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The Turmoil |
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The Turmoil is the first novel in the ‘Growth’ trilogy, which also includes The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). In 1942 Orson Welles directed a film version based on volume 2, also titled “The Magnificent Ambersons.” The trilogy traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by “doing things”. As George Amberson’s friend says, “don’t you think being things is ‘rahthuh bettuh’ than doing things?” A NOVEL By Booth Tarkington 1915.
To Laurel. CHAPTER I There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The stranger
must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon
him instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe
it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better
loved than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently
tended streets incessantly press home the point, and so do the flecked
and grimy citizens. At a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools of
dust, and if he should decline at any time to inhale the smoke he has
the meager alternative of suicide. The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more
riches. He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling
prodigiously. He has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained
to one tune: "Wealth! I will get Wealth! I will make Wealth! I will sell
Wealth for more Wealth! My house shall be dirty, my garment shall be
dirty, and I will foul my neighbor so that he cannot be clean but I
will get Wealth! There shall be no clean thing about me: my wife shall
be dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I will get Wealth!" And yet it
is not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the giant really wants is
hasty riches... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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Children |
Fiction |
Literature |
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Wikipedia – Booth Tarkington |
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