The Conquest of Canaan

by Booth Tarkington

Small town middle America in early 1900's---Ne'er-do-well Joe Louden loves daughter of wealthy judge, from afar---leaves town, goes to law school--returns to scandalize all be defending impossible cases---wins over town. Story of small town mores, social inequity, changing times, honor and greed. Summary by Bob Rollins.

Genres: Fiction, Classics

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1905

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

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Conquest of Canaan”, originally published in Harper’s Magazine between June and December of 1905 is yet another story set in a small town in Indiana, and it bears many similarities to his first novel, “The Gentleman from Indiana”, and “The Two Vanrevels”. In all cases, the hero is an exceptional person who takes on the less scrupulous people. In his first novel, everyone in the town of Platville respected the hero John Harkness, and his enemies were the White Caps (a thinly veiled parody of the Klan). In “The Two Vanrevels”, the hero is John Vanrevel, who is once again respected by almost the entire town, but his significant enemy is the rich and powerful Mr. Carewe. In this novel, the hero, Joe Louden is the hero of the misfortunate, but spurned by the “respectable” members of the town of Canaan, led by Judge Pike. To this hero, Tarkington adds his heroine, Ariel Tabor, who similarly is not regarded as a good person by the important members of the town.

In both cases, the characters have to leave town and then return to gain their respectability. Joe does this by putting himself through law school, though when he returns he is still looked down upon, and as he usually represents the lower classes and destitute, his reputation does not immediately improve. Ariel goes to Europe with her father after inheriting money, and when she returns she has gained respect by dressing and speaking correctly. In addition, she wins over Joe, who always overlooked Ariel in their childhood, instead he was in love with his neighbor Mamie Pike, the daughter of the judge. As with the others in the town, Joe is entranced by the returning Ariel, and he realizes his mistake when he was younger. Ariel has always cared for Joe, and with her help, he slowly builds up respect with the entire town, other than those fiercely loyal to Judge Pike.

This is a fairly standard Tarkington, and given its similarities to the previous two works of his, it is difficult to recommend it very highly. It is better than his first novel, but not nearly as good as “The Two Vanrevels”, as he fails to build the drama the way he did in that prior work by using the backdrop of the war. At the same time, it is a fairly straight-forward and easy read, and there are no major problems with it, so I will give it three stars.

[Vicious Circle · Rating 3 out of 5]

With an intentional allusion to the Old Testament, this book takes us back to familiar Tarkington Hoosier territory. Like his earliest novel, The Gentleman from Indiana, we find the hero of the book as an outsider from the rest of the city, fighting the established municipal machinery and managing ostracism from the highest strata of society. Stepbrothers Eugene Bantry and Joe Louden take different paths. Eugene returns home from school as polished, a bit uppity, and bound for a bright future at the town’s paper and as suitor to the daughter of the town’s key figure, Judge Pike. Joe, long dismissed as a bad boy who grew up to be even a worse man, flees to New York for a seedy life, only to return to the shock and horror of its residents. The dichotomy between the two men gets overshadowed by Joe’s romance with Ariel, a waif who makes good and is the only respectable citizen who stands by him. Joe find ready acceptance in the raucous, freewheeling, fast living community of nearby Beaver Beach, which also serves as a contrast to the Americana Canaan. Despite their bad reputation, Tarkington treats them sympathetically – particularly when trouble with the law follows one of them, named Happy Fear. A murder charge is brought against Happy, and outsider Joe serves as his lawyer despite popular opinion against him. A group of old men wryly observe and debate the proceedings throughout the book, adding continuity as Tarkington shifts from telling of Eugene’s fate to Joe’s.

[Sinuhe · Rating 5 out of 5]

If this were fanfiction, I would call it pure idfic. The writing is really top-notch, but what sells the story (to me, anyway) is the hurt/comfort vibe and the exaggeration of how the protagonist is treated, and his and his love interest's character development. In addition, it's a great window into small-city American life around the turn of the century, sort of like The Music Man, but a bit darker and grittier.

As a teenager, Joe Louden was known as a bad one - largely because his stepmother insisted on his father spending all the money on her own son, leaving Joe to support himself shamefully by selling newspapers. Joe hung out with a rough crowd: the transient working class, *gasp* African-Americans, and the family's very poor tomboy neighbor, Ariel. After leaving in disgrace, Joe returns years later as a credentialed lawyer; he expects that his reputation will have been forgotten, but finds that it's been embroidered ever since he left, and as a result nobody respectable will speak to him, let alone hire him. He takes up defending his rough companions instead, which only makes him less popular. In the meantime, Ariel and her grandfather inherited a large sum of money and went off to Paris, where she became refined, fashionable, and a drop-dead knockout. When she gets back, she, of course, will speak to Joe, and her actions throw the whole town into turmoil. Joe defends an innocent man accused of murder, and in the end the town comes to recognize his worth.

This basic summary doesn't really let on how much the text lingers indulgently on Joe's faithfulness to those who've been kind to him, how dreadfully the upper strata of Canaan treat him, and so on. To some extent, this is a grown-up and masculine version of A Little Princess. So if you're into that kind of story, then full steam ahead!

Warning: There is a certain amount of African-American eye dialect, which is extremely cringey.

[Vivienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Changing of a Town

I think this book would be classified as literary fiction, and although not up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning books, is a great read.
In this novel, Canaan is a small town of about thirty thousand people somewhere in Indiana, and it begins with a group of old men (called the “sages”) sitting at the big window of an hotel, so that they can see everything that is going on. It is a regular practice and they debate (argue) a great many things from the Koran to the speeches of Robert J. Ingersoll. Each of these men is summed up in an incisive sentence or two, so the reader pretty much knows their characters, although there could be a few surprises in store.

There are, essentially, five main protagonists: on one hand is Mamie Pike, daughter of Judge Pike, the big man in Canaan, and Eugene Bantry, son of a doting mother. On the other hand is Ariel Tabor, granddaughter of Roger, who is a failed artist, and Joe (Joseph) Louden, step-brother of Eugene. Mamie and Eugene are the haves, the golden ones, while Ariel and Joe are the have nots. Both of them are poor (all Joe’s father’s money is spent on Eugene), and both are socially unacceptable. Mamie is a nice girl, but Eugene is a shell, beautiful packaging, but hollow inside. Mamie’s father, Judge Pike is portrayed by a ruthless hand and without mercy, exactly the qualities of the Judge, with one addition that I will leave readers to discover.

The secondary characters are also so well-depicted, I feel as if I would know them if I saw them on the street.

There are two distinct Canaans; the one of the wealthy and respectable businessmen and their families, along with the shopkeepers and their staff; the other one comprising those who are poor, or black, or Irish, as well as those who cannot live up to the rigid standards of the other Canaan.

The author’s prose is remarkable and he has the gift of being able to imbue both his male and female characters with the multiple and intricate emotions that real people feel and his ability to express his female characters’ emotions is singular.

I shed a few tears in some chapters, was angered in others, and smiled or laughed in others. This book, published in 1905, takes a small town apart and puts it together again. Recommended.

[Arthur Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book starts out with a bang, in my estimation, but it takes an unwelcome melodramatic turn about the half way point and turns into something quite different. The murder case that the hero is defending is evidently supposed to hold the reader spellbound, but I just didn't find it particularly interesting. It's early Tarkington, so I didn't expect a masterpiece, and it is an entertaining enough book. But I was disappointed that it didn't live up to its early promise.

[Jocelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a while to warm up to it. But once I got going I couldn’t put it down. It’s so timeless. Some say it is about the changing of a town. But I feel it is more about the measure of a man. And how honesty, and integrity pull a lot of weight in the long run...there is also an example of looking fear in the eye and watching it back down.

[Michelle Koroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a lot. It was interesting to go back in time I realize how some things have not changed. The characters are richly developed and you find yourself wondering about them when you're not reading. A quick and fun read....

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Tom Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice period piece.

[Raymond Burchette · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book

I consider this book to be the best book that Booth Tarkington wrote next to Alice Adams both have great characters and a very good story.