck" kind of way). Much of what is happening now to the very wealthy, as their financial windfalls go down the proverbial tube, is very reminiscent of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons. Ambersons, the second novel to win a Pulitzer prize(1919) and the first of Tarkington's novels to win the prize(Alice Adams, which I read a while ago won a short three years later in 1922)is a sweeping epic of a wealthy family's demise into deject poverty. It is an excellent book and has been named to the Modern Library's 100 best novels of the 20th century list, and I actually think that it deserves it(at least at this point of my reading career). What I think is important about this novel, as a little background, is it, through the characters lives, shows how the world changed through the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. This was a big change, the change from horse-drawn carriages to cars, the change from gas lights to electricity, the rise of progress, the rise of the middle class, the rise of pollution. In the midst of all of this is the family the Ambersons, who seem to be at the start of the progress, but get left behind as the progress moves forward. The Ambersons are of old money, the kind that become wealthy due to real estate and then sit on their money forever, reaping the rewards. The grandson, George Amberson Minafer, on whom the book focuses most intently, is the worst kind of spoiled rich kid. His grandfather worked hard to take advantage of real estate market turns, made an insane amount of money, and then went into retirement. Because he was so rich, the rest of the family didn't have to really do shit. They could just live off of grandpa's money, which was what they did; investing in what they thought was good without much business sense, planning on getting richer or, if they didn't, expecting there to be more where it came from. George Amberson Minafer starts out the book as a little boy, who rides his pony and then pony and carriage at a tear through the town(a fictional Midwestern town), not caring who is in his path, and then even laughing if he makes a human fall down or startles another animal. He has the worst kind of attitude, he takes it for granted that his family is the wealthiest in the city and that everyone should be beholden to him, as well as care what he thinks, what he does, he is drunk, even as a young child with a sense of entitlement and of his own power. He is stubborn and pig-headed and is always thinking of what will be best for the family given their "status." You LOVE to hate this guy. Then, George Minafer becomes a young man, and he meets Lucy Morgan at a party. He is instantly enamored, and also possessive. Oftimes one wonders what the hell she sees in him, but they continue to court for a long time. It is during this time that George finds out that Lucy is the daughter of a former beau of his beautiful(and even though she has the VERY unfortunate trait of never seeing any fault with her son, regardless of what anyone says)and still attractive mother. The Morgans(Eugene being the father)have moved back into town after living elsewhere for a long time, and Eugene wants to get in to the car production business. George of course scoffs at the idea, thinking that cars are just a passing fad(HOW WRONG HE IS!), and never takes Eugene and his ever increasing fortune seriously, because of course he is so wrapped up in himself! It is only when gossip starts to amount around him about his now widowed mother and Mr. Morgan that he begins to become upset and take charge, since no one can ruin the Amberson name! So concerned with the possible ruin of the family's good name(and also, though perhaps subconsciously the loss of the total and complete attention of his mother), he refuses to let his mother associate with Eugene(who wants to marry his mother), which even though she complies willingly because for her the sun rises and sets in her son, it is emotionally devastating, and while the wealth of the Ambersons is eclipsed by other families that work for their money, that create wealth through business...during this time George Amberson Minafer goes to college, but doesn't really try to achieve anything because he doesn't feel that he needs to, in his words:
'"Lucy," he said, finally, with cold dignity, "I should like to ask you a few questions." [break] "Yes?" [break] "The first is: Haven't you perfectly well understood that I don't mean to go into business or adopt a profession?"[break]"I wasn't quite sure," she said gently. "I really didn't know--quite."[break] "Then of course it's time I did tell you. I never have been able to see any occasion for a man's going into trade, or being a lawyer, or any of those things if his position and family were such that he didn't need to. You know, yourself, there are a lot of people in the East--in the South, too for that matter--that don't think we've got any particular family or position or culture in this part of the country. I've met plenty of that kind of provincial snobs myself, and they're pretty galling. There were one or two men in my crowd at college, their families had lived on their income for three generations, and they never dreamed there was anybody in their class out here. I had to show them a thing or two, right at the start, and I guess they won't forget it! Well, I think it's time all their sort found out that three generations can mean just as much out here as anywhere else. That's the way I feel about it, and let me tell you I feel it pretty deeply!" [break] "But what are you going to do, George?" she cried.[break] George's earnestness surpassed hers; he had become flushed and his breathing was emotional. As he confessed, with simple genuineness, he did feel what he was saying "pretty deeply"; and in truth his state approached the tremulous. "I expect to live an honourable life," he said. "I expect to contribute my share to charities, and to take part in--in movements." [break] "What kind?" [break] "Whatever appeals to me," he said. [break] Lucy looked at him with grieved wonder. "But you really don't mean to have any regular business or profession at all?" [break] "I certainly do not!" George returned promptly and emphatically.' (131-132). It is at this point that Lucy sincerely starts to distance herself from him. He continues to live off of his family's money and deludes himself into believing that his family has clout, while it is the families like the Morgans that continue to make money in the industrial boom that surpass his family in wealth. When his mother, and then his grandfather die and leave the family penniless...he has to take a job in a plant that makes explosives; it's dangerous work, but he needs it to give his aunt a quality of life that's slightly better than complete poverty. In an ironic twist, while hurrying to work, he is hit by a car(which he poo-poos for most of the books), and it is the Morgans(Eugene, who was devastated by the loss of George's mother, both when she was alive as she was forced to distance herself from Eugene because of George, and of course at her actual death; and Lucy, who never married after her courtship with George)who get over their own feelings and help him out, they forgive. Will the U.S. taxpayers be so kind to those who have fallen due to the economy? I dunno, greed will only get you so far. I think one of the best scenes in the book is when George looks in his boarding house lobby(before his accident) and sees a newly printed book with "the title: "A Civic History" and beneath the title, the rubric, "Biographies of the 500 Most Prominent Citizens and Families in the History of the City." (246) It nags at him to look at it, and wonder...he finally does and when he does, his family's name is not there. "The elevator boy noticed nothing unusual about him and neither did Fanny, when she came in from church with her hat ruined, an hour later. And yet something had happened--a thing which, years ago, had been the eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town. They had thought of it, longed for it, hoping acutely that they might live to see the day when it would come to pass. And now it had happened at last: Georgie Minafer had got his come-upance. [break] He had got it three times filled, and running over. The city had rolled over his heart, burying it under, as it rolled over the Major's and buried it under. The city had rolled over the Ambersons and buried them under to the last vestige; and it mattered little that George guessed easily enough that most of the five hundred Most Prominent had paid something substantial "to defray the cost of steel engraving, etc."--the Five Hundred had heaved the final shovelful of soot upon that heap of obscurity wherein the Ambersons were lost forever from sight and history. "Quicksilver in a nest of cracks!" [break] Georgie Minafer had got his come-upance, but the people who had so longed for it were not there to see it, and they never knew it. Those who were still living had forgotten all about it and all about him. (247) The book could have ended here, but of course it doesn't, and the Morgans get to show their forgiveness, amazing in the face of how George treated them. I just wonder how forgiving the American people will be after this economic crisis pans out??? PPs-46, GGs-37.