The Magnificent Ambersons - Booth Tarkington #100

Review of The Modern Library's 100 Best Books of The 20th Century

#100

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

"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."

The Magnificent Ambersons was published in 1918 and is the second in a trilogy of books entitled the Growth Trilogy, detailing the urban growth and industrial expansion of America. The story follows the life of Georgie Amberson Minafer, a spoiled rotten youth raised under the wealth of his entrepreneuring Grandfather Major Amberson and the selfless and absolutely destructive adoration of his mother Isabel Amberson.

The Amberson's founded a small town that through the industrialization of the area grew and grew as the family's wealth and standing diminished. As the story progresses, life continues to deteriorate for Georgie, who desires nothing more out of life than to have the means to merely be, not do. Love enters and escapes Georgie's life influenced entirely by his arrogance and completely self-absorbed attitude toward living and wealth. After the death of both his Mother, Father and Grandfather, and the ubrupt realization that his inheritance amounted to a meager six hundred dollars, Georgie is left to take a menial and dangerous job in order to support his Aunt and his self. All dreams of remaining a lofty, wealthy figure in his ever expanding home town is dashed completely from Georgie's mind.

This story is profound in a uniquely magnificent way. The story begins in a glorious crescendo followed by a tumultuous, heart-wrenching and all too swift swan dive. Georgie's youthful arrogance and lofty attitude is dashed in a mere couple of chapters. Tarkington's background detailing of the revolution that is building up America as we know it is so dirty and grimey a counterpoint to the gilded magnificent life of the Ambersons. As the city grows and flourishes in the foggy, smokey industrial revolution the already brilliant and wealthy life of the Ambersons begins to crack and fade away until even stately Amberson Mansion, once the ideal of wealth and civic stature, is demolished to make way for apartments and factories. To watch the highly flawed Georgie, not a sympathetic character in the least, be ground into the dirt several times over is painfully endearing. The reader identifies wholly with his Mother's totally blind adoration. The story is part a lesson in history and part a tale of the descendents of the pioneers of industry being swallowed whole by their very own endeavors.

This book is definitely worthy of it's place on the list of 100 best books. Read it, please!