The Plutocrat

by Booth Tarkington

1927. Although his first book was about English romance, Newton Booth Tarkington, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, for The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams, came to be known for his comical (and almost cynical) style of the Lost Generation that characterized the 1920's. The book Out of the north Atlantic a January storm came down in the night, sweeping the American coast with wind and snow and sleet upon a great oblique front from Nova Scotia to the Delaware capes. The land was storm-bound and the sea possessed with such confusion that nothing seemed less plausible than that human beings should be out among the running hill ranges, and not only alive but still voyaging crazily on their way. Tow ropes parted off the Maine and Massachusetts coasts; barges were swamped and bargemen drowned; schooners drove ashore in half-frozen harbours; and all night on the Georgian Banks fishermen fought dark monstrosities of water. But in the whole area of the storm nowhere was the northeaster more outrageous than upon that ocean path where flopped and shuttled the great Duumvir, five hours outward bound from New York. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Genres: Fiction, School

548 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Newton Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction/Novel more than once, along with William Faulkner, John Updike and Colson Whitehead. Although he is little read now, in the 1910s and 1920s he was considered America's greatest living author.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read in an after-hours bar in Columbia SC in 1976.
Read again in 2007 and again in 2012.

My first Booth Tarkington. Stranded in an after-hours bar with cubby holes lined with bookshelves and no way home, I picked this up and began reading. I loved the characters and the setting. I adored the style. I have since read this book twice more and found it even better. I also adore Somerset Maugham and have read many of his works but it wasn't until I read almost a dozen Tarkingtons before I finally realized why I like him so much: he writes in the same style as Somerset Maugham.

[Chuck Redman · Rating 5 out of 5]

" Upon the wine list the General discovered a red Beaune, a dear lost love of his, he said—and not only said, but copiously proved by wearing his lost love’s colours, ere long, as his own complexion.”

BOOK? . . . The Plutocrat, by Booth Tarkington (1927)
WHAT KIND? . . . Novel
BE MORE SPECIFIC . . . Romance, but tempered somewhat by a jaded irony
ABOUT WHAT? . . . A 1920’s Atlantic Ocean voyage and North Africa land tour embarked upon by a young playwright named Laurence Ogle (I had a high school math teacher named Miss Ogle. Probably doesn’t mean anything). Well, for Laurence Ogle, this is a case of first love. They are barely out of U.S. waters before he is unwittingly smitten by a co-voyager, a Frenchwoman roughly a decade beyond his years, but what young man cannot relate to Ogle’s puppy-like helplessness, to the torment, the humiliation, the splendor of his infatuation? Ogle is not a simple character but, seeing only her loveliness, he discovers much more complexity in Madame Momoro’s nature than he is equipped to understand. The most obvious obstacle for Ogle is the gregarious Mr. Tinker, who seems to be everywhere that he, and Madame Momoro, happen to be. A ship can be like a prison when there is a ruggedly-handsome Midwestern plutocrat on board who can’t be avoided. Even North Africa can feel pretty small.
SIGNIFICANCE? . . . This book illustrates the difference between realism and romance. Not in literature. In life. Guess which one wins in the end. And guess what the book is really saying about class distinctions in America. And guess how many reversals of fortune you will encounter in its pages. And guess what mysteries will be presented and puzzled over. And guess how many other things you will see in the characters and the plot that I did not see.
SO SHOULD I READ IT OR WHAT? . . . Uh-huh. Very funny, in parts, but that’s just the icing on the cake. There is sophistication, artistry and astuteness. The Plutocrat is a mislaid American gem of a novel, obscured and overshadowed by Tarkington’s other books only because it is not of very epic proportions. But you don’t find writing like this every day. Hardly ever, nowadays.
YOU GOT ANYTHING ELSE TO ADD? . . . I’m gonna get me some more books by this fella Tarkington because I probably shouldn’t even be writing little Two-bit reviews until I make sure I know what I’m talking about.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow in the middle but the ends are good. I do love how Tarkington seems to redeem the unredeemable.

[Mystery Theater · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are an effete intellectual snob of the New York variety, this book is going to leave you cold. "Sophisticated" critics revile it as the 'anti-Babbit,' a book praising Tinker, the rich mid western business man that Lewis ridicules in his book by that name. That argument is pure misdirection. 1) The book is not about Tinker, and 2) Critics must revile it because it about them. This is so painful that they prefer to change the subject and hallucinate a different book. Tinker is but one of the two main foils by which Tarkington delivers scathing ridicule of the liberal intellectual fraud. Our 'hero,' Ogle, is introduced sympathetically but progressively revealed as an arrogant entitled child who believes his world view is globally shared by all "sophisticates." By the end he sees himself in truth as a cringeworthy hypocrite. His grossly predictable Deus ex Machina rescue reduces our respect for the author without in any way altering that the main character has been so badly raised by his professor father that he is unlikely ever to become a decent human being. Not a great book but extraordinarily applicable today.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It is among the collection of works by writers from the early twentieth century that I adore--Booth Tarkington and Sinclair Lewis are two of my favorites. This is simply a really "nice" story in which the narrator (Laurence Ogle) learns a lot about himself and other people. He changes for the better, AND it ends happily. What else could you ask for. The titular character would be Earl Tinker, a wealthy American capitalist who Ogle believes to be "barbaric."